Nye's Way

Ever since Aneurin Bevan, labor's hell-raising left-winger, quit the Attlee government last April, he has been working on a manifesto which, friends said, would inject new life into Britain's torpid socialism. Last week Bevan unveiled the manifesto. Title: One Way Only.

Main recommendations: !) slow down rearmament and try to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Russia; 2) restrain the "breakneck" pace of U.S. rearmaments; 3) resist German rearmament and Franco Spain's admission to the Atlantic alliance; 4) maintain veto power over any warlike mission of a U.S. bomber using British bases; 5) use more stringent socialist controls to keep down the cost of living in Britain; 6) establish, with Russian participation, a World Mutual Aid Plan (which would have to be largely financed by the wicked, capitalist U.S.) to help underprivileged countries.

"No one except a pacifist or partisan of the Kremlin," explains Bevan, "would argue that military strength is not needed to deter the rulers of Soviet Russia." But rearmament is proceeding too rapidly and may spoil the chances of a peaceful settlement. "In 1953 . . . the Americans will possess a dominance in armed strength . . . greater than that which was ever possessed by any other country in peacetime. It is not unknown for a giant to wish to use his strength, even though he is not attacked." Few Britons, except the editors of the Daily Worker and Bevan's followers, had anything good to say about Nye Bevan's proposed road for Britain.

Said the Manchester Guardian Weekly:

'"Extremely muddled thinking." Said the London Economist: "Mr. Bevan's brand of reactionary orthodoxy cannot rest on anything but poverty of thought." Said the Daily Mail: "Political nitwittery."

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