From: clarinews@clarinet.com
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.international,clari.news.election,clari.news.europe,clari.news.politics.people,biz.clarinet.sample
Subject: John Major leads his party to fourth term
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, election, politics,
	political personalities
Date: 10 Apr 92 06:31:47 GMT
Followup-To: biz.clarinet.sample
Location: great britain
ACategory: international
Slugword: britain-major
Priority: regular
ANPA: Wc: 553; Id: z0810; Sel: xxigf; Adate: 4-10-240aed
Codes: yigfuxx., yipeugb., yipruxx.


	LONDON (UPI) -- Decried by critics as a gray man, John Major led his
party to victory in a British election Friday for a historic fourth
term, boosting his reputation as man with a cool head in the tightest of
corners.
	Unbowed during an election campaign dogged by high unemployment and a
lingering recession in Britain, he refused to listen to pollsters who
said for months his party would not win an outright parliamentary
majority.
	``We have won tonight a magnificent victory,'' he said after it
became clear his party had edged across the finishing post as winner. 
``It was a victory many thought was beyond our grasp.''
	Unlike his main opponent Neil Kinnock, leader of the defeated Labour
Party, who shunned meeting the public face to face during the campaign,
Major took to making speeches from soap boxes. Unruffled, he dodged
flying eggs from angry opponents. Two, however, hit him.
	Polls showed many more voters thought Major would make a more
competent prime minister, even as the parties ran neck and neck.
	In power for 13 years, the Conservative Party under Major enters a
fourth term in office, a feat unparalleled since 1815.
	The youngest prime minister this century, 49-year-old John Major,
came to power in November 1990 after an internal Conservative Party
struggle that forced the resignation of Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher.
	Leading his party to victory has lifted him to being a prime minister
in his own right and laid to rest charges that he was an opportunist who
won his party's leadership by stepping over the warring colleagues.
	The son of a trapeze artist, Major rose to Downing Street via the
posts of chancellor of the exchequer and foreign secretary after only 11
years in Parliament.
	Thatcher chose Major as her successor. Major was seen as ``more
caring'' than his predecessor and the candidate to unite a party divided
over membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the poll tax
-- the most unpopular tax this century.
	Major, who defeated Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and Environment
Secretary Michael Heseltine to become prime minster, pledged to create 
``a nation at ease with itself'' on entering Downing Street.
	Despite his perception as a more compassionate leader than Thatcher,
Major is a man committed to his party's principles of free enterprise.
	``Very pleased,'' said Thatcher of her successor's victory. 
``Everything we have done will be conserved and built on into the
future.''
	He was brought up initially in the relatively comfortable suburbs of
London, but when his father's successive businesses -- including managing
a music hall and making garden ornaments -- collapsed, the family moved
to working-class Brixton in south London.
	Major left school at 15 without significant qualifications. He later
failed to get a job as a bus conductor because he was too tall. He then
worked as a general laborer for a year. His early experience of
deprivation is said to have significantly influenced his political
outlook.
	He is married to Norma, 49, and the father of two children,
Elizabeth, 20 and James, 17. Norma Major, who prefers housework and
domesticity, has said she is not particularly keen for a career of her
own, but is happy doing charity work.
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