Randolph's Raid

Few towns in Britain are so contentedly Tory as Bournemouth on England's south coast -a palmy haunt of the retired rich, of Pekingese dogs and uniformed chauffeurs. But last week, with a general election possibly a few months off, the parliamentary constituency of Bournemouth East was making a spectacle of itself.

In 1952, Bournemouth Tories confidently elected to Parliament Publisher Nigel Nicolson, son of British Authors Sir Harold Nicolson and Victoria Sackville-West. Tory Nicolson, 42, has all the proper caste marks (Eton, Oxford, Grenadier Guards), but he also likes to think for himself. First he expressed his opposition to capital punishment, for which some of Bournemouth's retired officers and wealthy widows have never forgiven him. Worst of all, Backbencher Tory Nicolson publicly criticized Sir Anthony Eden's Suez invasion. Outraged, local Tory leaders formally forbade members of the local party to have any contact with him, and pointedly announced that in the next election, Bournemouth East's Tory candidate would be Major James Friend -a huntin' and shootin' Staffordshire squire given to sweeping reflections on Britain's imperial glory.

Retreat. Fortnight ago, the Tory brass of Bournemouth sank into deeper trouble. Major Friend, they learned, was in close cahoots with the League of Empire Loyalists, a quasi-fascist group that recently heckled Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan himself. Friend, it turned out, had written letters arranging that every time Nigel Nicolson tried to hold a meeting, the Loyalists would break it up with their heckling and roughhousing. Unhappily, the Bournemouth East Conservative Association accepted Major Friend's withdrawal.

But they were still as hostile as ever to Nicolson, whose reputation in staid Bournemouth had not been enhanced by news that his firm, after other proper English publishers had turned it down, was about to publish the British edition of Lolita.

At this point a rotund shape loomed on the horizon. It was that of Sir Winston Churchill's bumptious son Randolph, 47, cheerily announcing his willingness to be of help: "I have always wanted to be a member of Parliament. I think my upbringing and varied experience of life entitle me to suppose without presumption that I have some useful contributions to make."

Randolph's record as a politician did not inspire confidence in his vote-getting ability; of his seven previous bids for a seat in Parliament, only one was successful -and that was during Britain's World War II political truce. Years ago, contending for Liverpool, he had said: "I don't want to go into Parliament to represent a lot of stuffy old ladies in Bournemouth. I want to fight for really hard-pressed people." Worse yet, though he was originally a staunch supporter of the Suez invasion, Randolph had recently embarrassed the Macmillan government by a series of newspaper articles attacking the inept military and political management of that operation.

Truce. In London the Tory Party's inner council reacted to news of Randolph's foray into Bournemouth like a military headquarters that has just learned of an enemy breakthrough. Party Chairman Lord Hailsham galloped off to Bournemouth posthaste. At week's end, in a tense, three-hour session with Bournemouth Tory leaders. Hailsham persuaded them to accept the hated Nigel Nicolson again, if a private postal poll shows that he would win a majority of the 7,500 Tory voters in the. constituency.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.