Inner city and outside cities
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
By-elections, as Mr Richard West once remarked in these pages, tend to take place in Labour-held constituencies if only because Labour MPs are more likely than Others to get highly-paid EEC jobs, die of old age or go to prison. The by-elections to be held next Thursday, at Manchester, Moss Side, and at Penistone, are alas caused by the death of two Labour Members, the obscure Frank Hatton and the mysterious John Mendelson (described to me by a local Party official as 'a second Zilliacus': well, Yes, but did he mean quite what he might have meant?) Some have said that the results will influence the timing of the general election, but that is far-fetched. If they go very badly for the Government it can hardly persuade Mr Callaghan to hang On. As Mrs Ann Taylor, the Member for Bolton West who was canvassing at Penistone, said, the only question about the date of the electon now is between the 12th or the 19th October. These two by-elections Will, though, give a last chance to asses the likely outcome in the autumn.
In area Penistone is one of the biggest Labour seats in the country, 144 square miles sprawling down from the Pennines to the outskirts of Sheffield and Barnsley. A small number of voters are sheep farmers; but most are industrial workers in steel or mining: Mr Arthur Scargill lives fifty yards from the Labour offices. The Labour candidate, Mr Allen McKay, is a Coal Board official. He has been campaigning —.at fetes and athletic meetings last Saturday — with the relaxed, even indolent, air of a man who knows he can't loose: Labour had an absolute majority over the other two parties in October 1974. He is a local man who knows 'about things like mining subsidence'. He is a good, old-fashioned Labour man, untroubled by original ideas. He will give the Whips no difficulties.
His Tory opponent Mr Ian Dobkin is an amiable young man, a Leeds barrister. Once he has fought and lost Penistone a couple of times he should pick up a safe seat. He knows his constituency — like his colleague in Moss Side he has the advantage of having been selected some time ago, While Labour have had to find candidates in a hurry after the demise of the sitting Members. The Conservatives are making something of local issues, serious unem ployment and more threatening. Penistone, Which gives its name to the constituency, is a.
pleasant little market town (though the Barnsley Chronicle is taking local patriotism too far in claiming for it 'a wealth of cultural and social life'). Several hundred men there are about to be laid off at Brown's steel works. But despite political mythology by-elections are dominated by national concerns and national trends. These mostly, still favour the Tories, though there was an unusual complaint from the very lady florist who had prepared Mrs Thatcher's bouquet when she visited the constituency, that the Conservatives had imposed VAT on flowers.
Moss Side is also a mixed constituency, but in a different way. It sticks out of Manchester to the south-west, beginning with the tower-block purpose-built slums of Hulme to the vernal suburbs of Chorltoncum-Hardy. Central Manchester is not as bad as, say, Birmingham, but it is sad all the same. Disused factories — most voters live outside the constituency — are alleviated by the occasional shop or pub, and the Tatler Uncensored Cinema Club showing Banging in Bangkok: I must ask Mr Auberon Waugh if he knows the work. The Labour candidate Mr George Morton knows the local problems. 'Of course Manchester is very much an inner-city city' — an inelegant euphemism, but one knows exactly what he means.
The by-election has been overshadowed by a slanging match on education between Mrs Shirley Williams and Mr Noman St John Stevas, who has been accused of 'misplaced criticism' of local schools. Thinking to explore local feeling on the subject Mr Morton went to Royce Primary School, accompanied by Mr Gerald Kaufman, to meet the mums collecting their kiddies. I had been waiting, occasionally mopping pools of water from my head. 'You can write what you like about the Labour Party,' Mr Kaufman said, 'as long as you don't spread any lies about it raining in Machester.' Pausing a suitable interval I pointed out that the school was shut for a half-holiday. The canvassers set off towards a housing estate.
More fun seemed in promise from the fruit-cake candidates which urban constituencies attract, and more of it from Miss Vanessa Redgrave of the Workers' Revolutionary Party than from the National Front. There we were wrong. Miss Redgrave talks rapidly, unblinkingly, no smile to match her red varnished toe-nails. Everyone is lying about the crisis. The Government is conspiring with the Tories and the TUC to cheat (or 'pull the chain on') the working class and 'hit the youth' (apparently a collective singular). Any doubts about Miss Redgrave's proximity to reality vanish when she announces that the 'high point of the campaign' will be a showing of a propaganda film called The Palestinians ('Zionists out of Palestine!'). It was time to move on.
The Conservatives have a strong can didate in Mr Tom Murphy who like all four main candidates at these two elections, is running for the first time. He is a thirtysix-year-old engineering executive who has lived all his life in the constituency. Again, some local issues were mentioned — high rates for poor serVices, especially streetcleaning — but national questions once more come first: prices, taxes, law and order (it would make a change to find a Tory candidate who claimed not to care a fig for 1. and 0. Mr Dobkin actually 'specialises' in it.) Mr Murphy says his campaign is going well, and there is every reason to believe him. If those of us who have predicated a Liberal collapse are right — and despite the Liberal candidate Mr Peter Thomson, with a local following — then Moss Side really is a test case. For here, as in not a few constituencies, the Liberal vote at the last election was larger than the Labour majority. If the Liberals largely defect, or return, to the Conservatives then the obvious follows. Mr Morton candidly admitted that it was a real worry.
It rained all day in Moss Side (pace Mr Kaufman), as it had for most of the day in Penistone. The weather is supposed to be a boring subject to mention but it really is a serious topic among party workers. Labour .people are obsessed by it, taking as they do. an extremely low view of the working class, 'our people', idle, unenergetic, disinclined to vote. 'Pray for fine weather, lad, or we'll never get the vote out,' one man said. Certainly the Government will be praying for sun on the 13th, on both sides of the Pennines, though as I have said, Mr McKay can scarcely fail to retain Penistone (one should add nowadays that if Labour can
lose a solid mining seat —Ashfield — they can lose anything).
Moss Side is another matter, and it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Conservatives have every chance of winning it. It would fall easily on the sort of swings which the Opposition was notching up throughout last year, and is even now within reach. The changes in the constituency, such as they have been, are unfavourable to Labour. The urban terraces decay; so do the newer council flats; people move out to less insalubrious estates; to an extent they are replaced by immigrants who — according to electoral lore — are even less enthusiastic voters. The quiet suburbs like Charlton stay peacefully Tory.
If Labour does lose Moss Side it will be an inconvenience for the Government but not a serious one. Now that the Scotland Bill guillotine is through there is nothing for Members of this Parliament to do but draw their salaries until the dissolution. Their two new colleagues will join them for a few months of parliamentary non-event. Though they will of course be able to join the debate on whether MPs' salaries should be raised to f8,500 or even £15,000. There are worse ways of spending your time when you first arrive in London.
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