The Art of the Practical

(See Cover)

Outside Conservative Party headquarters in London's Smith Square, jubilant crowds stumbled over TV cables and shouted noisily at each new bulletin heralding the election of yet another Tory M.P. At 1:25 a.m., long after the Laborites at their glum command post across the square had conceded defeat in Britain's 1959 general election, an elegant, grey-haired figure in evening dress stepped from a sedan to a surge of Tory cheers. "Well done, Mac," shouted voices. "You did it!" The tall, patrician-looking man paused for a moment, his handsome wife in blue evening gown at his side. "It has gone off rather well," murmured Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

Marking 28 million Xs on ballot papers that carried no mark of party affiliations but simply the names of their parliamentary candidates in 630 local constituencies, the voters of the British Isles last week gave Maurice Harold Macmillan, 65, a smashing personal triumph in one of the most decisive and significant political battles of the postwar era. Macmillan had led his party to its third straight victory and doubled its majority in the House of Commons, a feat without parallel in the annals of British politics. Overcoming a slashing Labor Party challenge, he had won his own mandate to rule Britain for the next five years. He had won, too, the right to speak for England at the summit he had done so much to promote, and to conserve and expand the Tory-fostered prosperity that had cracked the class lines of British society and provided the votes for his victory.

The victory that Macmillan brought off was of the famous kind that made Tories whoop as for Blenheim, Waterloo or Mafeking. "I reckon that 100,000 bottles of bubbly were consumed within an area of four square miles of London," said a nightclub owner after glittering thousands had danced, drunk and cheered till dawn. The staid London Stock Exchange erupted in an exuberant burst of buying as morning-coated brokers shouted bids at lung-top, stood on chairs to make sure their bids were recognized; industrial shares soared 16.1 points for the biggest rise ever recorded in a single day. The box score of Macmillan's win:

Seats Millions of votes

1959 (1955) 1959 (1955)

Tory 365 (345) 13.7 (13.3)

Labor 258 (277) 12.2 (12.4)

Liberal 6 (6) 1.6 (.7)

Thus, a swing to the Tories of a small fraction of the British electorate in marginal constituencies was enough to jump their Commons majority from 53 to 100 seats. Liberals, on the strength of their 1,600,000 popular vote, forecast with eager optimism that they would soon succeed Labor as the chief opposition party —a prediction that overlooked the fact that more than 40% of British voters stuck by Labor through the sweep. But the fact remained that for Britain's 53-year-old Labor Party it was a staggering defeat, threatening to open never-healed wounds, confronting Labor's leaders with the hard fact that Britain's citizens want no more socialism.