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Jenkins' strong opposition came not only from the two major parties but from the Scottish Nationalists, who favor outright independence and usually command 10% to 15% of the vote in the district. Bordering the University of Glasgow, Hillhead is the best-educated constituency in Scotland, a community that stretches from handsome, rosy sandstone houses on sloping streets to grubby shops near the River Clyde below. The Tories came in with an edge, possession of the seat for more than six decades, the past 33 years served rather lacklusterly by Sir Thomas Galbraith, who died last January. In his stead the Conservatives offered Gerald Malone, 31, a native Glaswegian, glib, vigorous and bluntly reactionary, who proposed using social welfare funds for buttressing law and order and called for the reinstatement of hanging. Labor's candidate was bearded portly Community Worker David Wiseman, 34, who became a creditable candidate after the party persuaded him to leave at home ther earring he customarily wore. Scottish Nationalist George Leslie, 45, was a popular local veterinarian who harped on the fact that Jenkins was an outsider from England.
In fact, Jenkins was born in Wales, the son of an ambitious coal miner who was later a Labor M.P. But to counter the carpetbagging label, Jenkins sounded a decidedly Scottish note in his campaign speeches as time went on. He pledged that he would spend "the rest of my political life" representing Hillhead, and that he would not dash away to a safer English constituency at the first chance to move south. He supported the granting of greater autonomy for Scotland, including the formation of a regional assembly with authority to tax and with substantial legislative power. Jenkins pledged his firm support of Britain's membership in NATO and the European Community. He opposed the unilateral disarmament movement that has been waging a spirited battle against the introduction of 160 new U.S. cruise missiles in Britain. To bolster the nation's sagging economy, he advocated a $7 billion budget increase.
Jenkins' allies vigorously threw themselves into the battle, realizing that a defeat for one would be a setback for all and would severely damage the party. Williams sounded a near apocalyptic note. Jenkins' success in Hillhead, she warned, was "the last chance for Britain to find a democratic, moderate but radical alternative to revolution."
To help Conservative Candidate Malone, the Thatcher government tried some canny pocketbook appeal from London. New taxes on alcohol, announced Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe 16 days before the election, would fall more lightly on Scotch whisky than on wine. The government also issued a well-timed announcement that Glasgow's derelict Queen's Dock would be transformed into a $55 million industrial exhibition center.