THE VOTERS at Torrington did not think that electing Mark
Bonham Carter would abolish bureaucracy, lower the cost of living or prevent Rent Act evictions. Theirs was a gesture of un- planned defiance. So was the Aldermaston march. Of some significance is the opposition the march roused in some of the newspapers. The one thing all those unsympathetic to the march seized upon was the fact that the figureheads (such as Michael Foot, Canon Collins and Philip Toynbee) did not go all the way. But I think it could be argued that the defection of these leaders, who are generally rather sillier and more muddled than those who actually marched, made the march a good deal more impressive than it would otherwise have been. And if the march was so dismal a failure there was a very curious reaction from the lunatic fringe of the far Right, who, headed by a Daily Telegraph columnist, were thrown into a state of raving hysteria that I have not seen equalled Since the Irgun dynamited the King David Hotel.
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