Freudian Slip

The little band that represents the Liberal Party in Britain's House of Commons has the ragtag and comically mismatched look of Sergeant Bilko's platoon. It includes a 300-lb. spring maker, a Welsh barrister, a teacher from the Scottish highlands and an insurance manager from one of London's blue-blood suburbs. Their leader is an engaging aristocrat, Jeremy Thorpe, 44, an amateur violinist and accomplished mimic whose ancestors were serving in Parliament in the 14th century. Now the band has been joined by David Austick, a bald lay preacher and bookseller, and Clement Freud, an antic journalist and television personality who, besides being Sigmund's grandson, is best known to the British electorate for his baleful appearances with a blood hound named Henry in a commercial for dog food.

Austick, 53, and Freud, 49, won stunning victories in by-elections on the same day. That gave the Liberals four of the eight national by-elections they have contested in the past year, and it has sent Tory and Labor politicians alike into their own form of self-analysis, probing whether all their recent slips at the polls are something more than Freudian. Altogether, the Liberals now occupy only ten of the 630 seats in the Commons. But suddenly they are no laughing matter--least of all to the Conservative government and the Labor opposition.

The victories of Austick in Ripon and Freud in Ely occurred in well-to-do farming areas formerly considered among the safest Tory seats. To increase their advantage, the Tories called the by-elections so soon after the deaths of the Tory incumbents that one of the bereaved families complained about unseemly haste. In Ripon, the Liberals did not have a phone at their campaign headquarters until two weeks before the vote. In Ely, Freud recalls, "there were 400 sq. mi. of trees already plastered with Conservative posters while I was still waiting to get estimates from my printer."

Clearly, the Liberal victories constituted a significant upset to Prime Minister Edward Heath and his government, whose parliamentary majority is now down to 15. As in the other by-election losses, the Tories seemed to be hurt most by Britain's floundering economy and spiraling inflation. But the by-elections were equally a setback to Labor Leader Harold Wilson and his party. Labor not only failed to pick up dissatisfied Tory supporters, it even lost some of its own. Labor's problem, it appears, is that the party is so racked by internal squabbling and irresolute leadership that it often seems to be in worse shape than the country.

Higher Sights. The resurgence of the Liberals may have more to do with style than substance. Their major policies are not strikingly different from those of the Tories (firmly pro-Europe and antinationalization), but the Liberals have caught the voters' eye with colorful candidates emphasizing local affairs. "We have changed," says Liberal Chairman Cyril Carr, "from being a theoretical, intellectualized party to a down-to-earth one."

Long advocates of individual rights and freedoms, the Liberals have been translating their rhetoric into action by becoming more involved in community politics. As a result, they have been mockingly dubbed "pavement politicians." But they have set their sights higher than that. As Leader Thorpe points out: "If the voters trust us on the local issues, there is a chance they'll follow us on the national ones."

The question is whether the Liberal support that has been blooming in the by-elections will wither in the next general election, to be held by 1975. Almost no politician, including Liberal loyalists who have been disappointed by short-lived revivals before, believes that the party has a chance of forming the next government. But even if current support continues at the same level--roughly 26% in the public opinion polls and 32% in by-election ballots--the Liberals could well become a major force for the first time since Lloyd George's government a half-century ago.

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