sentences:  The Conservative Party chose Robert Cooke, a schoolteacher who was only 26 years old.Cooke had been President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1953, and was elected to Bristol City Council the next year; he had been the Conservative candidate for Bristol South East in the 1955 general election.The Labour Party chose William Rodgers, then General Secretary of the Fabian Society, who was 28 at the time.