Politics and the Public

The years between 1959 and 1964 witnessed a dramatic reversal in the fortunes of the two major parties — the decline of the Conservatives who had dominated British politics since 1951, and the resurgence of the Labour party. On October 10th, 1959, two days after polling in the general election, a leading article in the New Statesman began: ‘Whatever the outcome of the poll, the 1959 election campaign has been a signal and significant success for Labour.’ But the paper had gone to press before the results were known, and a week later the offending sentence appeared in its ironical ‘This England’ column.