BY-ELECTION RESULTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1942, Page 4

BY-ELECTION RESULTS

SETBACK FOR THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT , SUPPORTERS PERTURBED. DISCONTENT WITH CONDUCT OF WAR. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, April 30. Two Independents were returned at the by-elections today for Wallasey and Rugby, constituencies which were formerly held by Conservatives. This setback to the Government, following upon the defeat of a Conservative by an Independent candidate in the Grantham by-election last month, has perturbed supporters of the Government. The political correspondent of the London “Evening News” says: “The results are a grave warning of popular discontent not with Mr Churchill but with the general direction of the war as a whole, and also of increasing resentment at the ‘hole-und-corner’ selection of party candidates by the local caucus.”

The Labour Party supported the Conservative candidate for Rugby, and the Labour Party leader, Mr Attlee, also appealed to the people of the Wallasey electorate to support the Conservative there.

The “Evening Star,” in a leading article, says: • “The Wallasey and Rugby by-elections mark a decline in the political parties’ authority oyer electorates. They display a political revolt which is one of the healthiest democratic signs of today. Messrs Reakes and Brown were chosen because they are powerful personalities with minds of their own, set on a sterner, harder and more determined drive for victory.”

Mr Brown declared: “I have won because the people are sick and tired of the party machines which took us into the war unprepared and then led us from disaster to disaster. I have won because there is a deep uneasiness in all classes at the obvious inadequacy of the political set-up. My election is a call to the Government to settle its political differences with Russia and achieve unity of strategy. It is a command to open a second front, and win victory this year.”