Bournemouth, but no belles

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

On the Monday that nominations closed for the Bournemouth East by-election the two questions of the hour were, where was the New Britain candidate, and, would Lieutenant-Commander William George Boakes enter the fray? The first question is yet to be answered as I write; Mr John Pratt is definitely standing as the New Britain man, but he has not been seen in Bournemouth. The answer to the second question is, happily, yes. Lt-Cdr Boakes made it in time, with his amazing bicycle and with deposit in hand. He has subtly changed his platform. Formerly the Air, Road, Public Safety and White Resident candidate, he now, stands as Democratic Monarchist, Public Safety etc. Aha. I hope they have noted that down at Nuffield. I'm not sure that 'Bill' Boakes wouldn't get my vote. He has been manfully losing his deposit at almost every by-election in living memory and he deserves a break. It is certainly hard to think of any other figure in contemporary public life who has added so much to the gaiety of nations and done so little harm.

This may seem a frivolous way to begin a description of the by-election campaign; but then they are after all, rather frivolous affairs for all the pretence the party leaders make of taking them seriously, using them as barometers of national feeling and so forth. There is not much to get excited about in Bournemouth. As a news event, the by-election is rather less exciting than Dopey Dick the whale. It is the kind of seat which, as Sir James Goldsmith would say, the Tories would win if they ran a donkey (or perhaps Sir James Goldsmith). They have in fact chosen, from what must have been a very large field of would-be candidates, Mr. David Atkinson, a small businessman who has a first class diploma in Engineering and Motor Management from the Southend College of Technology and who once worked on a kibbutz: a modern Tory. His qualification is his row of party campaign medals: a former National Young Conservative Chairman, a county councillor, a member of three party committees, and a candidate previously in two safe Labour seats. As he says himself, he has got where he is by 'sheer hard work'. The Bournemouth East Tories have reason for playing safe. It will be recalled that, having given Mr Nigel Nicolson the old heave-ho, they replaced him with John Cordle, whose poignant resignation occasions the present by-election. Better luck next time.

To be fair, Mr Atkinson has several important points of superiority over the other candidates. He calls himself David, not Joe or Don; he does not, unlike the Labour man, wear a beard nor, unlike the Liberals, long side-whiskers; and he is not, unlike both of them, a lecturer, of whom there are surely enough at Westminster already. He is campaigning on unsurprising issues: 'There'll be one confrontation after another in this winter of discontent . . . the Socialists are putting party before country too many social security spongers . . . put the incentive back in Britain.'

Of course, all Mr Atkinson needs to do, defending a majority of 10,129 in a seventy per cent poll, is to get his vote out on the day. In a town like Bournemouth this produces macabre technical problems. A quarter of the population is aged over sixty-five, far higher than the national average. Lady Young has come to explain what the Tories are doing for the old; but many of these elderly people can no longer be expected to take an active interest in politics. As the Tories canvassed through the streets of Boscombe we came to a 'rest house'. A stern Scotch matron let the candidate in. How many people did she have in the house?

'See for yourself.'

In a sitting-room were nine very old women, seated around the walls in straight-backed chairs. Two or three were reading, the rest just staring ahead.

'Hello, ladies. I'm your Conservative candidate.' Silence. 'I hope I can count on your votes.' Silence, with one or two inscrutable grimaces.

'You, my dear. Can I count on your vote?'

'She's a bit deaf,' the matron explain otiosely.

'I'm your Conservative candidate.'

'Conservative. Hear, hear,' said one lady, suddenly looking up. Turning to the matron Mr Atkinson said, imagine they have some difficulty getting to the polls.'

'None of them can get out of the house. None's under eight-five. One's ninetyseven.'

'Well, we'll get some cars. Cars, yes. George! Can you arrange for cars for these ladies on Thursday morning?'

There was nothing as grim as this with either of the other two candidates (I exclude the National Front, who will not make much showing in a town with many discontented people but no immigrant community, as well as New Britain and the great Boakes). Mr John (`Joe') Goodwin, the Labour man, is the youngest of the three, a local councillor, a polytechnic lecturer (They call it liberal studies, but naturally I prefer to say social studies), a Tribuneite who is largely campaigning on an anti-EEC platform. Mr Wedgwood Benn is to be his eve-of-poll speaker. Mr Goodwin is fighting, too, for increased public spending — 'OAPs know how important it is' — and against the wretched Heath-Walker local government reforms which have subordinated Bournemouth to the county council at Dorchester, miles away.

He is a fat, bearded, affable man who will no doubt earn his Labour seat before long. Surprisingly, he is as keen as the Tories on playing down the Cordle affair: 'The voters are interested in politics, not personalities.' He will learn otherwise one day.

The main interest on Thursday night will reside in whether the Liberals can retain their second place, 1,707 votes more than Labour at the last election. Initial canvasses suggest that they may not. (One canvass ten days before polling gave the Tories 13,000, Labour 6800, Liberals 6400, National Front 1800. I record this, for comparison with the result, because of its unusual source: the Front itself, though it was quoted to me by another party official.) There is a paradox here. Labour and Liberals are fighting one another, but they are implicitly fighting on the record of the LibLab pact. This is especially and selfconfessedly true of the Liberals. Their candidate, Mr Don Matthew, says that he is hoping to absorb Labour rather than Tory votes. Yet he claims that the pact is what the country needs, and that it has at last brought strong government. He claimed as well that the pact was electorally popular, particularly with Liberals. The morning's canvassing appeared to disabuse him. After several houses of don't knows, don't vote and I'm-afraid-we're-Conservatives, we came to a house where the door was opened by a fine-looking old man.

`Ah, the Liberal candidate. I've been wanting to see you. I've been voting Liberal for fifty years, and now you've got this damned pact. Helping the socialist§ to run the country. The sooner you get shot of them the better,' Mr Matthew was understandably disconcerted by this, and as we talked on he changed the subject. He wasn't so sure that Mr Cordle would play no part in the election. This was a refreshing change from the primness of the other parties, and would also seem to have some plausibility about it. Recent by-election results have tended to suggest that when a member departs for the Lords and the Quangos or for the television studio or for a large European salary or for prison, rather than merely resigning or dying, there is a perceptible additional swing against his party. It was a bitterly cold, wet week in Bournemouth. Even without the help of the striking firemen it promises to be a bleak winter for its ageing community. They and their younger neighbours as well have much to complain about. One could hope that their new Member would be able to do something to help them; but his own winter of discontent will be spent Lobby trudging over devolution and European elections — two issues which could scarcely affect the people of Bournemouth less.