COUNTESS AND LABOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18292, 8 January 1923, Page 5

COUNTESS AND LABOUR.

SILL-POSTING DISPUTE; AN ELECTION" INCIDENT. The final stages of the election at Ba.th have been enlivened by a hot* encounter between Countess. Temple and the sup-' porters... of, the Labour candidate, wrote the Bath correspondent of the Manchester Guardian prior to the poll. Lord and Lady Temple live at Newton Park, on the western . (outskirts of the city,, and the Countess 'motored to Twertori-on-Avoii, a working-class district of the constituency, and personally .superintended the removal of election posters from! a' house owned by the earl which is being used as ' : a committee room for Mr/ Elvin, the Labour candidate and a keen advocate of the capital- levy. "/'■■: ';."'•./.'; ,;, "' ;; : ; \, - •-' :,, _ The Labour supporters are boiling with indignation, and at a, subsequent: meeting Mr. Elvin said he had been informed that Lady Temple intended; -to? repeat her. action. The Labour Party did not want to make an example of the Countess, so he suggested that her friends should restrain her. Otherwise they ; would be compelled to take action., : : • - Lady Temple, in &h interview, said she received ,an anonymous letter asking her. whether' she knew that a -housei belonging to the earl was plastered • over with bills and disfigured with : - chalk marks. She at once went down ; with her husband's sub-agent and found the house in the condition described. The'house ; was neither a' public bill-posting station nor a. derelict building. She told the occupier he could put as many bills in the window as he pleased, but she could not allow Lord Temple's property to be disfigured ;iu this way, and asked him to remove the bills. He answered that he could not, as he had no one to. help him. " Then," said Lady Temple, " I will do so" myself." ■ .■ " The bills were then removed," con-.' tinued the Countess, "by the sab-agent and my chauffeur. That is all there is; in the incident, an di' the Labour man who dares to say anything else will-be prosecuted. IshaU do it myself." The Countess agreed that the occupier had said he was a poor man. and wanted to earn a few shillings by displaying bills, but site expressed the opinion that he was not as poor as he said he was. r