Egg-Spattered P.M. Off To Scotland

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30563, 5 October 1964, Page 17

Egg-Spattered P.M. Off To Scotland

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, October 4. The focus of Britain’s General Election campaign yesterday switched to Scotland amid increasing signs that the lethargy that was at first so noticeable has been shaken off and the real battle is on.

The Prime Minister (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) yesterday left a meeting in Lancashire with an egg-spattered coat. At Banbury, near London, a firework was thrown at Mr George Brown, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and not far away a rowdy audience tried to shout down the Secretary of State for Education and Science, Mr Quinton Hogg. The Prime Minister has embarked on a whistle-stop tour of his own vast constituency of Kinross and West Perthshire, one of the largest in Britain.. Mr Harold Wilson, the Labour leader, who on Friday night spoke in Glasgow, moved on to a meeting in Edinburgh,, within 50 miles of Hie Prime Minister’s constituency. Both major parties hold some seats in Scotland by the slightest of margins and in a number of cases a bitter struggle is anticipated. Scotland still has pockets of relatively high unemployment and this and local railway closures are possible

sources of embarrassment for the Conservatives in view of their 13 years in office. Most British newspapers yesterday splashed on their front pages the news of the overnight intervention by the Minister of Labour (Mr Joseph Godber) in the strike of inspectors at the. car components firm of Hardy Spicer. The strike, which followed the management’s rejection of the men’s claim for a minimum pay increase of 9d an hour, has now made over 10.000 car workers idle. Mr Godber invited Mr Herbert Hill, the 63-year-old chairman of Hardy Spicer, and other employers and union spokesmen to meet Ministry peacemakers in London this morning. Union leaders insist that statements by Mr Hill describing some of the strikers as “poor dears” of “pretty poor mentality” have not influenced them. But political commentators think Mr Hill’s outburst is potentially as damaging for the Conservatives as Mr Wilson’s talk earlier in the week about investigating preelection strikes was for Labour.