From: clarinews@clarinet.com (JANE HOLLIGAN)
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.international,clari.news.election,clari.news.europe,clari.news.politics.people,biz.clarinet.sample
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Message-id: <britain-election-thatcherU2A911ae@clarinet.com>
Subject: Voters choose successor to Thatcher in north London seat
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, election, politics,
	political personalities
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 8:05:26 PDT
Location: great britain
ACategory: international
Slugword: britain-election-thatcher
Priority: regular
Format: regular
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Codes: yigfrxx., yipergb., yiprrxx.

	LONDON (UPI) -- The acrimony of the campaigning in the closest run
British general election in years was left behind as voting for
Parliament got underway Thursday in former Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher's north London constituency.
	Sitting chummily side-by-side outside one polling station in the
Finchley constituency, a Conservative party activist and a younger Labor
party worker took turns to ask exiting voters for their poll numbers.
The only sign of rivalry was the bright rosettes pinned to their chests,
one red, one blue.
	The constituency's sitting parliamentarian, Thatcher, who is stepping
down at Thursday's election, was not even in Britain for polling day.
	The celebrated Iron Lady, who dominated the political scene for more
than a decade, was visiting the United States.
	She has bequeathed her Conservative Party successor and former
adviser, Hartley Booth, a commanding majority of 8,913 votes, which
meant second-placed Labour needed a swing of more than 11 percent to
oust the Tory candidate from the Parliamentary seat.
	With no one expecting such a large shift to Labour, Booth looked on
course for victory. The departure of Thatcher, given her personal
appeal, made it harder to predict the outcome.
	An outer London suburb, Finchley was ideally matched to its famous
member of Parliament.
	Its more than 65,000 voters are mainly made up of middle-class,
private home-owners, small business owners, and wealthier groups of Jews
and Japanese.
	They were the middle-income group targeted by Thatcher's populist
brand of Conservatism, championing wealth through individual effort,
home ownership, and the freeing of state controls of the economy.
	But, Thatcher's absence from Britain Thursday indicated the extent to
which she has been pushed to the fringes of the revamped Conservative
Party. Prime Minister John Major has taken a softer line on health and
social services, and a more conciliatory approach to European unity, a
subject that has raised fierce diatribes from Thatcher against the
relinquishing of Britain's sovereign powers.
	Nationwide, commentators have missed the power and passion Thatcher
brought to the campaign, but for one 30-year-old investment manager in
Finchley, who asked not to be named, the change of Tory candidate was
timely for Conservatives, the party she prefers.
	``I don't know about the older electorate,'' she said, ``but
certainly among my generation I think Mrs. Thatcher would have done very
badly.''
	She said younger Conservatives were alienated by Thatcher's
unyielding opposition to Europe, and that the new candidate, Booth,
would do much better than Thatcher.
	For 26-year-old Saylesh Delala, the result in Finchley, and in the
rest of the country, seemed to have been blown open since Thatcher stood
down. He said the election could go either way.
	Unemployed Delala said he had voted for Labour's candidate, teacher
Anni Marjoram, because of his ``bitter experience'' under the
Conservatives. He claimed to have been waiting a year for state-
subsidized housing, and said he was living with five other family
members in one room.
	``With experience like this, what can the Conservatives expect?''
Delala asked.
	Although Finchley voters have a choice of six candidates, including a
third-running Liberal Democrat candidate, for the voters interviewed it
was a two-person race between Labour and the Conservatives.
	And however far Thatcher has moved to the perimeter of politics, her
former supporters seem unlikely to shift their allegiance to the more
exotic choices Finchley offers.
	There was no evidence of support for Sally Johnson, candidate for the
Monster Raving Looney Alliance which advocates such things as bed-
sharing in hospitals, introducing crocodiles in the River Thames and
laws to muzzle dangersous politicians.
	Nor did much support surface for architectural photographer James
Macrae of the transcendental meditation-based Natural Law Party, despite
his promise of ``the creation of Heaven on Earth and a glorious future.''
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