23 JANUARY 1971, Page 7

Poole's leaky theory

It is nice to be vindicated once in a while, particularly following a gross error. Like most commentators, 1 regretted the way in which I had allowed myself to be misled by the pollsters during the general election. When Lord Poole, with benefit of hindsight, claimed in a celebrated letter to the Tunes. '1 will not be convinced by any argument which may be put forward that there was a dramatic swing to the Conservatives in the last week of the election', I wrote expressing great disagreement.

It is with some pleasure, therefore, that 1 read in the University of Strathclyde's Social Research Centre's study, edited' by Professor Richard Rose, of The Polls and the 1970 Election, that there is no support for Oliver Poole's theorisings. The pollsters, after the election and all of them except the Evening Standard's Opinion Research -Centre licking their wounds, are unanimous that there was a late swing to the Tories, and between them they adduce evidence which I myself thought, and still think, should carry weight. One or other pollster suggests that Wedg- wood Benn's attack on Enoch Powell was the greatest single mistake of the campaign (an estimate with which Harold Wilson would not, 1 think, disagree); that Powell himself gained more votes for the Tories than he lost; that Edward Heath was right therefore to decline utterly to disown Powell; and that the economic argument, sustained by Heath, reinforced by Lords Cromer and Kearton, was seemingly justified on the eve of the poll by the publication' of the worst trade figures for eighteen months.

Poole's theory, which 1 thought last August to be leaky, now looks like -a sieve,