GORDON WALKER MAY HAVE CHANGED LOCK

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 13

GORDON WALKER MAY HAVE CHANGED LOCK

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, March 23.

Political luck may be changing for Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Mr Patrick Gordon Walker, says the Associated Press.

The General Elections may put him back into the inner councils of a new Labour Government.

His political career was apparently wrecked in 1964, at the moment that his Labour Party comrades returned to power after 13 years out of office. He was defeated in his race for Parliament, the prerequisite for a leading place in a Labour Government But if he wins his seat in the coming elections it is believed he may be Britain's

chief negotiator if Labour tries to enter the Common Market. First he has to win a place in the House of Commons from the Leyton district of East London, where he chose to run WORKED HARD Few politicians in England have done more to work a passage out of the political wilderness, the A.P. said. It has been hard going for the former Oxford don. Mr Gordon Walker is a classic case of a political leader who lost touch with the voters.

When Labour was in opposition, he championed the cause of Britain’s non-white immigrants. At the same time they were settling in his

district of Smethwick, and Conservatives there were exploiting racial problems that arose.

Mr Gordon Walker refused to discuss immigration on the campaign platform and he lost his Parliamentary seat.

NEAR LONDON

Other Labour districts jumped at the chance to be represented by a leader of the party. Mr Gordon Walker insisted that as a member of the Cabinet, he needed to be close to London.

Mr Reginald Sorensen, M.P for the Labour stronghold of Leyton, resigned his seat and went to the House of Lords. The seat seemed safe for anyone Labour wanted to put up.

But the Labour voters of Leyton resented Gordon Walker as an interloper. They knew Sorensen as “Our Reg" and wanted to keep him in spite of pressure from the Labour command that forced him to go. British Nazis broke up Mr Gordon Walker’s campaign

rallies by shouting racial slogans. To top it ail, there was a snowstorm on the day of the by-election in January, 1965. Many Labour voters stayed away from the polls. Mr Gordon Walker's Conservative opponent, Mr Ronald Buxton, slipped in by 205 votes.

Leyton district is composed of small, neat working-class homes, many fronted by bow windows which now are plastered with Gordon Walker posters. Elsewhere in London the signs of an imminent General Election are blocks apart. NOW KNOWN Mr Buxton is still in the race as a Conservative, but voters now know Mr Gordon Walker’s face. Anyone who walks the streets with him and sees him greet the voters gets the impression that Mr Buxton's appeal will not work in a year when the national tide seems to be running in Labour's favour.