Jewish Labor, Conservative Candidates Elected, Returned to New House of Commons

Greville Janner, son of Lord Barnett Janner, was declared the victor Friday in the fight for the Leicester, Northwest seat, which his father had held for Labor over many years. The then Sir Barnett Janner, 78, announced on the dissolution of Parliament last month that he was stepping down. He was subsequently named a lifetime peer. The junior Mr. Janner was one of 19 Jewish Labor candidates elected to the new House of Commons in the greatest political upset in many years. Six Jews have been returned to Parliament as Conservatives. Among them was Michael M. Fidler, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who will take a seat in Parliament for the first time. Sir Henry D’Avigdor Goldsmid, president of the Jewish Colonization Association, was reelected as was Sir Keith Joseph, who served in former Conservative governments. Also elected by the Conservatives were Maj. Gen. J. D’Avigdor Goldsmid, Geoffrey Finsburg, and Harold Soref who is originally from South Africa. Sir Keith, who was appointed Secretary of Social Services in the new government, formerly served as honorary treasurer of the Friends of the Hebrew University. Among the new faces to be seen on the Labor side of the aisle in the new House will be that of Gerald Kaufman, a well-known journalist who served as press advisor to Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Other Laborites elected were: Harold Lever, a former member of the Cabinet; Sir Meyer Galpern, former Lord Mayor of Glasgow; Ian Mikardo, a Labor Party strategist; Edmund Dell, a former Junior minister; George Strauss, a former member of the Cabinet; Maurice Edelman, the novelist; Maurice Orbach, a member of the executive of the World Jewish Congress, and Sim Silkin, John Silkin, Dr. Maurice Miller, Col. Marcus Lipton, Julius Silverman, Leo Abse, Joel Barnett. Paul Rose and Rene Short. Reelected was Raphael H. Tuck who squeezed through in Watford with a hairline majority of 76 votes. A number of personalities considered friendly to Israel will be seen on both sides of the new House. On the Tory side, they include Winston Churchill Jr., Quentin Hogg, former Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, president of the Anglo-Israeli Friendship League. On the Labor side, they include Richard Crossman, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, and many members of the Labor Friends of Israel. Former Foreign Secretary George Brown was defeated in a surprising upset. His former Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Evan Luard, who was generally held responsible for Britain’s anti-Israel vote in the UN Security Council on the operation in southeast Lebanon, was defeated in his Oxford constituency. John Diamond, a prominent Labor member in the last House who was Financial Secretary of the Treasury, was one of the Laborites who failed to win reelection.