Fateful Election

FOREIGN NEWS

Faced with the Labor Party's emphatic refusal to continue in his Coalition Government until the Japanese war was won (TIME, May 28), Prime Minister Winston Churchill moved decisively. First he canceled the fortnight's holiday he had planned in the south of France. Then, twice in a single day, he drove formally to Buckingham Palace--at noon to resign, four hours later to accept King George VI's invitation to form a new government.

Two days later Churchill handed His Majesty a list of his new Ministers, all familiar Tory faces but for a few equally familiar National Liberals and nonparty men who had served in the coalition.* Conspicuously absent from this "caretaker" government were Labor and Liberal stalwarts like Clement Attlee (formerly Deputy Prime Minister) and Sir Archibald Sinclair (formerly Minister for Air), who preferred to cross the Commons floor to the opposition benches. The government which had brought Britain through the war frorn the dark days of Dunkirk to the Nazi surrender at Reims, had become past history. Their future government was up to the British voters, who will elect it next July 5.

M & B. Most Britons, even the Conservatives, were divided on the wisdom of holding an election so soon, but Tories in general trusted Churchill's political instinct. Two of Churchill's Cabinet intimates--Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) and Brendan Bracken--had insistently urged an immediate election (for fear that Britons' wartime memories would dim). Just as insistently the Labor Party had urged delay till autumn (in hopes that they would). Quipped Labor's Arthur Greenwood of Max and Brendan: "M & B* can save a man once--it saved Winston when he had pneumonia--but M & B a second time can ruin a chap."

It would be Britain's third khaki election since the turn of the century. Both of the others (during the Boer War and after World War I) gave convincing majorities for the government in power. With Churchill at their head, the Tories hoped that the July vote would be a pro-Tory deluge.

Stunning Resonance. Meanwhile the Labor Party conference at Blackpool ended a week of stunning resonance with a series of verbal thunderclaps. The mood of British labor, echoing Europe's mood of social change, was grimly set by Aneurin Bevan, leftist M.P.: "We want the complete extinction of the Tory Party and 25 years of Labor government." The Labor Party's program was outlined in a sweeping nationalization program for "a Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain" (TIME, May 28).

For its prospective Prime Minister, the Labor Party picked amiable, colorless Clement Attlee, since a choice between strong-arm trade unionist Ernest Bevin and smart-policy exponent Herbert Morrison might split the Party. Ernest Bevin was tipped as prospective Foreign Secretary. Promptly he expounded Labor's foreign policy:

P: On India: "If we are returned to power, we will shut up the India Office and transfer its affairs to the Dominions Office."

P: On Russia: "We pledge ourselves never to use small states to play off against big states [Russia], and so get advantage. There should be cards on the table, face upwards."

P: On France and Italy: "France is going left, and left understands left, but right does not. France will come back, and there will be confidence between her and us. Nor is it Labor's intention to go on treating Italy as though Mussolini were still in power."

The Labor Party's left wing centered its fire on the Conservative domestic program, past & future. Cried its spokesman, Aneurin Bevan, whose leftism is far afield from the orthodox trade unionism of Bevin: "Britain is an island bedded on coal and surrounded by fish; only an organizing genius could produce a coal shortage and a fish shortage simultaneously." Cried fiery, diminutive Ellen Wilkinson: "For the major task of reconstruction we obviously cannot work with the Conservatives."

But to win power the Labor Party needed 321 seats in the new, enlarged House of Commons, considerably more than Labor had ever won before. The Party could count on its solid trade union core and on a substantial section of the 4,000,000 voters in uniform. Harry Pollitt, Communist Party secretary, promised to throw the Communist vote behind the Labor Party except in districts where Communists were candidates. But for whom would the new electors--a whole generation of them under 30--cast their first votes? The answer to this question might decide the election.

. . .

While the Labor Party was denouncing him at Blackpool, Winston Churchill, bareheaded in a drizzling rain, opened his reelection campaign at Woodford, Essex. Early comers to Woodford Green huddled under the lofty trees and hoisted umbrellas (as did Mrs. Churchill). Cattle, which had been grazing in the village, lumbered away as the crowds increased a few minutes before Churchill arrived. There were lots of children, waving British flags.

Churchill spoke from the back seat of his car, which was parked at the side of the road. Traffic continued along the highway. Seeing the Prime Minister, a bus conductor stuck his head out of a second-deck window and yelled: "Hi, Winnie!" Everybody laughed.

* Among them: Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary: Sir John Anderson, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Woolton, Lord President of the Council; Lord Leathers, Minister of War Transport; Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Privy Seal. Brendan Bracken (formerly Minister of Information) was promoted to be First Lord of the Admiralty, Richard Austen Butler (formerly Minister of Education) to Minister of Labor. * M & B is the British trade name for the sulfa drugs--M (for May) and B (for Baker), who market sulfa.

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