"Don't Get Rattled"

GREAT BRITAIN

Since the convulsions of the Suez crisis and Sir Anthony Eden's resignation as Prime Minister, all Britain has been eying "the little general election" in nine constituencies. Though these by-elections cannot shake the government's substantial majority (about 60) in the House of Commons, they are a good index of the Tory government's popularity.

The first three seats contested, Labor won. Last week the Conservative Party won two, but with pluralities gravely reduced. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan felt obliged to call a private meeting of the Conservative backbenchers. Said he: "Don't get rattled. The government is not going to be stampeded into a general election."

In Bristol West, normally one of the Tory Party's ten top redoubts, the winning Tory candidate got 8,000 fewer voters than his predecessor. In Warwick and Leamington, the fox-hunting constituency recently vacated by Sir Anthony Eden after 33 years, Tory managers anticipated that their candidate, lacking Eden's magic name, would win by only 6,000 votes. Instead he scraped through by a mere 2,157.

Labor poured everything it had into Warwick and Leamington. Its managers and organizers criticized Suez, played up the threat of unemployment and the rising cost of living. Not only were there a large number of Tory abstentions on election day, but Labor's own vote was up a fantastic 12%. "Resign!" cried Labor M.P. Barbara Castle, and other Laborites took up the cry. But Harold Macmillan has no intention of resigning.

Despite Macmillan's calm, there is much unease among the more than 100 Tory M.P.s who hold their constituencies by pluralities of 3,000 or less. It is standard Tory talk that it is necessary to be courageously unpopular now, that within a year the benefits of the government's tightening economic policy will be more apparent and people will have forgotten Suez and gas rationing. Against the probability that his new administration does not now have a majority in Britain, Macmillan answers confidently: "This government will run its full term , and the problems of today will bear little relation to the issues of the next election."

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