Roundabout
contentment of people on a bridge playing were badly dressed in bright separates, and the Liberal was excellently and quite unsuitably dressed in whipcord trousers. Trade was not brisk.
There were surprisingly few beards and sandals, for Hampstead; more off-green suits, accom- panied by dogs; an occasional dirndled housewife in a hurry; a very old lady helped to the booth by a granddaughter and a friend. There was nothing jarringly political about any Of it.
Suddenly a serious young man arrived and at once addressed he Liberal helper in loud tones.
'I wish to vote Liberal. I am not a Liberal. I am a Socialist. But the Labour Party isn't Socialist enough so I am voting Liberal.' The Liberal helper was most taken aback; but the Labour lady at once said : 'Well, if that's how you feel, come into the Labour Party and make it more Socialist. 1 hate people who complain and don't do anything.' And Liberal and Conservative gave her a hearty 'Hear, hear!'
What were the burning issues of the district? Up the hill, apparently none.
'I really couldn't say,' said the Conservative.
'We have come to a historic moment for show- ing the world how to behave with dignity,' said the Liberal.
'It isn't really a burning district, is it?' said Labour.
Down the hill, where the population is denser, where the new housing and the immigrants occur, burning issues were eagerly sought after. 'The trouble is,' explained one candidate, 'for twenty years we have all been arguing about the Kilburn drains—they flow backwards after a sharp summer storm. But now they're actually being fixed, so that's the end of that.'
'Those drains,' said a brisk Conservative coun- cillor in a bowler hat and a wing collar, 'it's a stunt. Why, I used to have to get into boots and a mackintosh and go round reassuring people—L and it was all the LCC's fault anyway.'
Across the dusty playground, the people came in twos and threes to vote; most moving fast, with a cheery word to all parties; a few, young couples, very conscious of their right to a secret ballot, not anxious to give their numbers to the party helpers. Everyone agreed that elections aren't what they were. 'When 1 was elected in 1937,' remembered a Labour Alderwoman, 'we had a procession and everything. Now it's all so quiet —even the national elections aren't much fun. What does the election depend on? Well, on who bakes the best buns, I should say,' and she col- lapsed into a roar of laughter, while a Conser- vative who had been in hot water for baking the word 'VOTE' on to some buns looked sheepishly at his huge feet.
Housing, it appeared, was still something of an issue. But what with the people who voted Labour because they didn't like the Rent Act, and the people who voted Labour because they liked public housing, and those who voted Conservative because they liked the Hampstead public housing, and those who liked the LCC but disliked the borough and vice versa, it was all a little con- fused.
But one woman, at least, knew where she stood. 'I'm voting Labour, dear,' she said to the candi- date. 'I always have. But I'm afraid my husband won't be voting this time, God bless him; we found him dead on the kitchen floor in January: And she went inside to vote.
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