First Shots Fired In Election Battle

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27643, 27 April 1955, Page 13

First Shots Fired In Election Battle

(Rec. 10 p.ip.)

LONDON, April 26.

Sir Wihston Churchill will fly home from Sicily today to plunge into the election battle, already becoming heated over a Conservative charge that a victorious Labour Government would bring back the ration book.

This spectre of the war and post-war austerity could sway the votes of many British housewives and the charge, which Mr Attlee's Labour Opposition has sharply denied, is shaping as the major issue in the election on May 26. The Conservative Government completed the progressive abolition of food rationing last July, 14 years after it was introduced. Today Conservatives throughout the country were “plugging” the accusation that the Labour Party’s declared policy of controls and quotas inevitably would restore the queues and shortages which continued during the Labour Government’s six-year postwar reign. Dr. Charles Hill, the PostmasterGeneral, and one of the Conservative Party’s best speakers, said at a Conservative meeting last night that Labour’s policy of a return to consumer subsidies, price control, Government purchase and monopoly of foodstuffs could only mean a,return to rationing. , The “Daily Herald,” official Labour Party newspaper, today labelled the charge “a Tory lie.” It added that Labour's recent policy statement on agricultural marketing had declared that rationing would not be brought back. Mr Hugh Gaitskell, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, has hotly denied the charge at a regional party conference. “It’s a lie” he said. “There never was a more ridiculous smear campaign.” Politicians expect Sir Winston Churchill to take part in one of the Conservative Party’s television and radio broadcasts and also to make limited tours of certain key constituencies. Sir Winston Churchill will again be contesting his constituency of Woodford, in Essex.

A Syracuse message says Sir Winston Churchill is reported to be suffering from a slight cold, but he spent, the last day of his holiday at work qn a landscape painting showing a pinkwashed house and the Bay of Syracuse,