LABOUR PARTY TRIUMPHS IN LONDON ELECTION
The British Labour party scored a major triumph in the April 9 elections for the Greater London Council, In_the 100-seat council, Labour won 64 places, the Conservative party [Tories | got 36, the Liberals failed to elect a single member,
Tory Prime Minister Sir Alex Douglas-Home, evidently aware from pré-election polls in the area what.the results would likely be, announced the same day that the long-awaited general election would be postponed until the last possible moment; that is, until October, This was universally taken as an admission by’the titular head of the Tory forces that they expect to be crushed in the coming eleotion and that all that remains of their strategy now is desperate hope that a miracle can avert the reckoning for’their thirteen years of misrule,
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The London election was regarded by all sides in advance as a key test area that would most likely foretell the results of the general election, [See World Outlook March 6,] The forecasters therefore studied the results in the London election with particular attention. Two specialists in this field, Peter Pulzer and Michael Steed, forecast in The Observer April 12 that the swing to Labour in the general election will be around 8.5%. Results of by-elections elsewhere in the country confirm this figure, they state,
The London vote was particularly drematic in view of the extra ordinary lengths to which the Tories went in trying to win. They gerrymandered the entire area in such a way as to reduce the weight of the working-class vote and to swell that of the middle and upper classes,
The ballot, too, was not designed to help workers, Names of candidates appeared without party affiliations. Hundreds of com plaints were registered by voters about the difficulty of obtaining from election officials information on what party some of the oandi-~ dates represented,
The swing to the Labour party was so heavy, however, that all this trickery appeared to boomerang.
The ranks of the Labour movement feel greatly heartened by this impressive victory, The situation in the country seens to spéll certain defeat for the Tories in October,
With this strong wind in the sails of the Labour party, the rank and file should feel doubly free now to begin considering the immense problems that must be met with Labour again in power,
After being ousted for thirteen years beoause of the ineptness and treachery of the last Labour government, the working class must see to it that this time an effective program is carried out; in other words, that the Labour government exercises its mandate to put the country on the road to socialism,
British business appears to be reconciled to a Labour victory, But that is because the capitalists count on Harold Wilson and the coterie around him performing the same kind of rescue work for their system as the last crew.
This may prove not as easy as on previous occasions, however, In the world of today, with revolutions lighting up the horizon on all sides, the working class will not feel inclined to let this enormous opportunity go sliding down the drain, They will be more inclined to make England the first country in Western Europe to demonstrate how swiftly a highly developed economy can elevate living standards for the masses and open up a boundless perspective of abundance and well being for everyone once it introduces genuinely socialist planning.
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