By-Election

"That Mr. Shinwell,* Ah'd 'ave 'is lugs [ears] if Ah got me 'ands on 'im."

"Ah'd like to see Mr. Strachey/- queue-in' and scrapin' for every bit of fat and soap. It's the women wot 'ave the 'ard time these days."

These feminine plaints soughed from the microphone when Tory Candidate John Reginald Bevins jumped from his "Voice of the People" sound truck and let the people give tongue. Five minutes later Arthur James Irvine, Labor's six-foot candidate, strode up to the same housewives' queue. While he pumped hands all round, the women cheered and patted his back.

The occasion was the campaign for the by-election in Liverpool's grimy Edge Hill district, where both Labor and Conservatives waited anxiously to see what effect, if any, Britain's crisis might have on Labor's vote. When the votes were counted last week, the score was: Labor, 10,827; Conservative, 8,874; Liberal, 910. In 1945 the Labor Party had carried the Edge Hill district by a margin of 6,039. Last week's vote was a loss of some 2,300 votes for Labor. Said Conservative Party Chairman Lord Woolton: "The drastic lowering of the Government majority . . . in this largely working-class district is a most heartening sign."

But the Labor Government was jubilant. If the Edge Hill vote meant anything, it meant that the socialists could still count on the workers to give the Labor Party a loyal working-class vote regardless of conditions. Moreover, Prime Minister Attlee, rightly or wrongly, believed that the Labor Government had hit the bottom of the chute, and that its standing with the voters, since it could scarcely go lower, must go up. Noting that Labor has not lost any seat in by-elections since 1945, London's Daily Herald burbled: "It is more than 70 years since a Government has enjoyed such an uninterrupted sequence of by-election victories."

* Emanuel Shinwell, Minister of Fuel and Power in the Labor Government.

/- Evelyn John St.Loe Strachey, Minister of Food in the Labor Government.

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