The Winners

It was the biggest electoral upset in British history. When Britain's sealed ballot boxes were broken open for the count last week, it was found that the Labor Party, under the leadership of Clement R. Attlee, had defeated the Conservative Party, haloed by the prosecution to victory of a desperate war. Labor's astonishing majority over Winston Churchill's Conservatives: 195 seats.

Some twelve million Britons had voted Labor Party candidates into 388 seats--224 more seats than they had had before the election and 101 more than they had held ever before in their history. The Conservatives had received some nine million votes and 193 seats.

Winston Churchill, who had seemed invincible in the gratitude of the nation he had just helped so greatly to save, kept his own seat in Commons. But he saw ten thousand of the 38,000 electors in his constituency (Woodford, Essex) plump for a candidate of the lunatic fringe Alexander (farmer) Hancock. A more definite gesture of personal repudiation was scarcely possible.

Distinguished Cadavers. This electoral El Alamein, which brought British socialists to power for the first time in 14 years, strewed Britain with distinguished political corpses. Among the Conservative cadavers were: First Lord of the Admiralty Brendan Bracken; Secretary of State for India, Leopold S. Amery; Sir James Grigg, Secretary for War; Harold Macmillan, Secretary for Air; Sir Donald Somervell, Home Secretary; Ernest Brown, Minister of Aircraft Production; Richard K. Law, Minister of Education; Churchill's son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, Minister of Works; Churchill's son, Major Randolph Churchill.

A somewhat more massive corpse was the Liberal Party, which, caught in Labor's bloody angle, lost seven of its 18 parliamentary seats, and failed to re-elect its leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, its president, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, or its most celebrated candidate, Social Planner Sir William Beveridge.

Among the political small fry, the Communist Party could claim a 100% parliamentary gain. For its traditional lone M.P. William Gallacher, it had managed to elect a comrade, Philip Piratin.

Nowhere did Labor lose one seat to the Conservatives. From them it captured 130 seats. Scotland went almost solidly Labor. The landslide was pitted with startling "firsts." For the first time in British history a cathedral city (Winchester) went Labor. For the first time in history Birmingham, traditionally conservative home of the conservative Chamberlains (Joseph, Austen and Neville), went Labor.

Rural constituencies that have voted Conservative as long as there has been a Conservative Party voted Labor. Most important of all, for the first time in their three tries at Government (the others: 1924 and 1929), the Labor Party had received a majority so sweeping as to constitute a mandate. Since, with such a whopping majority, a no-confidence vote seemed impossible, the Labor Government was presumably in for the full parliamentary term -- five years.

What They Voted Against. The consequences of this great shift of Britain's political earth were all but incalculable. The British general election came at a moment in history when all over the world social institutions and political values were in question or in flux. The twelve million Britons, who, under law, by orderly process, and with due respect for the Crown, voted to change their rulers, knew that their act could not fail profoundly to affect the future.

Seldom has an electorate gone to the polls with more deliberate purpose. Seldom has an electorate been more clearly aware of what it was voting against and what it was voting for--against the past and for the future.

They voted against:

P: The ten-year monopoly of Government by the Conservative Party (although the Government was a coalition in the war years few questioned that it was the Conservatives who ran the political show).

P: The "personal government" of Winston Churchill, who wielded an unprecedented degree of personal power.

P: The memory of Munich, for which (however mistakenly) many blamed the Tories.

P: The Conservative Government's policy toward Greece and Spain, the suspicion that they were over-tender toward Europe's repudiated royalty.

P: Churchill's conduct of the election campaign, notably his speech warning that the dynamic of socialism is toward totalitarianism. There was nothing new in these Churchill views. But many electors believed that they had been inspired by Brendan Bracken or Tory Publisher Lord Beaverbrook (The London Daily Express and Evening Standard).

P: The Conservative program for the postwar period and the Tory apathy toward social change.

What They Voted For. They voted for:

P: Government by party instead of personality.

P: A party with a coherent, thought-out plan instead of a party with an eclectic program.

P: A strong Britain whose competitive position, in a world in which she is no longer No. 1 power, might be buttressed by the nationalization of, and Government planning for, key industries: coal, power, steel, transportation.

P: A healthy Britain whose strength would rest in the first instance on a population benefited by a coherent plan of social welfare, including social security.

P: A foreign policy strengthened by the contacts and sympathies of Labor Party leaders for the leaders of the socialist (as contrasted with Communist) and progressive forces emerging from Europe's social and political turmoil.

Only the future could tell whether or not they had mistaken change for progress.

The New P.M. For a government by party which should efface the memory of a government by brilliant personality, Labor's leader and Britain's new Prime Minister was an almost ideal man. Sincere, sensitive and shy, Major Clement Richard Attlee is a colorless, self-effacing, somewhat chilly little man who walks with a shuffle, talks without rhetorical tricks. At the Big Three Conference he looked, critics said, like Winston Churchill's butler. But there is a good mind behind his glistening bald pate.

"Clem" Attlee is a Labor politician by act of will rather than by birthright. He is as suburban as his London background. The son of a Tory lawyer, he was born in Putney (1883), was educated at Haileybury (one of England's more exclusive public schools) and Oxford. At 22, he seemed headed for a profitable law practice, was a Conservative, and a tariff reformer.

Destiny in the East End. Then fate, in the guise of the Secretary of Haileybury Club, stepped in. The secretary invited the young barrister to visit London's East End slums. Attlee went along--in a white tie, top hat and tails. His appearance nearly caused a revolt of the masses. In the scrimmage he lost his topper and gained a black eye. He also acquired an interest in social problems.

He began to read the literary apostles of British Socialism, Critic John Ruskin and Poet William Morris. He joined the Fabian Society, which under the intellectual aegis of Sidney and Beatrice Webb had repudiated the violent revolutionary doctrines of Karl Marx in favor of the ultimate triumph of socialism by ballot instead of by bullet--"the inevitability of gradualness." Later he joined the embryonic Labor Party.

Soon young Attlee himself was moved to take a revolutionary step. He moved out of his father's house and into a two-room flat in the East End. He became secretary of Toynbee Hall, a pioneer social settlement, took to lecturing at the London School of Economics. The ragged denizens of London's vast Limehouse slums came to know his tweed jacket and his fuming pipe (he is almost never without it). He acquired a firsthand knowledge of working-class misery and labor problems.

It was Limehouse that inspired Attlee to one of his rare public expressions of sentiment. In the Socialist Review, then edited by a tall, gangling Scot named Ramsay MacDonald, these lines appeared above the initials "C.R.A.":

In Limehouse, in Limehouse, before the break of day, I hear the feet of many men who go upon their way, Who wander through the city, The grey and cruel city, Through streets that have no pity, The streets where men decay. In Limehouse, in Limehouse, by night as well as day, I hear the feet of children who go to work or play, Of children born to sorrow, The workers of tomorrow, How shall they work tomorrow Who get no bread today?

Pacifist Warrior. The cockney stevedores of Limehouse were grateful. They launched Attlee on his Parliamentary career (1922). Since then his seat has been one of the safest in England. World War I interrupted Attlee's political education, but gave him education of another kind. An hour and a half after Britain declared war he joined the Army as a volunteer. Five years later, he emerged as a major with a D.S.O. and some severe wounds.

In the first Labor Government (1924), Attlee was Under Secretary for War, presently filled a variety of other Cabinet posts. Impatient left-wing Labor comrades found him a fine target for their barbs: "His presence in meetings is seldom remarked"; "His speeches win warmer applause before being heard than after"; "He is better at evading points than at making them." They liked to point out that Attlee has only one platform gesture --he raises his right arm and scratches his head just above his left ear.

But his neutral coloration--the same quality that made him about the best Prime Minister Labor could offer to the nine million uneasy Britons who had voted Conservative--also advanced his career in the Labor Party's factional feuds. Attlee became the Labor Party's favorite compromise leader--first in the struggle between crafty Arthur Greenwood and rambunctious Herbert Morrison, later during the struggle between Herbert Morrison and burly Trade Union Leader Ernest Bevin.

Gardening & Carpentry. Attlee is above all a homebody. He is a member of the exclusive Athenaeum Club, where he sometimes dines, sometimes shows an unexpected flash of wit. But he spends most of his leisure time at his Middlesex home, puttering in the garden, tending his chickens or doing carpentry. He has torn down and rebuilt his chicken coop four times, is still dissatisfied with it.

In 1922 Attlee married one of the daughters of a middle-class family of Hampstead. They have three daughters, and a son in the merchant marine. Mrs. Violet Attlee, a dynamic character, may soon be even more of a public figure than Mrs. "Clemmie" Churchill. Last week she helped the new Labor Government break its first precedent by driving her husband (Attlee cannot drive) to receive the seals of office from King George VI. She went right in with Clement too, but Palace formality in the shape of Sir Piers Legh, Master of the King's Household, stopped her short of seeing the King.

One of the things that Prime Minister Attlee discussed with the King was the formation of the new Labor Cabinet. Attlee proposed Ernest Bevin, the strongest man in the Labor Party and probably the ablest man in the new Government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a job that Bevin wanted. But the king urged his new Prime Minister to make Ernest Bevin Foreign Secretary. Attlee agreed.

Before he and Foreign Secretary Bevin flew to Potsdam for the Big Three Conference (see INTERNATIONAL), Attlee announced five other Cabinet appointments: CJ Lord President of the Council: smart, cockney Herbert Morrison, 57, adroit maker of quips and policies, who will henceforth direct Labor's huge Commons majority.

Cf Chancellor of the Exchequer: Dr. Hugh Dalton, 58, the Labor Party's Eton-and-Cambridge-educated braintruster. CJ President of the Board of Trade: Sir Stafford Cripps, 56, former Ambassador to Moscow, now back in the Labor Party after having been expelled for advocating a united front with the Communist Party. CJ Lord Privy Seal: Arthur Greenwood, 64, party orator and authority on housing. CJ Lord Chancellor: Sir William Jowitt, 60, brilliant barrister, who will receive a peerage and represent the Government in the House of Lords.

Not in the new Cabinet, but conspicuously at the new Prime Minister's elbow was the Labor Party's left-wing theoretician, Professor Harold J. Laski. Promptly Professor Laski announced that the Labor Government would act to wipe out Europe's "plague spots"--particularly Dictator Francisco Franco.

Other Laborites who might be offered posts when Prime Minister Attlee completes his Cabinet: Aneurin Bevan, fiery ex-miner, one of Labor's extreme left wing; Ellen Wilkinson, fiery professional trade-union organizer; Michael Foot (Guilty Men), London Daily Herald columnist and the party's ablest pamphleteer; Lieut. General Frank Noel Mason MacFarlane, last man to leave the beach at Dunkirk.

By week's end, heads had cleared sufficiently after the concussive election news, for some sober stocktaking. What did Labor's victory mean to Britain now? Certainly not a Bolshevik revolution. The Laborites were advocates of gradual necessary social repairs, enemies of violent change. All the leaders were responsible men. Most of them had had Cabinet experience.

Moreover they were faced with immediate massive tasks:

The War against Japan. Last week Prime Minister Attlee promised to wage it without stint.

Housing. More than 500,000 of Britain's houses had been destroyed during the war. One million new houses were needed at once.

Trade. To meet the cost of essential imports, Britain must increase her exports 50% over the 1938 level, 500% over the current level.

Nationalization. To organize efficient production to meet her trade and international needs the Labor Party proposed to nationalize the mines (the first stage of coal nationalization was predicted before winter) and the electric-power industry. This was an enormous task. On its success probably depended nationalization of railroads and the Bank of England.

Clearly an era had ended. The speed and competency with which the Labor Government solved its immediate problems and moved on to new ones would tell whether an era had also begun.

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