My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyleaders when invited; some of them were men of considerable intelligence. It seemedto me, incidentally, that this experience might be valuable in possible later dealingswith the problem of black and white relations in a far larger sphere; it certainly gaveme an insight into psychological questions I could never otherwise have acquired.My relations with the white electorate apparently went from strength to strength. Notonly were the open-air meetings enthusiastic, but on all sides I was received with thewarmest friendship. The canvass was a winning canvass, if I ever saw one. It is truethat the process of election canvass was reputed to have become much less reliablesince the war and the far-off days when I used to make the winding-up speech forLabour at most by-elections; after the eve of the poll rally I had been able in thecompany of the skilled election agents to calculate from the canvass returns with atiny margin of error what the result next day would be. It was true also that suchfantastic legends had been spread concerning the alleged ferocity of our partymembers before the war that electors might have been chary of giving an adversereply to our canvassers, but the number of women among them, including Diana, andmy habit of walking alone or with one other man or woman through the constituencyquickly dissipated most of this nonsense. Nevertheless, when everything was takeninto account, it looked all over like a winning fight. More significant than any canvassto the experienced eye was the reception from the children who swarmed in the streetson polling day and greeted us with a favour as extreme as the disfavour they showedto our opponents. Electors may conceal the truth from canvassers but not from theirown children in the free and intimate life of North Kensington. We looked like beingin by thousands. It was therefore one of the chief surprises of my life when we polledonly eight per cent of the votes recorded.I was determined if possible to find out what had happened, and sufficientirregularities had occurred to get an election petition on its legs. It was admittedly tosome extent what the lawyers call a fishing expedition, but I had to make a start. Asusual in the English courts during recent years, I took the case myself, and as usualwas treated with the utmost fairness and courtesy by the judges. Nothing of muchsubstance came to light, and we got nowhere. The rules of British electoral procedurehad been sufficiently fulfilled, and the rest was a matter of criticising the system andnot of securing any redress from the law courts. As everyone is aware who knowsanything of our electoral system, we are far from the method employed in some of themore suspicious Latin countries, where representatives of all parties remain withinview of the ballot boxes throughout the poll, not to see how anyone votes but toensure there is no substitution of boxes, and at the close of poll accompany theprecious receptacles on the ceremonial drive to the place of the count with the handsof all party representatives firmly resting on the boxes in case anyone is around whois a good enough conjuror to make votes disappear. This procedure may seemexaggerated to the English tradition, but I would suggest there is room to tighten upthe electoral procedure at present laid down by our law.The election remains a mystery to me, but I do not accept the view of many of myfriends that the result was necessarily incorrect. There is another explanation for thedisparity between appearance and fact, between all the overt evidence to theexperienced eye of a winning election and the decision of the ballot boxes. In fact, thecontrary explanation coincides with the analysis I have already made of the movementof mass opinion, both historic and actual. An electorate never moves decisively except378 of 424