Bored with Mac?

After five by-election setbacks in a month, the prestige of Britain's ruling Conservative Party was in a shocking state. The Tories not only had the Labor Party to contend with these days (a most unsatisfactory alternative to most British voters), but were now confronted with a new popularity surge by the long moribund Liberals. Last week, fearful of disaster in still another by-election, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan himself hurried to the grimy, North Country industrial town of Stockton-on-Tees to throw his weight behind the Tory candidate.

There was also a touch of sentiment in Macmillan's journey to Stockton: it was there that young Captain Macmillan won his first seat in the House of Commons in 1924. Hatless in the chilly rain, Macmillan now roamed Stockton's streets, delightedly shaking hands and exchanging banter with tradespeople and old acquaintances. In his wake was the personable local Tory candidate, Barrister Gerald Coles, 28; he did not hope to win, for Stockton had been a safe Labor seat since 1945. What Coles, and Macmillan, hoped to achieve was at least a decisive second place over the Liberal Party candidate, for defeat by this puny group (which has not been in power since Lloyd George) would be a deep humiliation.

When the votes were in, the Tories could hardly be proud. Labor doubled its last previous plurality to 7,582 votes as it swept to victory. Barely in second place was Tory Candidate Coles; he squeaked in by a mere 390 votes ahead of the Liberals, who jumped from zero to 27% of the vote. The strong Liberal showing indicates a Liberal appeal to the working class as well as white-collar groups, though the cautious remembered that the Liberals had looked fine in early by-elections before, only to fizzle out at general election time.

Conservative chiefs blamed the times, not themselves. Said Tory Party Chairman Iain Macleod: "We're not as a nation confident of our future. We've not as a nation been ready to face the reappraisal that must follow the closing of the chapter of imperial power." Others had a simpler answer. Suggested the solidly Tory Sunday Times: "The country has become fatigued with the same faces expounding the same measures in the same cliches. The Conservative Party is losing its grip on middle-class loyalties, and it bores the public to a pulverizing degree."

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