BRITAIN IN 1951

Just returned from a two-month tour of duty as head of the TIME-LIFE London Bureau, Thomas Griffith, TIME'S National Affairs Editor, wrote:

The hardest job in reporting Britain is to do justice to what is right about it: the plucky people, the enduring greenness, the reminders, both in man and nature, of a memorable past; the good nature, the good sense and the good heart of the run of the people; the values and standards still surviving of a way of life that had much to recommend it even though it also had much in it to reform; the surprising winter flowers, the endless variety of London street scenes. We all know these things, and treasure them, but find ourselves reporting, instead, the transitory, unpleasant news of rationing, muddle and misgovernment. For one thing, in this winter of 1951, Londoners talked of little else themselves.

So let us talk of what they talk about, and that brings us first to politics.

The Socialists Are Fed Up. "A change of government would be good for the country." You heard this everywhere, even among Socialists. I heard it on several occasions in Prime Minister Attlee's own circle of advisers.

By all signs, the people axe fed up with the Socialists, and by all signs, the Socialists are fed up with governing. Only tenacity and pride keep them in office. Their revolution is over and so is the thrill of adventure that went with it. In February the Labor government nationalized steel, but it was a halfhearted gesture, made without conviction. In the final debates, steel nationalization was not argued as a good or necessary step but defended as a perseverance in dogma. One Socialist minister, as doctrinaire as they come, conceded over a plate of venison that all the other nationalization proposals (such as sugar) were only so much window dressing in the last election.

So, their revolution over, the Socialists are condemned to preside over the financing and administering of a gigantic rearmament program. Nothing in their past as university dons or trade unionists, as pacifists or Marxists, equips them for this task. It is one of Britain's misfortunes that the Socialists, representing as they do so large a percentage of the governed, should lack enough experienced leaders who are fit to govern. There are able men among them, but as a party they are ignorant of finance, naive about foreign affairs and antagonistic to the military.

I am convinced that it is not ideology which has turned the country against them--the health program, for example, is highly popular--but a reluctant awareness that the Socialists are just not up to the job as men and as administrators. They have only five first-rate men, and of these five, two--Sir Stafford Cripps and Ernest Bevin--are all but out. (The Attlee-Bevin friendship is the only genuine top-level friendship in the party; the others eye one another distrustfully).

Attlee's defects are obvious. His virtues, less obvious, are his dedication, his industry and his amazing talent for reconciling the irreconcilable in his party. But today he is tired, sometimes snappish and not really big. Herbert Morrison has the cockney's dislike of foreigners. Like Jimmy Byrnes, he is a compromiser, not a thinker, so it is hard to see him in his new job as Foreign Secretary. But he was wonderful leading the House of Commons, with an engaging grin and an effective talent for making it appear that it was the other fellow, not he, who was injecting politics into the debate.

Then there is Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan, who now, as Minister of Labor, may be called upon to put down the kind of strikes he used to foment. He is a Welsh teakettle with the lid on. What a time he would be having if he were in opposition now, damning the Tories for what his own government is compelled to do! Tories fear and respect him. He has possibilities of growth and you often hear it said that he will become a Lloyd George some day. A Tory peer leaned against a fireplace in the Connaught Hotel, rum sour in hand, and said, "Since I believe that in this life a man can get whatever he wants so long as he is willing to pay the price, I believe that Nye Bevan will some day become Prime Minister." He paused, plainly waiting for me to ask what price Bevan would have to pay. When I obliged, he said: "He will become the greatest Conservative Prime Minister of the 20th century."

There are some odd fish in high places around the party table. Take His Majesty's Secretary of State for War, that lanky, argumentative and agreeable fellow John Strachey, who though never a Communist Party member once worked in sympathy with the party and broke cleanly with them some time after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He still talks as though good Social Democrats are as opposed to capitalism as to Communism; this, however, may only be donnish provocative talk; he likes to shock. He is amusing to fence with, but what a choice to preside over raising Britain's army! Whatever defects the Tories may have, they would not be guilty of keeping John Strachey in office long. The only convincing explanation I heard for his staying on is that Attlee is determined not to turn out any Socialist first ranker for fear of creating a leader for the dissidents in the party.

One more word about British socialism. In Britain's constricted island, the Socialists are redistributionists. What their Fair Shares come down to--and it is most glaringly apparent in the meat muddle--is that if all cannot have, then none shall. It is a dry and appalling doctrine.

The Tories Are in No Hurry. In the normal teeter-totter of politics, when one party is down the other is up. What is strange about British politics at the moment is that the decline in enthusiasm for the Socialists is not easily translated into increased enthusiasm for the Tories.

One illustration of this is that among journals and journalists most deserving of respect--on daily papers like the Times or the Manchester Guardian, or weeklies like the Economist and the Observer--the key editors seem to be small "l" liberals, disliking Socialism but unable to bring themselves to be Tories. Several of them, in fact, lunch together on occasion and tauntingly read out portions of each other's editorials to try to show that the other has at last gone over to conservatism ; the defending editor is always able to point out an escape clause somewhere in his leader. Among the half dozen or so Conservative M.P.s I lunched with at one time or another, I never heard one talk about what the Tories would accomplish, or indeed sound as if he really believed his party was much fitter to govern than the Socialists. It is principally Winston Churchill, still bitter at his 1945 defeat, who thirsts for office. And he is getting older, growing hard of hearing and remote. A Conservative M.P. told me that he doubts that Churchill regularly speaks to more than 20 members of the House.

Churchill would not be human if he did not deplore the way he was thrust from office after having carried his nation through its hardest war. It is certainly understandable if he believes that the electorate should have, and at the earliest opportunity, another chance to redress this regrettable mistake.

For Churchill to be so masterful and commanding implies that others are mastered and commanded. Some prominent and ambitious Tories, in their 40s or 50s, feel held down, their chance to develop blocked and their opinions disregarded by 76-year-old Churchill.

This discontent, mingled as it is with admiration of Churchill's greatness, manifests itself in odd little ways. For example, an ability to do an unflattering imitation of Churchill's hissing, sibilant speech seems now to be part of the social equipment of some Tory M.P.s.

"Politically, I could murder Churchill," one Tory told me, "but to do so I would have to murder myself, and that I refuse to do." This chilly sentiment, so quietly delivered, is a sample of something in the parliamentary character I was not prepared for: the public correctness, the private outbursts of hostility and accumulated malice toward one another. There is nothing quite like it in Congress, where dislikes may be more outspoken but seem somehow healthier. Perhaps this is because Congress is not so hierarchic in organization. So small is England, and so narrow the room at the top, that one man's rise is often at the expense of another. Or perhaps the clubby, family nature of the House has something to do with it: so many knew each other at Winchester or Eton, and again at Oxford or Cambridge. The other day, speaking on a corporal-punishment bill, a brigadier M.P. lightly recalled how he as a schoolboy had been wrongly caned by an honorable member a few feet from him. It was all very chummy.

Peace, But Not Appeasement. But long acquaintance also produces dislikes that are pettier and of longer standing than mere political differences.

The traditional red "sword line," set into the rug before the front benches to make sure that government and opposition are two full sword lengths apart, may once have had historical justification. But I got the feeling that today's honorable members really need armor, not in front but in back, to protect themselves from the quills of their fellow party members.

Even though they may scent the imminent kill, as Churchill does, for Tories quite openly lack Churchill's enthusiasm for an election soon. Realistically, they recognize that they have few alternative solutions to the problems of meat and coal and no radically different foreign policy to propose. What is more, they are in no hurry to bear the onus which the Socialists must now assume for the higher taxes and dislocations of rearmament. Many would just as soon wait for the plum to fall without having to shake the tree.

Britain has been going through two upheavals at once: the triumph of the working class (the Socialist revolution) and the decline of the nation itself as a world power. Both of these upheavals distress the world the Tories knew. The Tories give the impression that it is all too much for them. Perhaps it is too much for any party, for the British today are no longer masters of their own destiny: Peron denies them meat, America denies them pride, Russia denies them peace.

The British are not a complaining lot, but over & over I heard Britons, recalling some prewar incident or practice, sadly say that they never expect to see so happy a time again. Bound with this is a pathetic belief that things will be better for their children, a belief that is stoutly and desperately held.

Tension over Russia at this moment probably helps the Socialists stay in office. Britain accepts the necessity of preparing for war, but so dreads the prospect that she is determined that no action of hers shall in any way provoke war. People sense that Churchill, with his martial spirit and forthright ways, might somehow hasten a war. Churchill, sensing this mood, is careful in the House not to sound more warlike than the Socialists. His recent attack on the armament program flopped because of this attitude. He obviously thought that a 15-day call-up of reserves was inadequate but refused to be maneuvered into advocating even 16 days in camp.

My first weeks in England were spent in an atmosphere of deep (but privately expressed) hostility toward the U.S., in which "hysterical" was the favorite word for Americans.

It is as unfair and inaccurate a word as the one some Americans were throwing at the British at the same time--appeasers. Both words paralyze debate: call a man appeaser or call him hysterical, and there is no further need to analyze his arguments. The editor of one of London's greatest newspapers glared at me across a table at the Caprice restaurant as we talked of this. He insisted that long before Korea, Britain was doing more than the U.S. to prepare against Russia, by whatever standard anyone wanted to take--percentage of men in uniform or percentage of national income spent on arms. "Get this," he added. "England is the only nation in the world which would fight to defend itself even if the U.S. did not come to her aid." I felt convinced.

I was glad to see the hostility come out into the open over the relatively frivolous issue of the admirals--the question whether the North Atlantic naval command should go to an American or an Englishman. A conflict goes on between the British heart and head, caused by dependence on the U.S. and a natural resentment of this dependency. We must be prepared to accept this fact.

The Most Dependable Friends. All that Britons most dislike about America they concentrate in one man, General MacArthur; 6,000 propaganda geniuses like Ivy Lee could not sell the English on him. All that Britons most like about Americans they find in Eisenhower. In him they see skill, vigor and shrewdness combined with a sensitivity to others' feelings and a friendly and modest presence.

As the British grope around for what part they can play in the world, they come to the position that what they have to offer is their experience, their wisdom in diplomacy and what they conceive to be their "committee sense," i.e., their ability to resolve problems by talking them out. As British self-pride reasserts itself, I fear we are in for some polite but patronizing lectures on how impulsive we are.

Britain's foreign policy is being created in a landscape of bombed cities, pitted and jagged like bad teeth. Britain fears another war as if it might be her last, and prepares for it resolutely but reluctantly. Two months there left me with the impression that the hardness of their lot is a fact which the British admit to themselves but don't like strangers to console them about. The people have not given up and will not. They are worthy allies and, despite constant and continuing opportunities for misunderstanding, the most dependable friends we have.

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