ELECTIONS IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 19

ELECTIONS IN BRITAIN

Prime Minister Heckled (New Zealand Press Association) LONDON, September 23. The British Prime Minister (Mr Harold Macmillan) was heckled with shouts of “get off” and “pipe down” during his whistle-stop tour of the vulnerable Lancashire constituencies today. Lancashire—recently an unemployment black spot and hard hit, particularly by Commonwealth competition to its cotton industry —is a critical area for the Conservative Government. The Prime Minister was generally well received, but he encountered real opposition at Middletown. While he spoke to a crowd of about 1000, workmen and women heckled from the windows of a nearby mill, with shouts of “pipe down,” “send him off,” and “get off Macmillan.” * Men paraded with boards reading “500 mills closed—the Tories have written you off,” and ‘“Three cheers for Mac, one (Suez), two (Rent Act) and three (cotton).” A woman shouted: “You are in the graveyard of Lancashire, Macmillan”* However, in Oldham—an area where about 20 mills are to be closed under the cotton reorganisation scheme—there was no opposition, although it had been expected. Mr Macmillan told a crowd at Heywood that the Government’s policy' on< the cotton trade was now coming to fruition. Lancashire had lost many of its foreign markets and was beginning to be hit in its home market. But the Government had achieved a voluntary limitation of textile imports from Hong Kong, which was soon to be followed by one for Pakistan and India. As Mr Macmillan left Heywood —“marginal” seat with a Conservative majority—he was loudly cheered. At Bury, the Prime Minister told a 500-strong crowd: “I lead a party whose policies are united, Mr Gaitskell (Labour Party leader) could, no doubt, negotiate as well as I could, but his party is hopelessly divided on all the great issues of foreign policy.”