World Notes BRITAIN

The champagne corks after the election popped at an unexpected place in southeast London last week. The Labor Party had held the Greenwich parliamentary seat in every election since 1945. But this time the victor was the candidate of the centrist Alliance, a coalition of the Social Democratic and Liberal parties. The S.D.P.'s Rosie Barnes won a stunning 53% of the vote, vs. 34% for Labor and 11% for the Conservative Party candidate.

The outcome was a humiliating blow to Labor, which narrowly trails Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in polls and hopes to take power in the next general election. Thatcherites, though, were in no mood to celebrate. They fear that a surging Alliance could win enough seats to create parliamentary gridlock and deny the Conservatives a majority. Pundits have been predicting that Thatcher will call a fall election.