Great Britain: The Leyton Affair

It was the most shocking blow Harold Wilson's Labor government could have received. Never before had a British Prime Minister been so brutally humiliated at so early a stage of a new government. Running for Parliament in a supposedly "safe" seat in the London constituency of Leyton, Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, 57, was rejected by the voters —and lost his political life.

The slap was aimed not only at the Prime Minister but at his party and platform as well, as Tory Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home was quick to emphasize....

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