Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Laborites had expected at least small losses in Britain's local elections, chiefly because of the sluggish economy and austerity at home, but they experienced a shocker. From one end of Britain to the other, voters toppled Labor from control of town halls...
...count at week's end showed that Labor dropped 1,282 borough council seats, while the Conservatives gained 1,295. Steelmaking Sheffield, for 40 years a Labor fief, fell to the Tories; so did Norwich, after 35 years of Labor rule. London went solidly Conservative as Labor lost 16 boroughs, holding on to a mere four...
Though only a third of the council seats were at stake, the rout left Labor in control of only 43 out of 374 boroughs in England and Wales; only five of the 43 were in big cities...
Nationalist Obsessions. In particular, Harold Wilson's government met humiliating defeat in Scotland, long a stronghold of Labor strength. There, instead of losing to the Tories, Labor was beaten chiefly by the Scottish Nationalist Party, a party so weak a year ago that it amounted to little more than hope in the minds of its 60,000 members. Even last fall, when the Scot-Nats elected Mrs. Winifred Ewing, 38, a lawyer and mother of three, as their first member in Parliament since 1945 (TIME, Nov. 10), few considered them serious electoral contenders...
Inside Attack. Labor's setback also brought out unexpected opposition to Harold Wilson's continuance as Prime Minister. Press Lord Cecil King, head of Britain's largest publishing empire and a Wilson supporter in the last two general elections, demanded that the Prime Minister resign. In a signed frontpage blast in the Daily Mirror, King wrote: "Wilson and his government have lost all credibility, all authority. We are now threatened with the greatest financial crisis in our history. It is not to be removed by lies about our gold-dollar reserves, but only by a fresh start...