Cracks in the Armor

In London's vast, cavernous Empress Hall, which is generally used as a skating rink, the leaders and rank-&-file of Britain's Tory Party met for their last conclave before the national election. Their hopes were high. Winston Churchill, firmly in the saddle as the Conservatives' leader, was once again flushed with the excitement of battle. In memoranda, terse marginal notes and snapped-out orders, he laid out Tory strategy. To describe his strategy, he revived a famed Churchillian wartime phrase: a concentrated attack "on the soft underbelly of Socialism."

Shades of Dunkirk. Explained one of his lieutenants: "The Old Man's dead against showing too much target for them to attack us. Instead, he's set on seeking out the cracks in their armor and probing home his steel wherever he can penetrate." In accordance with their platform, The Right Road for Britain (which has sold 2 1/2 million copies since it was published last summer--TIME, Aug. 1), the Tory leaders called for a reduction of taxes and government spending, promised they would keep Labor's social services but manage them less wastefully, would halt but not abolish the nationalization of industry. They denied Labor charges that they would use "mass unemployment" as an economic weapon. But Churchill declared that his party could not lay out a complete program until it had "responsibility and power."

Standing stolidly, his feet apart, his chin jutting out at the old, defiant angle, he cried: "If the government of Britain is entrusted to us at this crisis in her fate, we will do best for all, without fear or favor, without class or party bias . . . but with the clear and faithful simplicity that we showed in the days of Dunkirk . . ." An thony Eden, Churchill's deputy, also echoed wartime urgency: "We can promise only hard and challenging times."

Just before the Tories convened, Lord Beaverbrook, most powerful of Tory publishers, splashed across his front pages his own ten-point program for Britain's salvation. His main points: P: All-out effort for empire self-sufficiency ("The empire comes first . . . Without the empire not only is there no hope for the future--there is no future"). P: A minimum wage of -L-6 ($16.80) for British workers, but at the same time "no limitation on dividends. Pioneers should be encouraged to go into . . . new industries . . ."

P: Maintenance of Labor's social services, and "a house, and a good house, for every family . . . How to achieve it? Set the private builder free . . ." P: Abolition of the House of Lords.* P: "Joint action" and "firm friendship" with the U.S., but "it must be friendship of equal partners."

Thoughts of Spring. Churchill, for the record, dampened his friend's ardor: "Lord Beaverbrook's opinions are his own but . . . must not be taken as representing the considered policy of the Conservative Party." But Churchill specifically rejected only one of Beaverbrook's points--the minimum wage. Despite past political differences, it looked as if Churchill and The Beaver might be allies again in the stormy election weather that lay ahead.

While the Tories were planning in Empress Hall, Prime Minister Attlee huddled with Labor's top brass, pondering the question of whether to call a general election now or wait till next spring. Last week they got to an answer. As some observers had predicted (TIME, Oct. 10), the decision was to let things ride until spring. By that time, Labor hopes to repair some of the political damage which it suffered in the devaluation crisis. This week Attlee will put before Parliament a new economic program including reduction in government expenditures and other measures which, as Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison put it, "are bound to be unpleasant to us all."

Tories, who thought their chances would have been good in an early election, were impatient at the delay. But, said Churchill confidently, "we can certainly afford to wait."

* No hereditary peer is Canada-born, self-made Lord Beaverbrook. He was made first Baron of Beaverbrook in 1917 for "political services rendered."

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