GREAT BRITAIN: No Cheers for the Victor

Anti-Communism last week won a victory in a place where it least deserved one, a suppurating slum called the Gorbals that sprawls southward from the rat-ridden wharves of Scotland’s Glasgow. Most of the Gorbals’ massive grey granite houses were built a century ago when thousands of poor laborers began to arrive in Glasgow. Now 85,000 human beings cram its 252 acres. In many of its tenements 30 people share a single doorless toilet, and the odor of garbage hangs heavy in the stairwells. There is an undertaker on every other block. A Gorbals girl summed up life there: “The cat sleeps with us. If a rat runs over the blankets, he springs out and has it.”

Last week a pack of youngsters in the Gorbals ran from a Communist election rally to follow a Labor Party car (see cut). At the polls their elders did virtually the same, even though Labor has done little more than the Tories ever did for the Gorbals. Alice Cullen, Labor’s candidate, won by a 6,525-vote margin over the Conservative candidate.The Communists, after an all-out campaign, got 17% of the vote. Said one Labor Party official in smug satisfaction: “We’ve still held our record of never losing a seat at a by-election since 1945.” In 1906 the Gorbals became one of the first two Scottish districts to go Labor. It has never wavered. Last week’s victory, therefore, was no occasion for surprise—or cheers.