In steady drizzle that turned to fog, about 40,000 Liverpool suburbanites voted last week in the West Derby by-election. "A significant straw," the politicos called it, for West Derby symbolizes Britain's even political balance: able Sir David Maxwell Fyfe held onto the seat for the Conservatives so narrowly in the 1951 general election that the Socialists needed only a 1.7% swing to win this year.
Now that Sir David, a successful Home Secretary, has been elevated to the peerage as Viscount Kilmuir (Churchill recently made him Lord Chancellor), a by-election was needed. Both parties wheeled out their heavy artillery. "There has been...
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