STALEMATE FEARED

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 18

STALEMATE FEARED

Liberal Factor In Election (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 24. Fear that the October 8 General Election may produce a stalemate verdict is currently uppermost in the minds of Britain’s Conservative and Labour parties. Both have uneasy memories of the 1950 contest, when the nation, divided almost evenly in a Socialist versus anti-Socialist alignment, slashed the Labour Party's previous majority of nearly 150 to the almost unworkable figure of six. Now, as then, the intervention of a big army of Liberal candidates is the imponderable factor in the election—even though the 214 Liberal entry foreshadowed is less than half the 475 put forward by the middle-of-the-road party in 1950.

Liberals in the present election will put three-quarters of their total of candidates into Conservative constituencies, but this does not dispel Labour concern about the effects of their intervention generally. Vote-splitting possibilities are the main bugbear of the calculations of the two main parties. The Prime Minister (Mr Harold Macmillan) revealed his own anxiety on this score at the outset of his campaign when he appealed to voters to give an overwhelmingly clear verdict, so that the next Government—either Conservative or Labour —would act with real authority in “the next five critical years.” He has continued to underline this point, which was evidently also in Sir Winston Churchill’s mind last night when in a speech to his Woodford constituents he urged: “Do not vote Liberal—do not waste your vote.” The same underlying concern can also be traced in the speeches of Labour leaders generally.