Slow Starter

One day last week, Prime Minister Clement Attlee summoned his ministers to the white-pillared cabinet room at No. 10 Downing Street to announce that Britain's next general election would be held Feb. 23.

No More Money. The meeting lasted only 30 minutes. Then Attlee took his wife to a matinee at the Criterion to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. The play was a farce based on the plight of rich Britons stranded in a swank Swedish hotel after having spent all the money (-L-50) Attlee's government allows tourists to take out of Britain. At one point, a player remarked wanly: "My accountant has forbidden me to die until the Tories get back." Attlee just smiled.

Winston Churchill, on vacation at Funchal on the island of Madeira, received the news of the election date by telephone from London, promptly flew home. Landing at Southampton, Churchill said: "I heard there was going to be a general election, so I thought I had better come back in case I was wanted. I think it's high time we had a new Parliament." The old Tory also praised Attlee for giving six weeks' riotice of the election. Said Churchill: "It's just what I did the last time. I hope it will be an equally good result--the other way around."

Actually, the campaign stumbled at the start. All parties, especially the Tories, were uncertain how to interpret a new election law. It limits what a candidate may legally spend to -L-450, plus twopence for each voter in a county constituency, a penny ha'penny for each voter in a borough constituency. The law says that victorious candidates can be unseated if it is proved that they and their supporters spent more than the legal limit. The big question was: Would the courts decide that expenses of regular month-to-month political propaganda were chargeable against individual candidates as campaign expenditures?

No More Slogans. A similar question on expense limits was raised concerning various anti-nationalization publicity drives conducted by private business. Britain's cement tycoons, for instance, decided that they would cease stamping cement bags with the slogan "Don't Mix Nationalization With Cement."

One exception to this cautious policy was 67-year-old Baron Lyle of Westbourne, whose firm of Tate & Lyle is the biggest sugar refinery in Britain (the baron's coat of arms includes interlaced sugar canes surmounted by a defiant rooster). Baron Lyle is the sponsor of the "Mr. Cube" cartoons, which feature an animated lump of sugar with definite opinions against proposals to nationalize Britain's sugar industry (TIME, Dec. 19). The "Mr. Cube" cartoons, he declared frostily, would continue to appear on his sugar packages, at least until the King dissolves Parliament Feb. 3.

In other respects, too, the race was off to a slow start. Beginning Feb. 3, announced the already nationalized British Broadcasting Corp., all political jokes would be banned. Three days after Attlee had set the election date, Britons were being subjected to far less electioneering than they had been the week before. The campaign probably would not get rolling again until early February.

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