Seismic Tremors

With Britain's general election ballots still uncounted in sealed boxes, many Conservatives had eleventh-hour jitters. Many Laborites believed the Tory majority would be unworkably small. They prepared (somewhat prematurely) to bury the Conservative Party and dance on the grave.

TIME'S London office reported that "the best available information shows the election results swinging heavily against Churchill. At best he can only win a smallish majority and there is a probability that the Conservatives will be in the minority and in that case Churchill's tenure as Prime Minister is over."

How Far Left? The New York Times's London Correspondent Herbert L. Matthews reported: "All signs . . . point to heavy gains for the Labor party . . . with a real chance that the Liberals will hold the balance of power. The Conservatives still feel that they will get a majority, but the experts believe it will be, at best, a much smaller one than the margin of 50 or more seats which Prime Minister Churchill aimed at. . . . Great Britain, in short, has swung well to the left and it only remains to be seen how far to the left."

The traditional method whereby British parties assess their vote is based on a personal canvass of voters in each constituency immediately after the election campaign opens, again in the middle of the campaign, and finally just before voting. On polling day, it is customary for checkers at the polling booths to ask each voter for his polling number, which gives a clue to his name and address in the electoral register. These checkers often find out from the voter whom he has voted for. The ballot is secret, but many voters, especially Laborites, are quite willing to reveal their vote. Estimates based on this method have proved wrong in the past, but seldom in the case of the Labor Party.

Confident Claims. Last week Laborites confidently claimed that they have won at least 100 seats from the Conservatives. They believed that voting for 50 other seats had gone so much in their favor that the result would be decided by a very narrow margin. If Labor has won 100 new seats, it would have 266 seats in the next Parliament--22 seats short of the number on which Ramsay MacDonald formed his second Labor Government in 1929.

If Labor has won 260 seats, the Liberals might hold the balance of power. The Liberals are not expected to gain more than seven new seats, bringing their total to 25. Liberal Leader Sir Archibald Sinclair is one of Winston Churchill's closest friends and a Conservative-Liberal coalition government was possible. But if Labor has won 100 new seats and even a part of the 50 doubtful seats, the Conservative majority would be narrowed to the point where it was all but unworkable.

Grave Repercussions. This was big news far beyond Britain. In Europe, seething with social unrest and social politics, it might have grave repercussions. If Britain goes far left, it might, as, Winston Churchill had warned, bowl over Europe's precarious political balances "like nine pins" and precipitate the Continent into new unrest.

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