The photograph above is captioned on Getty Images:
British Liberal Party politician John Pardoe with his wife Joyce, UK, 24th September 1964. Pardoe is standing against Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher as the Liberal candidate for Finchley.
And Pardoe did very well at Finchley in the 1964 general election, putting the Liberals into second place and recording a seven per cent swing against the sitting Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher.
A Jewish Chronicle article by Robert Philpot from 2017 gives an important reason for this achievement:
When Mrs Thatcher was selected as Finchley's Conservative candidate in July 1958, she inherited a seemingly impregnable majority of nearly 13,000. She soon discovered, however, that the Tories had a little local difficulty on their hands. At its centre were the constituency's Jewish voters who constituted a politically significant one-in-five of the electorate.
It stemmed from that most quintessentially middle-class of pursuits: golf. The previous year, a number of Jews – including Shirley Porter, then a young Liberal activist – had applied to join the Finchley golf club. Each had had their membership refused; not an uncommon occurrence at golf clubs at this time.
The club leased its land from the Tory-dominated borough council, and its officers included a number of prominent local Conservatives. Scenting an opportunity, two Jewish Liberals fought and won seats in Finchley’s wealthiest and most Jewish wards.
Upon her selection, a horrified Mrs Thatcher discovered that, while the club had swiftly caved in and agreed to admit Jewish members, more lasting damage had been done: in the next year's local elections, the Liberals made further advances. "The Jewish faith," she worriedly wrote to Central Office, "have allied themselves to Liberalism."
The golf-club scandal had come to symbolise a cloud of antisemitism which hung over the local Tory association. That was not altogether surprising given the attitude of Sir John Crowder, the retiring MP, who privately grumbled that the national party was trying to impose a choice between "a bloody Jew and a bloody woman" as his successor.
Mrs Thatcher was, she later recalled, upset that her new local association had been "tainted" by antisemitism and moved swiftly to repair the damage. She prioritised the recruitment of new Jewish members and invited Sir Keith Joseph, the Tories' rising Jewish star, to speak locally. Her efforts appeared to bear fruit: in October 1959, she increased the Tories' majority to over 16,000.
However, the Liberal bandwagon continued to roll. In 1962, the party made sweeping gains and a year later it seized control of Finchley town hall. Six of its 19 councillors were Jewish, including the new leader of the council and mayor. Drawing a parallel with the Liberals' recent dramatic by-election victory, the press dubbed Finchley "the Orpington of North London."
Mrs Thatcher knew exactly the source of her problems. "It’s the golf club… that’s where it all started," she told one journalist. Her finely tuned political antenna were correct: she held Finchley in 1964, albeit with a sharply reduced majority. However, Jews in the seat voted Liberal in considerably higher proportions than non-Jews, with Mrs Thatcher and the Liberal candidate, John Pardoe, each taking roughly 40 percent of the Jewish vote.
John Pardoe went on to become MP for North Cornwall in 1966 and represented the seat until he was defeated in 1979. In the Seventies he became the party's economic spokesperson and, along with David Penhaligon, one of my early Liberal heroes.
Shirley Porter, who died earlier this year, followed a different political career path.
