Don't Tell the Tories, But . . .

By R. L. LEONARD

WHEN Bernard Shaw ran unsuccessfully for the London County Council in St. Pancras fifty-eight years ago, Beatrice Webb confided t 3 her diary: 'He will never be selected again by any constituency that any wire-puller thinks can be won.'

Yet his was a genuine if unconventional attempt to secure election to a body which at various times has commanded the services of such disparate" characters as Lord Rosebery, Sidney Webb, Lord Morrison of Lambeth and Mr. Henry Brooke. It may be doubted whether any of these would have thought it worth his while to stand for the Greater London Council, the first election for which will be held on April 9. &minimum of two days' work per week will be required of its members, yet the powers which they will wield are substantially less than those of the LCC.

The London County Council has, no doubt,

been an anachronism for rather more than half its seventy-five years, and no longer contains more than about a third of London's burgeoning Population within its boundaries. Yet the GLC, which will replace it next year, is a curiously unsatisfactory body which seems fated to enjoy a far briefer life than its predecessor. Although it will cover an area with 8,000,000 people, com- pared with not much more than 3,000,000 in the LCC area, its boundaries fall far, short of what they should be if it is effectively to exercise its principal function: overall planning' and development. This point was ironically under- lined by the publication of the report on the South-East on the same day that nominations closed for the GLC election.

Nor does it now appear likely that the GLC

will produce the political effect intended. A genuine desire for reform in local government may have inspired the authors of the London Government Bill, but what really steeled the Government, and even more its back-benchers, to persevere with the Bill (albeit in an amended for persevere

against a barrage of criticism, much of

it Coming from their own supporters, was the Prospect that the seemingly permanent irritant of 'Socialist misrule' in the metropolis would at last be removed.

It now seems increasingly doubtful whether

this object will be achieved, at least in 1964. The heavily assumption that the GLC area would be

has weighted in favour of the Conservatives has not survived closer examination. The Tories

was

sixty-one of the 103 parliamentary con-

stituencies included, in the 1959 general election, out when the two parties are evenly balanced nationally they could expect to win control of the GLC by only a narrow margin—fifty-three members to forty-seven, according to the most s"11 detailed estimates. The exclusion of fringe areas, as Banstead, Epsom and Weybridge, during the e Committee stage of the Bill, has robbed the whether of their built-in advantage. One wonders .7ether the Government would have agreed to

those exclusions had it foreseen what the political consequences might be. . remote he consciousness that defeat is more than a muted ull.te°dte possibility must account for the somewhat Campaign that the Tories have mounted.

It otherwise difficult to account for the many exhibited signs of tardiness which they have mani- festo in recent weeks. Their election mani- i,, e, was published five weeks after Labour's, _".. the wake of both the Liberal and Communist pi °grammes. Biographical details of their candi- dates were sent to the press in an incomplete form long after those from the other parties had been sent out. It is only in their poster campaign that the Tories have led the other parties.

Nor have the traditionally optimistic forecasts been a feature of their campaign. In his opening press conference, Sir Percy Rugg, the leader of the Conservative candidates, was asked whether he would care to predict the resuft.`I'd love to, but I won't,' he replied. The Tory campaign is, in fact, dogged by the knowledge that much more is at stake than the control of Greater London. The Prime Minister is clearly unwilling to risk all on 'the uncertain glory of an April day,' and the word seems to have gone out from Downing Street to play down the election as much as pos sible. Sir Alec's own appearance on the London hustings was over a month befthre polling day: his personal associatioh with a Tory defeat will be minimal.

On the face of it, this Tory caution is only too well justified. To adapt a Central Office slogan : Don't Tell the Tories, But . . . Labour needs a swing of barely 4 per cent, on the 1959 figures, to win control of the GLC, and this is a swing which they have failed to achieve only once in the last twenty-eight parliamentary by- elections.

The baffle will effectively be decided in nine marginal boroughs. Three of these—Haringey, Havering and Lambeth---seem almost certain to finish up in the Labour column. The others— Bexley in the east and five boroughs stretching from Camden to Hillingdon in the west—could go either way. However, Labour needs to win only two of these for victory, while the Tories need to win five. It would be surprising if they managed it, especially as National Opinion Poll surveys in several of the marginals, published in the Evening News, show Labour ahead.

The NOP has also dealt a body blow to the hopes of the Liberals. The merging of their strongholds at Finchley and Orpington into the larger boroughs of Barnet and Bromley had con- vinced their opponents that they had little chance of securing representation on the GLC. The Liberals obstinately held to the view that they would win at least one of these boroughs, and perhaps Redbridge as well. The Evening News's survey of Barnet, showing the Liberals lying a bad third, has gone a long way to destroy this self-confidence.. To sum up on Greater London, I would expect Labour to finish up with about

sixty of the one hundred seats on the Council, with the Tories holding all the other seats. Such a result would be a powerful argument in favour of an October election.

But London is not England, and account must also be taken of the other fifty-three counties which are going to the polls next week. Not much excitement will be-caused by the inevitable result from Devon (ninety-one independents elected), but several of the counties do have a marked political significance. The four to watch most closely are Lancashire, Staffordshire, Northum- berland and the West Riding.

In Lancashire, Labour needs to win fifteen seats to secure control, and in Staffordshire five. North- umberland and the West Riding are Labour- controlled, but a loss of four seats in the former and of two in the latter would deprive Labour of its majorities. For Labour to justify its position as favourite for the general election it would need 'to end up firmly in control of all four of these counties.

It is fairly certain that well under half the voters will bother to turn out next week, and it would be foolhardy to read too much into the results. Yet in the past there has been a remark- ably close correlation between local and par- liamentary election results, and the county polls may be the last solid piece of evidence that Sir Alec has to go on when he makes his difficult choice between June and October. We may not now have long to wait to see how his mind is working. Budget day is just five days after the GLC election.