Panorama by Candlelight

Mrs. Sophie Chimes was determined to get some coal, no matter how little, and no matter if it meant standing all day long in the queue. But after two hours in a bone-chilling wind, Mrs. Chimes collapsed. Neighbors carried her to her small, cold, prefabricated dwelling in the bomb-scarred slums of London's Whitechapel.

Revived, Mrs. Chimes broke up two small orange crates (cruelly labeled "Sunkist") and kindled a puny blaze in her stove. She went to the icy window, peered down the street in the hope of a glimpse of her husband. Unemployed now, he had gone out ahead of her to queue up at the greengrocer's for a few potatoes. Mrs. Chimes turned to her tiny kitchen and a pile of clothes awaiting washing. She sighed:

"I've got no time for doing the 'ouse. In the daytime I'm out queuing for coal and in the evening we get into bed to get warm. My 'usband, 'e's a Labor man, but now 'e don't know what to think. It seems all these politicians are the same once they get into power."

Foreign Weather. Thousands of Britons were not as badly off as the Chimeses were in the first week of The Crisis, but millions were. Every Briton had his own personal crisis as the underlying fact of his nation's woefully low coal production was brought to a head by mean, frosty, snowy, windy weather. The Crisis itself had been a stunning blow (TIME, Feb. 17). Now, as it deepened, it was worse in many ways than the blitz at its worst: it hit everybody. The Government extended its five-hour domestic power switchoff and blackout of cities, villages, industries from Land's End to John o' Groats.

The below-freezing weather seemed to be under the control of foreign devils intent on Britain's downfall (the islands were in the middle of a high-pressure area that extended from central Russia to northern Iceland).* It lashed coal ships to their piers and snow-blocked 75,000 coal-laden railroad cars. Britons shivered in unheated trams, trains and subways (most transport was drastically cut), squinted under nickering candlelight in unheated offices (there was a run on aspirin, a coal-tar derivative, for eyestrain headaches), came home to huddle around the kitchen stove and to hope that a threatened cut in gas would not add to their miseries. London's Central Electricity Board was typical of the general discomfort: it met in overcoats, by candlelight (see cut).

Britons were in a bristling, grumbling mood. But they stood and took it again. There was no disorder as factories closed indefinitely; by this week unemployment was up to 2,000,000 and rising fast; 1,255,000 had registered for the pittance of the dole (about $10 a week for a family of four). The British national character and the British political mood stood out in their words and deeds.

Right to Left. Boomed the clear, cultured voice of a thin, scholarly-looking man lunching in his heavy ulster at a Soho restaurant: "I say it's the judgment of the Almighty on the British people for voting Socialist."

Whined a flower girl on the steps of lamplit St. Paul's Cathedral: "All my flowers shriveled up, and the buds go brown with frost. Politics, I don't understand 'em. It's warmth I want."

Said a docker on the Thames near Westminster Bridge (on which only two lights burned): "This is the proof of 20 years of rotten government. If the Conservatives had harnessed hydroelectric power 20 years ago, this would not have happened.* The Government can count on us dockers."

In a Whitechapel pub, the Northampton Arms, a tailor's cutter discussed The Crisis. No, he couldn't blame the Socialists. Then he reflected the typical defensive class-consciousness of many Laborites: "Still, I don't think they've had enough education to deal with the twisting coal owners."

Did any of this rumbling mean that the Laborite Government's voters might swing away from it because of The Crisis? Candid Tories did not believe so. Said William Wallace, ex-president of Edinburgh's Chamber of Commerce: "I have a bet on that the Government will run the full five-year course. I should like to pay, but I'm afraid I shan't."

Double Error. Laborites, Tories and everybody else had the same whipping boy for The Crisis. Balding, garrulous Fuel Minister Emanuel Shinwell had been warned, as early as mid-October, by Tories and Laborites alike that there would be a serious coal shortage. Shinwell gambled on a green winter (as had some politicians before him in comparable situations). He then made a serious political error as well as a bad bet: he kept his gamble to himself. Had he put the choice up to the House of Commons and the country, perhaps a majority of politicians and plain citizens would have gone along with him. After all, the alternative was a winter of fuel rationing and curtailed production; Britons had had a bellyful of such austerity. When his gamble did not come off, Shinwell had no plan to meet the emergency.

Shinwell took a merciless thumping in most newspapers (which were back to wartime four-page skimpiness).* Shinwell became a byword and a hissing. A music-hall comedian punned: "Be sure your Shinwell find you out." The House of Lords cheered as Viscount Swinton belabored him with "We suffer not from an act of God, but the inactivity of Emanuel." Shinwell got a bomb threat, and Scotland Yard put four constables around his small house in Tooting. Tooted Mrs. Shinwell: "Let them try to harm him!" Would her husband resign (as the Tory press had demanded and some Laborites had privately suggested)? Said Mrs. Shinwell: "I don't see why. I should like to see the man who could do the job better."

There were more politically practical reasons why Shinwell would not be ousted from the Cabinet now. He was still extremely popular with the miners; if he were axed, there might be trouble in the pits. A measure of that factor came last week in a by-election in the Yorkshire mine area of Normanton. There the Labor candidate got 80% of the total vote, a drop of only 4% from last year's general election.

Inequalities & Inefficiencies. In a pine-paneled office of a closed engine plant in

Coventry, an industrialist who had been in charge of large aircraft undertakings during the war talked about the economy under Socialism. His conclusion: "In a human sense it's regrettable, but inescapable. Nationalism and equality are inefficient."

In a human sense, for many Britons The Crisis was a nightmare of inequalities and inefficiencies. In one short street in Plymouth, shops showed these signs: "No Potatoes"; "No Logs"; "No Rabbits"; "No Fish"; "No Cigarettes."

Emanuel Shinwell's Fuel Ministry bureaus all over the country took a beating from hundreds of irate Britons whose businesses were squeezed in the hastily applied switchoffs.

Poultry farmers, listed as nonessential, screamed for power or fuel to save thousands of chicks.

In London there was a call from a crematorium. Said the voice: "I have one half-baked and two waiting to go in. Am I a priority for coal?" The Fuel Ministry pondered the question, called back with a decision: he was.

In Hammersmith, at the well-lighted "Palais de Danse," members of the National Coal Board solemnly stood before 2,000 jitterbugs and bobby-soxers and helped select a pretty, blonde "Coal Queen." They planned to wine, dine and publicize her in a campaign to recruit more miners.

Cheers & Boos. The people managed to work their stiff upper lips into smiles over some lighter incidents. Trade delegations arrived in London from Russia and Iceland, took up their negotiations by candlelight. Among the things they wanted was more coal from Britain. An Edinburgh restaurant orchestra, unable to read its scores in the near-darkness, played over & over a tune it knew: Keep the Home Fires Burning.

Amidst the drab suffering of the snow-grey week, Winston Churchill provided a happy and colorful note at Daughter Mary's wedding to Army Captain Christopher Soames in heatless, candlelit St. Margaret's Church in London. A crowd of about 3,000 shivering women and a few men gave him a long cheer and a "Good old Winnie" as he grinned and flashed the V sign. They mildly booed Guest Clement Attlee. Churchill made up for that. After the ceremony he strode to the Prime Minister, seized both his hands, then clapped him on the back, said to him: "We worked well together in the coalition; you come along and sign the register with me." Warmed and pleased, Attlee did.

Hope & Gloom. By week's end The Crisis seemed to have passed its peak of fever. Working around the clock, a force of about 100,000 British troops, German prisoners of war and Polish exile troops had cleared many snow-blocked rail lines. Gales abated and more than 100 coastal colliers fought heavy seas. Along the Thames and the Tyne came the electrifying sight of ice-coated ships unloading at power stations.

How long would Britain be flat on its back, in economic semicoma? This week the Government could give no better answer than "indefinitely." Fuel and factory experts figured that it may take two weeks after a thaw for the country to return to pre-Crisis normal. The effects of this emergency operation would be painfully felt for a long time. Loss of production in 1947, at the best guess, would be 10%. There was little hope that the country's limping export drive (TIME, Feb. 3) could regain much strength this year.

Bitter medicine was in store for the bitterly stoical Britons. Fuel rationing seemed a must from now on. Sufficient reserve stocks for next winter could not be built up without giving industry less than its full requirements. That meant that goods for domestic use would have to be cut. Some economists talked in terms of three more years of scarcity.

Almost every Briton now knew that his nation was very, very sick and that recovery would be slow and painful.

In Hampstead a bank clerk expressed the thoughts of thousands : "If I'd known about this, I would have cleared out last year. South Africa or Australia for me."

*Britain did not suffer alone: northern Europe was also caught between intense cold and coal shortages. The Netherlands closed its schools. In orderly Copenhagen a mob attacked a coal train. Berlin counted 150 deaths from cold and hunger in recent weeks. Eire and Northern Ireland felt the pinch of Britain's troubles; several industries closed, and domestic gas supplies were cut.

*The docker had distinguished company in his assertion. Last week George Bernard Shaw came up with a belated version of Franklin Roosevelt's abandoned Passamaquoddy project of 1935. G.B.S. proposed harnessing the swirling tides in Scotland's narrow inlets to avert future crises. He added a petulant note: "My suggestions usually take 30 years to attract any attention."

*For news of what The Crisis did to some of Britain's ancient & honorable magazines, see PRESS.

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