To the Polls

Winston Churchill called it Britain's "most momentous election," but it didn't seem that way. Not that there was a shortage of momentous texts. According to Clement Attlee, Labor had spent the last six years "cleaning up the mess of centuries." According to Winston Churchill, the last six years had marked "the greatest fall in the rank and stature of Britain since the loss of the American colonies." But the clash of massive allegations hardly disturbed a campaign that was decorous even by British standards.

Visiting Americans hardly knew an election was on. News from Egypt dominated the front pages. The combination of inflation and Britain's austere election laws, which forbid, candidates to spend more than a maximum of $3,000 on their campaigns, ruled out big, U.S.-style rallies and acres of billboards. The BBC, less suspect than Caesar's wife but taking no chances, as usual allotted for the entire campaign only five hours of radio time to all parties put together, and none whatsoever in the final week. BBC comedians were forbidden to make political jokes.

Questions & Hecklers. Despite the lack of surface dramatics, probably 85% of the electorate would go to the polls this Thursday (even presidential elections only get out about 60% of the U.S. vote). Political meetings held in school classrooms and in between shifts at cotton mills and shipyards were packed with grave, attentive audiences, pressing and persistent in their questioning, and sometimes skillful in heckling. Tories talked mostly about the cost of living, anxious to dodge the war party label that Labor tried to fasten on them. Tom Dewey's old slogan, "It's Time for a Change," turned up on Tory placards. Clement Attlee, making a virtue of his plainness, and of the Socialist largess, liked to look out over an audience that was plainly but warmly dressed and say: "I think you compare favorably with a 1945 crowd." It was an effective trick.

In the final week, beset by Tory orators, Labor was defensive on two points: Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, whom the Tories dubbed "Lord Festival of Abadan," in commemoration of his two best-known activities, tried to justify his notably unsuccessful foreign'policy: "The world has changed . . . but Labor understands this new world. We can treat the demands of Asia and Africa with understanding." And reacting to the Tory slogan, "A Vote for Labor Is a Vote for Bevan," Clement Attlee devoted a final broadcast to scotching the whispering campaign that, if elected, he would resign in favor of Bevan. "I am not going to resign," he said, "unless the people of this country reject my leadership."

Wooing Liberals. The result was expected to be so close that Winston Churchill, who used to be a Liberal himself, made a major effort to win over Liberals to the Conservative side. The dwindling Liberals got 2,621,489 votes in 1950 but only nine seats, and this time entered candidates in 367 fewer constituencies. Churchill journeyed up to industrial Yorkshire to make a campaign speech for his hard-pressed Liberal friend, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of a former Prime Minister, Lord Oxford and Asquith. On Churchill's orders, Lady Violet was unopposed by the Tories. Churchill talked of the "wide overlap of agreement both in doctrine and action" between Liberals and Tories, and their need to fight together "to rid the nation of its Socialist incubus."

A little nervously, both major parties rested their cases, and--the Tories somewhat more confidently than the Socialists --awaited the verdict.

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