Government by Governess

One duty of the British nursery governess is to wake the children from their naps. Last week, with Economic Dictator Sir Stafford Cripps bending sternly yet benignly over it, Britain was awake. It was resentful, expectant and confused, but, undeniably, it stirred.

Gone was the midsummer's nightmare in which it had somnambled into the convertibility crisis. Gone was the comatose paralysis of a Government which had collected unprecedented powers, but which could not collect its wits for leadership. The tempo of life and work has quickened. Factory managers reported that their employees were "really getting down to it." Even the Tory party, which since its crushing defeat of 1945 had been the most torpid segment of the British scene, suddenly came sufficiently alive to win an election. Just 24 hours before the votes were counted, a TIME correspondent in London had reported: "The Tories are less certain of not winning."

If that cautious attitude was a measure of past apathy, the election returns themselves were an impressive token of the awakening. An unusually heavy vote in elections to municipal councils throughout England and Wales showed that the Conservatives had made a net gain of 621 council seats. Labor suffered a net loss of 652 seats. Labor's loss in industrial areas was particularly notable. Grim and grimy Birmingham, which the Chamberlain family had accustomed to Tory rule, put 65 Tories in its council of 136. Manchester, Reading and Rugby went Conservative. It was the first major political shift in Britain in more than two years.

Did the shift mean that the British voters loved the Tories more? Hardly, since even the Tory leaders themselves were so unconfident of their party's principles that they had clutched socialism in a tepid, awkward embrace. Certainly, however, the British voter loved Labor less. A month ago, before the awakening, a TIME correspondent touring England by car ran into evidences of leaden disgust and shamed resignation. Said a Coventry bricklayer:

"Last autumn my dad was mortal sick, and the doctor gave us a priority order for extra coal to keep him warm. The coal came five weeks after we buried him. Mum was sick too. The doctor gave us another priority order. She died in March; her coal came three weeks later. What do you do? You can't refuse coal, even if the reason for it is gone. At least Dad's coal helped Mum."

"The Bloody Boss." A coal miner got more terrifyingly close to the heart of Britain's problem, which is that her people won't get more of the things they want until they produce more, and won't produce more until they get more of the things they want. He was one of the absentees whom the Government eloquently exhorts to stay on the job. Asked why Britain's prewar coal production of 230 million tons had fallen below 200 million, the miner said:

"It's absenteeism. This warm weather decided me to take another holiday and get a bit of sun while I can."

"What about the coal you could be digging?"

"Any bloke who complains can dig it himself," he answered. "Those Government bastards talk a lot--but I notice they don't come near the bloody pit face. Scared maybe.

"We need more food and more pay--and more to buy with the pay--before we'll dig more coal. Even with what you can earn, there's little to buy in the shops, that's worth buying, that is. Everything good goes for export. Well, they'd better send some of it to mine towns, if they want us to send coal to them. That's the export drive I want to see."

"What about nationalization of the mines?"

"That hasn't changed much," he answered. "There's still the bloody boss. With the old owners you at least knew where you stood. They were out to get the biggest slice they could, and to hell with us miners. But this Government can't seem to make up its mind and it interferes in the wrong places. You should see some of the red tape and regulations clerks that never saw a pit face can dream up."

"One First-Class Intelligence." Before Britain could go ahead on any front, Prime Minister Attlee had to break this mood which, in various shades of distempered grey, permeated the national life. In September he appointed Cripps Minister for Economic Affairs. Almost instantly political, economic and social forces began to regroup themselves, like iron filings when a magnet is held over them.

It became somewhat pointless to snipe at the inefficiency of the bureaucracy when one of the most efficient administrators in the world was in charge of it. If any man could make democratic socialism work, Cripps could. Winston Churchill greeted his appointment with this tribute: "He is certainly the ablest brain in the administration, and at least we have one first-class intelligence now brooding upon our affairs."

Within a fortnight of his appointment, Cripps had come to overshadow Attlee and Herbert Morrison and even Ernest Bevin. Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton sulked in Cripps's long shadow. The Government now had direction, drive and vision. If British recovery failed under Cripps it would be because 1) world conditions forbade recovery, or 2) democratic socialism would not work, or 3) both.

"Set the People Free." Churchill's keen tactical sense led him toward a new Tory position last week. Abandoning sniping tactics, he opened up a full-scale attack on the principle of socialist planning and controls. For the first time in months the House of Commons heard an all-out defense of free enterprise. Said Churchill:

"I feel myself a strong conviction that he [Cripps] is leading us down the wrong road, and that at the end of all his efforts and our privations, we shall in a year or two be worse off than we are now. . . . Exports . . . are only that part of the iceberg that glitters above the surface of the ocean. . . .

"I do not believe in the capacity of the state to plan and enforce an active high-grade economic productivity upon its members or subjects. . . . I am sure that this policy of equalizing misery and organizing scarcity, instead of allowing diligence, self-interest and ingenuity to produce abundance, has only to be prolonged to kill this British Island stone dead. We are told, and I am told, that we Conservatives have no policy. . . . Here is the policy: establish a basic standard for life and labor and provide the necessary basic foods for all. Once that is done, set the people free--get out of the way and let them all make the best of themselves, and win whatever prizes they can for their families and for their country."

Churchill denounced meticulous governessing. As he said "governessing," Churchill, who for all his age and greatness has never outgrown the small-boy look, stared hard at Cripps who, even in his youth, had the thin lips, the stern but not unkindly eye of the typical governess. And there was a further likeness: Cripps has always had the deep conviction of all good governesses that they know best.

Not many in the House of Commons agreed with Churchill's defense of free enterprise. Derisive laughter greeted his speech. Even the Tory front-benchers were uneasy. Deputy Tory Leader Anthony Eden was flushed during Churchill's speech, and did not applaud. The Tories have rested their case mainly on the claim that they could manage controls better than the Laborites. Churchill apparently thought that if Britain was to have a governess, the Tories would hardly find a better one than Cripps would make.

"Dad." His brother, Colonel The Hon. F. H. Cripps, wrote recently: "When Stafford was quite young he was very fond of giving advice to the elder members of his family. This earned him the nickname of 'Dad,' which still sticks to him at home."

Villagers of Filkins, in the lush green Cotswolds, where Cripps was the local squire, tell a significant story of his earlier days there. Cripps heard that a shiftless villager called Old Joe was in debt. He went to see him. "Nice little house you have here," said Sir Stafford. "You don't want to sell it, do you?"

"Well, sir," said the villager. "It's mortgaged, see. An' I can't afford to pay no more on it." "How much do you owe?" asked Cripps. "-L-400." "Well, suppose I gave you -L-500?" Old Joe jumped at the chance, but his face fell when he heard Cripps's conditions. For Cripps added that he would pay Joe the extra -L-100 at the rate of -L-1 a week. " 'E knew," explained a villager, "Old Joe would only blue the lot if 'e 'ad it all at once--so 'e rations 'im. Well, Old Joe 'adn't got no choice really. But although Sir Stafford cleared 'is debts for 'im, and gave 'im -L-100 'e needn't 'ave, Old Joe 'asn't got a good word to say for Sir Stafford."

"Now, Papa!" Cripps's strong sense of social responsibility was born & bred in him. He took to heart the injunction of his mother (who died when he was four) that her children should be "undogmatic and unsectarian Christians, charitable to all churches and sects." He came of a long line of British squires who, from the time of Willmus Cripps in the 12th Century, had been known as champions of the underdog. Stafford's aunt, Beatrice Webb (a sister of Cripps's mother), helped turn the youthful instinct for social justice toward formal socialism. Cripps was born in 1889, the year Uncle Sidney and Aunt Beatrice published the famous Fabian Essays in Socialism.

The Cripps family was long on M.P.s (Stafford is the ninth of his line to sit in the House of Commons) and lawyers (both his father and grandfather were at the bar). But young Stafford's quick mind first turned to science. He loved to take the family car to pieces and put it together again. After his schooling at Winchester, a near-perfect examination paper in science won him a scholarship to New College, Oxford, and a job on the research staff of Sir William Ramsay at the University of London.

While he was still a research chemist he met Isobel Swithinbank, whose grandfather introduced Eno's Fruit Salt to a more or less grateful nation. One day she came into his father's office, where Stafford was helping get out campaign literature, and asked if she could help electioneer. Since then, she has seldom left Cripps's side. Tall, blue-eyed, with fluffy, grey hair, Lady Cripps's vivacity helps melt his icy public front. In a recent interview with a reporter, Cripps was stiffly formal. To almost every question he objected: "Well, you really can't ask that," or "Sorry, but that's Cabinet policy." At last Lady Cripps broke in: "Now, Papa, why can't you be more human?"

Fronti Nulla Fides. Cripps in his non-public character is warmly human. His family motto "Fronti Nulla Fides" (Trust Not to Outward Show) is appropriate; he scorns good fellowship in appealing to voters, preferring facts, figures and measured arguments, but British workers have always sensed the warmth of the man behind the prim bearing.

"He gives you something to talk to your mates about," said one. When Cripps toured aircraft factories as Minister of Aircraft Production during World War II,. factory girls literally sighed. " 'E's got ever such a nice way with im," said one. " 'E thanks you ever so nicely when you show him anything--and 'e seems to know what 'e's talking about, too."

After marrying Isobel, Cripps had left the chemistry laboratory to take up the law. He was quickly successful. In the 19203 he earned up to $150,000 a year. His mastery of difficult facts resulted in a high proportion (about 80%) of legal victories. But he was restless; he yearned to put his ideas of Christian socialism into practice. He entered politics.

The 3,293,615 members of the Labor Party who received the mild-looking lawyer into their ranks in 1929 could not suspect what a political hellion he would turn out to be. His militant leftism reached a climax when, in the years 1937-39, he tried to ally Laborites with Communists in a Popular Front. The Labor Party booted him out.

As World War II started, Cripps sat alone, an independent, in the House of Commons. Tory Churchill, who knew ability when he saw it, put him to work. As British Ambassador to Moscow, Cripps concluded the long-sought Anglo-Russian Pact. Cripps was so happy on this occasion that he broke his ten-year rule of teetotalism to drink a toast in champagne with Russian friends. As the Government's special emissary to India, he failed to work out the terms of independence (mostly because he was not given elastic bargaining powers), but left behind a wealth of good will. Churchill made him Leader of the House of Commons, later Minister of Aircraft Production. At war's end, the Labor Party received the renegade into its ranks again. Clement Attlee made him president of the Board of Trade, and when storm clouds gathered last September, Minister for Economic Affairs.

Whitehall Circle. Some of Cripps's best Labor friends became members of his official family. Cripps supervises four ministries directly: Board of Trade, Supply, Transport, and Fuel & Power. Of the four ministers only Alfred Barnes, Minister of Transport, is not a socialist intellectual. One of the founders of the cooperative movement, Barnes is more the old-style labor leader. Cripps's closest friend and adviser is 46-year-old George Strauss, tall and swarthy Minister of Supply. Like Cripps, he is an upper-class leftist. Son of a wealthy metal merchant, Strauss was one of the faithful few who were expelled from the Labor-Party along with Cripps over the Popular Front issue.

Young (31) Harold Wilson, who was once (at 21) the youngest don at Oxford, succeeded Cripps as president of the Board of Trade. The new Minister of Fuel & Power, Hugh Gaitskell, is, like Cripps, a product of Winchester and New College. Last week Gaitskell advocated fewer baths as a means of saving coal. "Personally," he had told an audience in Hastings, "I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less. As for your appearance, most of that is underneath and nobody sees it."

"When Ministers of the Crown speak like this," commented Churchill, ". . . the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odor."*

Whitehall Court. Cripps himself would not suffer because of cuts in fuel for heating bath water. Part of his strict daily regimen is to bathe each morning at 8, in cold water. By that time, he has already been up nearly four hours. He gets up at 4:15, works in his Whitehall Court flat along the Thames Embankment until 6:45. Then he and Isobel walk briskly through St. James's Park. The rest of the day he sticks meticulously to a tight schedule, gives no more than the allotted time (usually 15 minutes) to each interview.

At 7 in the evening, if he has no urgent meeting, he dines at home with Isobel. Their menu: carrots or other raw vegetables, black bread, fruit. Ever since he drove for the Red Cross in France during World War I, Cripps has been bothered by intestinal trouble. In 1935 he became a vegetarian. Cripps and Isobel eat no cooked foods, except for an occasional boiled potato or egg.

Tightening the Screws. Justly or not, some Britons suspect a connection between Cripps's austere appearance, his cold baths, his raw carrots, and the increasing national austerity. Said the Economist: "However right Sir Stafford is at present, it is difficult to suppress the suspicion that he is right because he is in his element, because he positively prefers an austere, restricted, controlled economy, because, like the tympanist in an orchestra, his instinct, when he has nothing else to do, is to go around tightening up all the screws."

In a drive to cut Britain's foreign trade deficit, Cripps plans to tighten up the national diet from 2,870 to 2,700 calories a day (U.S. average: 3,450). Standing as far as possible from Marie Antoinette, Cripps drily said: "The public must expect many fewer and much less attractive cakes and buns." He has eliminated all imports of U.S. tobacco, and faced a storm of protest over the ban on gasoline for pleasure driving. This issue brought the Labor Government close to defeat last week in Parliament: at a very late session, when many weary Laborites had gone home, the Tories called for a vote in which Labor squeaked through, 187-to-160.

To save manpower, steel and fuel for the export drive he believes all-important, Cripps has cut $800 million from allocations for new capital outlay. This means postponement of many reconstruction projects dear to Socialist hearts; it also means that some sections of British industry will have to wait a long time before they are modernized.

Export Emphasis. Britain is producing more than ever before in peacetime. Except for the key industries of coal and cotton textiles, production is above prewar levels. With about 7% more people working, Britain is turning out 10-20% more, by volume, in products than in 1938.

Britain stands a good chance of meeting Cripps's export target of 164% of prewar levels by the end of 1948. But even if all goes according to Cripps's plan, at the end of 1948 Britain's deficit in trade with the U.S. will still be at the rate of $1 billion per year. With characteristic realism, Cripps did not count on further U.S. aid while constructing his plans for Britain's economy. But he knew that only U.S. help could build up Europe's production. The Marshall Plan discussions, he said, "are the most momentous for the whole future of democratic civilization in the world." Meanwhile, Britons would have to spend more of their energies on exports rather than domestic needs or capital outlay.

What Incentives? In short, Cripps's program offers to British workers no immediate prospect but more sweat, and to British housewives only more tears of frustration over shortages. If Cripps could dangle before British workers no carrot in the form of more food and consumer goods, what incentives would they have to greater effort? Cripps last month said: "It has never yet been worked out how far a donkey will walk after a carrot permanently held beyond its reach, but there must be a limit to that form of stimulation." Cripps believes in a higher incentive "[We can succeed] only if each one of us puts the interest of our country first and his personal interest a bad second."

If there could be no carrot, or at best an attenuated one, would Cripps then waggle a stick to prod workers into action? He has a formidable one at hand. The Control of Engagement Order, now in effect, gives the Government authority to "direct" any worker who leaves his job into an "essential" industry. So far there have been so many jobs open in essential industries that jobless workers, sent to them by employment exchanges, are scarcely aware that they are being "directed." But as Cripps, through the coming months, closes down more & more "unessential" firms, workers will have less choice of jobs and coercion may be felt.

Multiplying Plans. This is the point where the test may come--a moral and political crisis far graver than a shortage of dollars. Cripps holds, with all the sincerity of his intense nature, that the net result of state planning is "to increase the liberty of the ordinary citizen." Churchill holds that the net result is to multiply plan upon plan and control upon control, whether the planner intends to do so or not.

Cripps has already had to sacrifice principles for expedients. He believes, for instance, in multilateralism and freer world trade. Yet his bright young man, Harold Wilson, has just returned from Geneva, where the British led a successful attack on the U.S. freer trade program. The 123 agreements signed among 23 nations which were planning the International Trade Organization add up to more barter and bilateralism, and, probably, to a reduced flow of goods from country to country. Government planners everywhere (and not all of them call themselves Socialists) are intent on protecting the national economics over which they preside from other planners, or from the operation of economic laws.

The "dollar shortage" is met everywhere by bans on U.S. imports. Norway won't take U.S. automobiles or gasoline; Mexico bars U.S. refrigerators; China has virtually stopped imports of U.S. cotton, tobacco and automobiles; Brazil refuses U.S. apples. The freer economic world which two years ago seemed just around the corner now seems further off than it was in the grim heyday of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht's controls.

"As Never Before." If world trade contracts in the next year or two, how can Britain's exports expand? That is one of the deepest pitfalls ahead of Cripps and the nation for whose material well-being he is responsible. Cripps believes he can manage the job--with some help. Last week he told his 46,000,000 charges:

"I wish that today our country could refresh its heart and mind with a deep draught of that Christian faith which has come down to us over 2,000 years, and has over those centuries inspired the peoples of Europe to fresh efforts and new hopes . . . call it by what name you will, self-sacrifice, honor, love or comradeship; it is the strongest power in our lives, and at this moment of deep difficulty in our history we need its supporting strength as never before."

This week Cripps, who never minimizes the difficulties ahead, went on the air with a sober broadcast analyzing Britain's economic position. After he laid out the gloomy prospect, he asked Britons, especially housewives, to be cheerful. He is. Adversity only brings out his dogged confidence that he is right and will win through. Perhaps that very British trait explains why millions of Britons who are beginning to have doubts about their Government nevertheless feel a warm glow for their governess.

*Mrs. Gaitskell rushed to her husband's defense. "A daily bath," she said, "is a middle-class habit."

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