Word: backbencher
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...Nation. Some of Mrs. Thatcher's support undoubtedly came from disgruntled backbench M.P.s who felt that their talent had gone unrecognized and untapped by Heath. Most of her votes, however, came from the party's right wing, which believed that Heath's Disraeli-inspired "one nation" policy -particularly his publicly expressed willingness to join Labor in a coalition government-constituted a betrayal of traditional Tory principles. Although Heath's gruff confrontation tactics with Britain's powerful miners' union cost the Tories the general elections last February, his more mellow conciliatory tone in the unsuccessful...
...chief pro-Common Market spokesman in the national referendum that Wilson plans to hold before the end of June. Behind the scenes, Heath will be working hard to see that the Tories do not drift too far to the right. In this endeavor, he will have plenty of backbench support; even M.P.s who voted against Heath were touched by the personal sadness of this formidable, lonely man going down to unexpected defeat. But with the focus turning immediately to the next phase of elections, there was little time for sentimental postmortems. As the notoriously hardheaded Mrs. Thatcher...
Last week British Prime Minister Edward Heath also won a small but helpful vote of confidence on the EEC. Pro-Market Labor Party M.P.s, led by the rebellious Roy Jenkins (TIME, April 24), abstained on an antiMarket resolution, proposed by a group of backbench Tories who are fighting Heath on British membership, that would have submitted Britain's entry into EEC to a national referendum. The handy margin of Heath's victory on the vote-284 to 235-suggests that Britain's formal entry into the Ten will proceed unimpeded...
...Corned-Beef Dinners. As a backbench state assemblyman beginning in 1904, he won friends among suspicious upstate legislators by entertaining them at weekly corned-beef-and-beer dinners. By 1913, he was assembly speaker, by 1918, New York's Governor. From both offices, he struggled to simplify the ramshackle state government, making New York the classic example of state administrative reform. As early as 1911, he was also engaged in the fight for social reforms (childlabor laws, maximum-work-hour legislation for women, factory safety regulations) that made New York the most advanced welfare state in the nation...
...Edward M. Kennedy became the youngest majority whip in the history of the U.S. Senate. By moving from a backbench to the cockpit of congressional power, the senior Senator from Massachusetts could now overtly exercise the influence that has hitherto been his primarily by virtue of legend, tragedy and guilt. He disavowed his election as a personal victory or as a steppingstone toward the presidency. "I view it," he said, "as expressing the sense of the Democratic Senators in favor of an aggressive and creative program in the upcoming Congress...