Stratford Notebook
DAVID WATT writes: It seems wildly unlikely that Mr. Macmillan will want to rush to the country this autumn on the basis of the Stratford by-election result. But although the Conservative turn-out may not be as large as Mr. Maude, the Tory candidate, will have hoped, the Conservative Central Office boys will not be entirely implausible as they go through the customary routine of explaining that their man has done much better than might have been expected in the circumstances. Mr. Profumo's 14,000 ,majority in 1959 was picked up in the absence of the Liberal candidate, the Opposition was weak and the candidate (and more especially his wife) had a big personal following. Mr. Maude, on the other hand, faced a strong Liberal challenge, and a Labour opponent possessed of great charm and the best-known beard in show business (pace James Robertson Justice), and though both he and his wife are charming people 1 doubt whether either of them would claim to be particularly glamorous figures.
Nor does the basic situation in the constituency at all conform to the popular idea of Stratford as a freak Tory stronghold made up of petty bourgeois tourist trappers on the one hand and landed lordlings. and their hapless villeins on the other. It is true that the southern and eastern half of this huge Division (400 square miles) is some- thing like this picture -sleek-looking churches, big houses, farms and cottages (mostly tied) all closely knit in villages of glorious golden stone. This is the heartland of the Conservative whist drive and willing helpers at the Me and squire-, archical paternalism. It is also true that the keepers of oak-beamed guest houses and six- teenth-century Wimpy Bars in Bardsville itself are not exactly revolutionary material.
But many of the vople who work for them, the waiters and caterers and car-park attendants and barmen who service the Shakespeare in- dustry, take a rather more radical view. So do the growing legion of commuters from industry in Birmingham and Coventry and the profes- sional people. The whole of the northern part of the constituency is full of housing estates where workers in light industry have spread their homes round the old village centres. In short, the Division is not a bad cross-section of public opinion—Tory-biased, of course, but still decently representative. How much comfort Mr. Mac- millan will derive from this fact I wouldn't know.
The effect of the campaign itself seems to have been chiefly to bring out the true balance of political forces which Mr. Profurno's tenure had obscured. Given three competent main candi- dates I doubt whether any tactics could have pre- vented the Liberals and Labour eroding the effects of Mr. Maude's big initial adVantages- a Tory tradition and a superb organisation. How- ever, I do think he might have lived a little more dangerously. He is obviously competent and authoritative but he is hardly a winsome speaker and by deliberately keeping down the tempera- ture with gallons of statistics he gave a distinctly lack-lustre impression. Moreover, he handed the initiative to his opponents by largely avoiding local issues. Mr. Mirfin, the Liberal, seized his chances with the energy, grandiloquence and condescension which carried him to the Presi- dency of the Cambridge Union a few years ago. His public mannerisms are exasperating but they had their effect by their sheer contrast with those of Mr. Maude. Mr. Faulds for his-part, as a local candidate, was able to attack. very effectively with rates (which are astronomical in Stratford) and local housing and schools and hospitals, wearing his most fearsome Carver. .Doone sscowl for the purpose. I doubt whether against these opponents
'Some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr. Maude should have masked his very effec- tive battery of invective for so long.
One can see that it was in the interest of all sides in the campaign to put it out that the Profumo affair did not at all affect the result. I don't think it was true, though. Visitors criticising the late Member were apt to find themselves laid out cold on the pavement by angry members.of the Profumo fan club and one doubts whether Screaming Lord Hailsham, that hammer of Ministerial vice, would make much headway if, as some Liberals alleged, he should ever stand for the seat in place of Mr.. Maude. On the other hand I found ,that. while the question oi. sexual morals -was genuinely irrelevant to most people, the general line that 'you can't trust these Con- servatives' had gained a good deal of force from the traumatic effect of the incident. Some Tory abstentions and Liberal conversions may well have stemmed from this malaise.
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