Oldest Undergrad. Opposes Churchill

Northern Advocate, 30 May 1949, Page 6

Oldest Undergrad. Opposes Churchill

(From Reuters Correspondent in London) LONDON (By Airmail).—An Oxford undergraduate has undertaken the task af contesting the Woodford, Essex, Parliamentary seat in the next general election, as the Labour opponent of Winston Churchill. The man who will thus challenge the leader of the Parliamentary Conservative Party and Britain’s wartime Prime Minister is Seymour Hills. He is 6ft tall, and has the broadcast pair of shoulders in Oxford, topped by j fine masculine head with ruddy face and a ginger moustache. He readily breaks into hearty laughter or into lively conversation in a rich deep voice. “I like ale and good company,” he declares. “DORMITORY” AREA Woodford, the constituency for which. Hills has just been selected as prospective Labour Parliamentary candidate, is a pleasant suburban “dormitory” area, peopled with artisans and professional workers. Wartime destruction in East London coupled with post-war transport improvements which have linked Woodford with the metropolitan underground railway system have carried a tiue of manual workers and their families out there from London. On the borders of Woodford the tide broke against the inviolate open spaces of Epping Forest which surrounds the town. For a long time Labour regarded Woodford as a hopeless seat to contest. This assessment was upset by experience at the last general election, when the Labour Party did not even nominate a candidate to oppose Churchill, then at the peak of his popularity as “the man who won the war." / An Independent candidate 'entered the field and polled 10,488 votes against Churchill's 27,688. ' Hills is optimistic of his chances. “I have made it clear that I am not going to fight Churchill the man. but the policy ,he represents,” he said. THE BACKGROUND The background which led Woodford Labour supporters to pick Seymour Hills is unique. He is the oldest undergraduate at Oxford University. He was 38 last month. He is the only trade unionist to be elected president of the Oxford Union. He has worked on the factory assembly line, and he has served as a captain in the British Army. He has been a member of the Labohr Party for 20 years and is now vicechairman of the Oxford City Labour Party. Oxford is his home town, he was born there and went to elementary and secondary schools there. & His father was killed in the First World War and young Hills started work in the printing trade. He became a local official of the Typographical Association. When conditions in the trade became bad, Hills transferred temporarily to the motor industry, and worked fpr some years on the assembly lines. Soon after he returned to the printing business the army claimed him and during most of the war he was a captain in the Royal Artillery. The war over, he returned to Oxford but this time as an undergraduate, enabled to study by one of the special Government grants made to ex-service-men. Hills takes his final examinations this summer. Of his life after that, only one thing is yet fixed, that he will fight Churchill in wie general election. Round that central fact he must seek to arrange the other details of his career. Living in a flat at Maidstone in Kent, his wife awaits his return from Oxford. He has a 12-year-old daughter now at school at Torquay, Devonsnire. His pne sport is rowing. He has long .been secretary of the rVvfnrrl fl tv Rfmiin.i Cllllv