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Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28489, 20 January 1958, Page 8

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The Clutha by-election on Saturday has confirmed the general expectation that the Labour Party’s majority in the new Parliament would not exceed two. Few, eyen of Labour’s most partisan supporters, expected the party to strengthen its tenuous hold on Parliament by winning Clutha; , and neither party will be disappointed in the result. The definite, though limited, swing to Labour, apparent throughout the country in the General Election in November, has been maintained; but it was sufficient only to whittle down the big majority Mr Roy has won at each election since 1935. Mr Fahey, the Labour candidate, who was selected after the death of the party’s candidate just before the General Election, r deserves credit for maintaining this swing, though his campaign was probably aided by the rift among National Party supporters in the electorate. The smaller poll on Saturday

suggests that the rift caused some abstentions which probably favoured Mr Fahey. Boundary changes, too, were believed to favour Labour. It is perhaps significant that the substantial drop in support for the Social Credit candidate almost balanced the gains Mr Fahey made. The knell sounded for Social Credit in November; it sounded even more insistently on Saturday. The party will require extraordinary resilience to contest, as it intends, another election, though it may not need to wait till 1960 to be assured again that politically it is a dead movement. When the Parliamentary session begins this week, Mr Nash will have an effective majority of one; and the difficulties of putting the party’s platform into legislative effect will be immense. The possibility of a “ snap ” dissolution, and an election on an issue and at a time the Government considers favourable, cannot be overlooked.