SWING SEEN TO LABOUR

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27669, 27 May 1955, Page 13

SWING SEEN TO LABOUR

Eden Still Leads In Popularity

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, May 26. Britons go to the polls tod-ay after a dull election campaign which has left tipsters confidently predicting a Conservative Party victory. But eleventh-hour public opinion polls showed that the popularity margin between the Conservatives and Labour is much narrower than 10 days ago. Party agents in many electorate, all over Britain yesterday reported a last-minute hardening of opinion among thousands of people who earlier declined to say how they would vote.

A poll which the “Daily Express printed today showed the Conservatives 27 points ahead of Labour. In the last 24 hours of the election campaign, the Conservatives’ popularity dropped .3 of a point, according to the newspaper’s figures. Sensing this rally to Labour in the mounting election temperature, the Conservative chiefs have made a concentrated drive to whip up then supporters in the areas they won a' the 1951 election by small majorities. Sir Anthony Eden made a quick tour of four vital towns in Lancashire where the outcome is in doubt Mr Duncan Sandys, Minister oi Supply and Sir Winston Churchill’s son-in-law, threw his weight into two London constituencies with uncomfortably thin Conservative majorities.

Marginal Seats The Conservative Party's anxiety over marginal and Liberal-contested seats has gradually . increased during the election campaign. Its leaders have urged Britain’s several million Liberal supporters to vote Conservative and help keep Labour out. Labour is equally anxious about marginal seats and the group of more than 20 seats which it is defending with Liberal as well as Conservative opposition. Sir Winston Churchill, bareheaded beaming and sporting a huge blue Conservative rosette, made an eve-of-the-poll tout in his constituency oi Woodford. Essex. Smoking the inevitable xiigar, he acknowledged his reception with the V sign and declared at one stop: “The fortunes of Great Britain may well be affected by the decision which will be taken tomorrow. I am sure everyone will do his duty, and that we may look forward to another spell of good progressive peaceseeking government.” . The deputy Labour leader, Mr Herbert Morrison, told a crowded meeting at Welling, Kent: “I should like to impress on Labour people and progressive minded people that this is an election in which every vote is needed. I want to appeal to the electorate as a whole to vote in accordance with its convictions.”