Jeremy Thorpe 1,166. After the 1966 election, Grimond confided to senior party officials that he wished soon to step down from the leadership. Thorpe was now the senior Liberal MP after Grimond, and the party's highest-profile member, although Timothy Beaumont, chairman of the party's organising committee, noted in his diary: "I am pretty certain that he has little popularity within the Parliamentary Party". When Grimond finally resigned, on 17 January 1967, an election to replace him was arranged to take place within 48 hours, leaving little time for manoeuvring. The 12 Liberal MPs formed the whole electorate; after the first ballot, Thorpe
Jeremy Thorpe election, Caroline Thorpe was killed in a car crash. For the rest of 1970 and for much of 1971, Thorpe was preoccupied with his loss and his plan for a permanent memorial to Caroline. Meanwhile, the party began to recover, chiefly through its adoption of "community politics"—engagement with local rather than national issues—and achieved modest gains in the 1971 local elections. By early 1972, with the monument to Caroline erected on Codden Hill, Thorpe was fully re-engaged in political life. In February he assisted the passage through the House of Commons of Heath's European Communities Bill, approving the United Kingdom's