The Law & Lucas-Tooth

One day last week, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill sat down in a front pew in St. Paul's Cathedral for special pre-campaign services conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The day's lesson, from St. Luke 6: 39: "And He spake a parable unto them. Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?"

Next day, at Sandringham, King George VI signed a proclamation formally dissolving Britain's Parliament. A few minutes later, the Lord Chancellor was speeding back to London to have the Great Seal affixed to the proclamation in the House of Lords, and by morning the mechanism of Britain's complicated election machine had finally begun to function. The campaign was officially on.

Don't, Don't, Don't. By U.S. standards, the campaign will not be a lively one. Speeches over the government-controlled British Broadcasting Corp. are limited to 14 for all the parties; the full-page newspaper advertisements of most American campaigns are almost unknown in Britain. But the British election laws that would make most U.S. votegetters quit before they started are the ones governing campaign expenditures. Said one campaign manager last week:

"We're putting up a list of 'don'ts' in every committee room--and the list will cover a whole wall." The list will include: "Don't pay for bands, torches, flags or banners; don't provide refreshments for voluntary workers; don't pay for food, drink or entertainment for any voter; don't offer a gift (including cigars), bribe or loan or promise same; don't exceed the number of cars legally permitted for carrying voters to the polls."

Since the 1945 election there have been some changes in the British election setup. Two years ago Parliament abolished the so-called business premises vote. Previously, many businessmen had two votes, one in the constituency where they lived, another where they owned a place of business. In many constituencies the business premises votes ran to appreciable numbers (e.g., in the 1945 election there were 6,608 business premises voters in the City of London constituency out of a total enrollment of 10,830).

Parliament has also abolished the twelve university seats which were formerly filled by mail ballot votes of graduates of the leading universities.*

Felons, Lunatics & Lords. The British electoral system does not provide for U.S.-style primaries. Instead, most prospective candidates are approved by both the central committee of the party under whose banner they wish to run and by the party association of the constituency concerned. The final decision is usually up to the local association, which chooses the candidate it thinks most likely to win.

Once he has been approved by the local party association, the candidate reports to the "returning officer" (official election supervisor) of the constituency in which he is to run. He is not, however, required to live in the constituency.

To the returning officer, the candidate presents his nominating papers containing a brief description of himself and the signatures of his sponsors, but no reference whatever to his party affiliation (in Britain not even the ballots carry a candidate's party affiliation). To discourage frivolous candidacies, each candidate must deposit -L-150 ($420), which is returned to him if he polls more than one-eighth of the total vote cast; otherwise, it is forfeited to the Crown.

The candidate has only three weeks to make his case to the electorate, which includes all registered British subjects of 21 years and over. The exceptions include imprisoned felons (this disqualification does not apply in Scotland), lunatics* and members of the House of Lords.

Britons do not use voting machines. On election day, the polls are opened at 7 a.m., closed at 9 p.m. When the polls close, the sealed ballot boxes are removed to a central "counting room" in the constituency, opened and emptied; it is then that the election officials embark on a procedure that would baffle U.S. politicians. British law requires that the ballots from all the polling places in the constituency be mixed on a large counting table before the count is begun. This makes it impossible to get a breakdown of the vote by districts. The returning officer declares the candidate elected who received the highest number of votes.

15,000 Stickers. Last week, in two markedly different constituencies, two markedly different candidates for the House of Commons were at work, each in his own fashion.

In the heavily pro-Labor constituency of Blackburn West, in the heart of the Lancashire textile mill district, 45-year-old Socialist John Edwards launched his campaign with a rally of 3,000 vociferous supporters in King George's Hall. From now until election day, John Edwards will campaign from soapboxes at the mill gates and in the workers' canteens; he will tramp Blackburn's narrow streets in a steady house-to-house canvass, and he will make numberless speeches to street-corner gatherings from his loudspeaker car.

John Edwards' hurly-burly campaign will be a far cry from that waged by the Tory candidate in the Conservative constituency of South Hendon, a residential section at the northern edge of London. At 47, Sir Hugh Vere Huntly Duff Lucas-Tooth, Bart., a graduate of Eton and Oxford, a lieutenant colonel of His Majesty's Cameron Highlanders, was not one to get in a pother about an election campaign; Sir Hugh had few doubts that his constituents would troop dutifully to the polls on Feb. 23 and return him to Parliament with an impressive majority. Said the South Hendon Tory Association chairman, Dr. Rowland Cockshut: "Everything is well in hand."

The campaign of South Hendon's Tories will be as conservative as their candidate. There will be only 19 meetings, and Lucas-Tooth will not bother to attend all of them. There will be no street-corner meetings ("Not here, y'know," Cockshut shudders), and there will be no loudspeaker cars, except on the actual day of the election ("Don't approve of that sort of thing," says Cockshut aggressively). "Our only slogan," added Dr. Cockshut, "is 'Lucas-Tooth.' That will appear on 15,000 stickers."

* One of Britain's most famous university M.P.s, Independent A. P. Herbert of Oxford, will not seek another political office in the forthcoming election; he has decided to devote all his propaganda energies to a crusade against low-flying airplanes. * However, if a lunatic casts his vote during a lucid interval, it is valid.

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