Peer Triumphs In By-election

Press, Volume C, Issue 29506, 6 May 1961, Page 11

Peer Triumphs In By-election

(N ZJ’.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, May 5. Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the Labour member of Parliament who has become a peer against his wishes, last night triumphed in an election at South-east Bristol. But it is only the first step in his struggle to get back into the House of Commons —which has disqualified him from sitting there because of his new rank.

The strangest Parliamentary by-election in British history was caused by his elevation to the peerage on the death of his father, Viscount Stansgate, last year. Mr Benn, a 35-year-'ola Socialist with an American wife, won South-east Bristol

in 1959 with a 5827-vote majority over Mr Malcolm A. J. St Clair. Last night he increased that majority to 13,044, the figures being 23.275 to 10.231. Speaking when the result became known just after midnight, Mr Benn called it “■wonderful.” Mr St Clair indicated the big problem when he replied that it "resolved nothing” because the electors would continue to be without a member. The real fight will now

begin. This morning the Labour Party will table immediately a motion proposing that Mr Benn shall be allowed to take his seat in the House. The campaign in Bristol was fought in the face of rulings that Mr Benn is no longer a member of the House of Commons and cannot renounce the peerage inherited from his father. A curious sidelight is that Mr St. Clair is himself heir to a Scottish peerage. If he succeeded to it he might, as the law now stands, be obliged to vacate any seat he held in the House of Commons for a seat in the House of Lords.