Set-back for Wilson

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33628, 2 September 1974, Page 13

Set-back for Wilson

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, September 1. The General Election hopes of the British Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) have received a blow, the militant Engineering Workers’ Union having rejected the “social contract,” an unwritten agreement between the Government and the Trades Union Congress on wage restraint. Two days before the beginning of the T.U.C.’s annual conference, delegates representing the 1.4 million members of Britain’s secondlargest union decided, by 36 votes to 15, not to withdraw a conference motion expressing reservations about the contract.

The union leader, , Mr Hugh Scanlon, said curtly of his delegation’s vote: “It means that we reject the social contract.” The decision is a serious set-back to Mr Wilson’s hopes of a trouble-free approach to the General Election now considered likely to be held early in October. ‘Political lunatic’ Although nominations of possible Unionist Party candidates for the safe seat of South Down, Northern Ireland, closed at noon on Saturday, it will not be an-

nounced officially until Tuesday whether the name of the rebel Tory, Mr Enoch Powell, was put forward. The present retiring member for South Down, Captain Lawrence Orr, has supported Mr Powell’s adoption. An enigmatic figure bestknown for his opposition to coloured immigration into Britain, Mr Powell resigned from his Conservative seat in Wolverhampton before the last General Election, in February, and urged his supporters to vote Labour. Under fire

Throughout his career, he has attracted both intense loyalty and severe criticism, and yesterday he came under fire from Mr Gerry Fitt, the leader of Northern Ireland’s predominantly Roman Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party. “Mr Powell is a political lunatic, but not politically mad enough to see that while he would get nowhere in Britain, he could conceivably make some sort of headway in trouble-torn Ulster, where he can preach hatred and prejudice, and be

applauded for it by Protestant extremists,” Mr Fitt declared. ‘Heath has failed’ Support for Mr Powell came yesterday, mixed with criticism of the Conservative Party leader Mr Edward Heath, from an unexpected quarter: Mrs Elizabeth Sandys, a daughter-in-law of the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Mr Duncan Sandys, said that she and an organisation of about 100 staunch Conservatives would be urging voters to back the Labour or Liberal Parties so long as Mr Heath remained Conservative leader.

Mrs Sandys said: “Mr Heath has failed hopelessly, and we would like to see Mr Enoch Powell lead the party. He has the honesty, consistency, and credibility needed."