With just ten days to go before polling day, deputy Labour leader George Brown was out on the hustings in Hyde’s new civic square.
Mr Brown and his wife Sophie were greeted with enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.
About 200 people turned up, including a few hecklers determined to put one of the Labour government’s most senior figures ‘on the spot’. Wages and unemployment were the two main topics they wanted to talk about.
Labour had been way ahead in the recent opinion polls, which had persuaded the PM Harold Wilson to call a snap General Election for Thursday, June 18.
Mr Brown, ‘suntanned and in a light grey suit’ as the North Cheshire Herald observed, was rallying support for Tom Pendry, the party’s Stalybridge and Hyde candidate who was aiming to succeed the retiring Labour MP Fred Blackburn.
Labour had started the second week of the election campaign “with our tails well up,” said Mr Brown, while the Conservatives remained “in a desperate situation... reduced to trying to talk Britain into an economic crisis. They would like you to believe we are in trouble. The fact of the matter is, we are not.”
Despite Labour’s optimism, the pollsters had got it wrong. A last minute swing to Ted Heath’s Tories produced a surprise win and a 30-seat majority.
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