HUGE MAJORITY

Evening Post, Volume 105, Issue 4, 6 January 1928, Page 7

HUGE MAJORITY

SOUTHEND BY-ELECTION LADY IVEAGH'S TRIUMPH BLOW TO SOCIALISTS (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 25th November. People interested in tho by-election at Southend heard tho result announced at a few minutes before midnight by wireless on Saturday night. All but Conservative supporters must havo been greatly disappointed. The result was:— Lady Iveagh (C.) 21. 221 Mr. D. Moston (L.) 11,912 Mr. E. Harper (Lab.) 4,777 Mr. E. A. Kailwood (Ind. Con.) 917 Conservative majority .. 9,309 Total electorato 47,259. Number of women voters, 21,907. Percentage of electorate polled, 82. Mr. E. A. Kailwood, the Independent Conservative candidate, forfeited Ins deposit. Mr. Harper (Labour), having failed by 76 to receive one-eighth of the total number of votes polled, also forfeits his deposit. At the previous cloction tho voting was: Viscount Elveden (C), 23,417; J. D. Young (Lib.), 10,924; S. A. Moseley (Lab.), 3144. . While tbo return of Lady Iveagh was never in doubt, the size of her majority has somewhat exceeded expectation, and has caused the liveliest satisfaction in tho party. That satisfaction is the greater because of tho consistent attacks on the Government, and in particular on the Prime Minister, by newspapers which until lately were at least nominally Conservative. Her crushing victory is regarded as at once a reply to those attacks and proof of the powerl.ssness of those who make them. Lady Iveagh is tho twenty-second member of her family to achieve the distinction of M.P., and the fourth Conservative woman M.P. in the present Parliament. . . NEW MEMBER INTERVIEWED. "I havo fought the election o_ the three years' record of the Government," said Lady Iveagh. "The case I put before the electors was simply that the prime need of tho country was a strong Government which would give industry tho confidence and stability required for sound progress. I have maintained that the Conservative Government has, through a timo of acute difficulty, steered the country on a safe course. During the contest my opponents havo used every possiblo and impossible argument to traduce the Government. All the big guns of both tho Liberal and Socialist Parties have been brought down to batter the Conservative defences and to give full effect to all tho most deadly ammunition that their arsenal could supply, "My victory, therefore, proves that all this highly organised campaign of distortion and malignant misrepresentation has failed in its effect. < The result shows that there is nothing like tho degree of discontent with the actions of. tho Government which tho other parties would like both themselves and the public to believe. Southend has sent a decisive note of confidence to Mr. Baldwin, which will hearten him'to go forward in completing the labours of the present Government and preparing for the next General Election." Kcgardiiig.,the foolish extravagances put forward- by Lord Itothcrmei'o on" tho women's voto issue, Lady Iveagh said: ''I hope, now that Southend has given its opinion on this curious newspaper 'stunt,' that it will go on the scrap-head along with all the other rejected rubbish of political controversy. Apart from politics the verdict goes to prove that the people of Southend at least havo confidence that a wife may represent them as faithfully as her husband. But the main thing is that the other parties did their utmost to shake the allegiance of the, people of Southend, and that the people stood firm." LORD ROTHERMERE. ; "It will go hard," says the "Morning Post," "with those political meteorologists who have been discovering in the by-elections evidence of the country's impatience with tho present Government, 4o find any support for their theory in this election at Southend. The most disappointed man—apart from the Independent Conservative candidate, with his 917 votes' out of a total poll of nearly 40,000—will surely be Lord Itothermcrc, whose hostility to Mr. Baldwin, and eagerness to discredit the Government, havo become almost a mania. In the pursuit of his vendetta he denies himself even the weekly day of rest; for the denunciations which he maintains in his morning and evening journals during the week are renewed on Sunday in his 'associated' organ. iYestorday he even put in overtime, and beside pillorying Mr. Baldwin as a Socialist in his own paper, gave an interview to a rival sheet, where he predicted an overwhelming triumph for the Socialist Party at the next election. It is a little unfortunate that these forecasts of disaster should coincide with ;the result of the Southend ' election, which so singularly fails to sustain *hem; but Lord Rothermere's lot must be mortifying in any case. His desires frustrate ono another. Ho wants abovo all things to turn Mr. Baldwin out and to prevent the Socialists from coming in. But if he succeeded in tho first aim he would defeat tho second; and if lie succeeded in the second it would only be to defeat tho first. In this cruel dilemma it must bo a consolation to Lord Rothermere to realise that, as events prove, he is powerless to influence the result." / MR. H. G. WELLS'S REBUFF. Another well-known man must also havo had a shock. This is Mr. H. G. Wells, who informed the Southend voters that tho present Government was "heading straight for war," which 'drew from Mr. Churchill tho very just observation that it was "indescribably mean to make such an untrue statement for the purpose of cadging votes at a by-election." "Tho new member," says the "Daily Telegraph," "with her lino record of social work and inherited aptitude for politics, will be a valuable addition to the House of Commons, and to the ro presentation of her sex in Parliament. Sho has dono no small service in reducing to total absurdity Mr. Mac Donald's statement that 'the Government lias no business to keep in offico another day.' In her own words, 'tho other parties did their utmost to shake the allegiance of the people of Southend, and the people stood firm."