By-Election Setbacks For Conservatives

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 13

By-Election Setbacks For Conservatives

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, May 15. The Labour Party today hailed its capture of the Conservative parliamentary seat at Rutherglen, Scotland, as a harbinger of a Socialist victory at the General Election next October.

The party—now holding a 16-and-a-half per cent popularity lead over Conservatives by the reckoning of public opinion polls—suffered a disappointment at Devizes, south-west England. Devizes, like Rutherglen,

was held by the Government with a small majority, and the Labour candidate there confidently predicted he would win by 2000 votes. However, the Conservatives, facing Labour and Liberal opposition, emerged with a 1670-vote majority, compared with 3838 votes in 1959. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Prime Minister, expressed disappointment at the result in Rutherglen where, in a straight fight with Conservatives, Labour more than doubled the previous Conservative majority—to 3747 votes compared with 1522. Even so, he claimed that the results announced from three out of four by-elections balloted yesterday were a pointer that Conservatives would do well at the General Election. The third contest was at Winchester, south-west England, where the Government’s former 12,132-vote majority was halved—to 6064 votes—in a fight with Labour and Liberals. The fourth contest yesterday was at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Its result will be declared later today. A feature of the polls at

Devizes and Winchester was the poor fortune of Liberals who, until recently, have been polling strongly in parliamentary by-elections, and who, two years ago, captured a Conservative seat at Orpington, Kent At Devizes the Liberal,

with 4281 votes against the 17,884 of the Labour runnerup, forfeited his £l5O deposit. At Winchester the Liberal with 4567 votes came near to losing his deposit. Despite Conservatives’ loss of Rutherglen to Labour, politicians said the Government had reason to take new heart from the verdict at Devizes.

They considered this of much greater importance because it broke the long pattern of strong swings to Labour.

The “Daily Herald,” described the Devizes result as an “exjiltant” one for Conservatives.

Conservatives said that although the Rutherglen ver-

diet showed a swing to Labour of about seven per cent, that at Devizes was only just over two-and-a-half per cent which, if repeated on a national scale, would be insufficient to give Labour a a parliamentary majority. London’s daily newspapers, regardless of political colour, also stressed the significance of the Devizes result.

Spy Charge.— A British radio engineer, Ronald Harold Evans, aged 44, has been arrested in Helsinki and charged with spying for an unidentified foreign power. Evans, a former Londoner, is believed to be married to a Finnish woman. He has lived in Finland since 1955.—Helsinki, May 15.