London

ATLANTIC

February 1953

on the World today

BECAUSE no people reacts so promptly to changes in weather as do the English, it has long been a rule of thumb for reporters in London that you can roughly assess the prevailing mood of everything from politics to greyhound racing by reading the Times weather report every morning. This winter, however, the rule has broken down badly. Though it has been the grimmest winter in some years — including a spell of unusually sulphurous and tenacious fog — the general mood in Britain has been good, almost buoyant.

After a mediocre performance through the summer, Churchill’s Government has suddenly achieved a modest but palpable easing of the economic strain. Bevan’s rebellion within the Labor Party, which has envenomed politics here for a year and a half, has been called off. Britain’s standing set of foreign crises, particularly the two most costly, in Malaya and Egypt, have for one reason or another been mitigated. The most effective cause of the easier atmosphere, however, is the impression being made by the new royal family.

Britain’s radiant Queen

The idea of being ruled by a pretty young queen with the promising name of Elizabeth has tickled the British ever since her ascension to the throne on the death of her father last year. When, after months of mourning followed by a respectable transition period of court austerity, the Queen made her first state appearance at the opening of the new session of Parliament in November, they found her even more attractive than they had expected.

For the first time, as a photographer at the occasion put it, she “pulled out all the stops.” In regal robes, wearing a crown of sparkling gems, she no longer had the air of premature matronliness given her by the apparel (“good Republican cloth coats” would be a valid description in another country) she wore when she was her father’s daughter. Her dutifully restrained demeanor of months past gave way to a gay smile as she waved to crowds on the way. A United Press photographer who luckily caught this attitude in a close-up may look forward to having his work become the standard image of their queen that will hang over millions of Britons’ mantelpieces; Churchill promptly ordered a dozen copies for distribution to eminent friends.

Photos nearly as attractive were made inside the House of Lords, where her slender form, small but given an illusion of tallness by her trailing robes as she mounted to the throne holding her husband’s hand, made her seem as near to the fairy-tale variety of princess as ever English queen appeared.

The stunning effect of this first state appearance on the people has been sustained by an excited anticipation of her coronation. Though the event does not take place until June, no day has passed in this gloomy winter without news of the preparations for it. The first stamps and coins bearing the Queen’s image each produced animated debates as to resemblance in the letters columns of the Times. The debates have had an insidious and infectious quality: hard-boiled members of London’s American community who have long since dismissed the whole fuss as “a lot of mumbo-jumbo” have been noted comparing half crowns with photos and declaring with spirited conviction that the artist has indeed made the Queen’s neck too long.

Seven months before the event, bleachers had already been constructed on the processional route along the Mall, and all leading hotels had announced that they were sold out for June. Six months before, Westminster Abbev became forbidden ground to the public and a chaotic scene of cranes and piles of lumber and sand. On Sunday, early risers have been able to watch through the mist the Queen’s horses and the Queen’s men already rehearsing the parade they will be able to do blindfolded by summer.

The Churchill revivalI

Not all Britons completely approve, or adopt the view that it is all harmless fun. Aneurin Bevan of the Labor Party’s left wing, for example, sees hard political significance in it and does not hide his misgivings.

It should be said that Bevan and his Labor colleagues have an unpleasant political phenomenon to explain, It is the sudden revival of Churchill’s prestige. The Conservatives’ stock with popular opinion fell radically throughout the summer and autumn. At one point it stood, according to the Gallup poll, ten percentage points below that of the Labor Opposition — a figure which promised Labor a landslide victory whenever new elections should be held.

But by midwinter, Churchill and his party had become the people’s choice once more. In a byelection to fill a vacated seat in Parliament, Churchill’s candidate won handily by a larger majority than the Conservatives got for that seal in the general elections a year previous. This was the first time in twenty yenrs that a party in power in Britain had increased its majority in a by-election, and a startling index of Churchill’s rehabilitation.

To Bevan, a large part of the explanation of this change lay in the nation-wide hum of chatter about the coronation. The royal family, he said in an article in the left-wing weekly Tribune, always comes to the aid of the Tories. In the middle thirties, when the masses should have been justly indignant at their Conservative rulers, their attentions were diverted and their unrest solaced by royal opiate — the dramatic abdication of Edward VIII to marry the woman he loved. Now, in the winter of 1952-53, when once again they should be charged with a fever to throw the rascals out, there is provided the atmosphere of coronation with the double effect of inducing a Conservative frame of mind in the people and taking their thoughts off their real grievances.

There is indisputably something to Bevan’s thesis. People are certainly more lighthearted than they would be if no royal celebration were in the offing. But other grounds for the change in the Prime Minister’s political fortunes cannot be ignored. First among them, the general economic stringency has clearly been eased. After more than a year of failing to pay her way, Britain’s industries began in September and continued through the winter producing and selling more than enough to pay for the nation’s imports, with a welcome influx of gold for the nation’s depleted treasury.

In part, this was a happy accident: those mysterious features the “terms of trade” happened to shift in favor of the kinds of goods Britain sells. In large part, however, it is undeniable that the Tory husbandry of British resources—in the main, the ban on semi-luxury imports with the purpose of reducing the national bill —is responsible.

More homes, more quiet

The Tories’ most specific election promise in 1951 was to increase appreciably the number of houses being built. This they have done, and during the winter the increase has become very noticeable. Laborites may justly complain that any party could have done it if it had chosen to deprive more vital sections of British industry of resources in favor of housing; they may point out that in part the increase in “dwelling units” has been achieved by lowering the standards the previous Labor Government set for them. But the public is impressed by the fact that more homes have become available.

In addition to these positive achievements, the Conservatives have been helped by sheer windfalls, particularly in the realm of foreign affairs. With the change in Soviet cold war tactics announced by Stalin at the Communist Congress in Moscow in October, the prospect of hot war has appeared lo recede. Since in the last elections, in 1951, Labor loudly insisted that a Churchill victory would bring war nearer, the new turn of things has tended lo raise Churchill’s stock and lower Labor’s.

The changed Communist line has in the specific case of Malaya brought immediate improvement. The Communist rebels in that British dependency have abruptly reduced outright guerrilla warfare in favor of subversive “popular front” propaganda.

And in Egypt the ascendancy of General Naguib has brought very near an agreement with Britain over the disposal of the disputed Sudan, which in turn has caused a marked casing of tension in the Anglo-Egyptian crisis. Since these two crises have been Britain’s most costly in terms both of economic resources and of casualties, the amelioration has had political effect in Britain.

What has been most embarrassing in all this to the Labor Opposition leaders is that their own behavior has also been a factor in the Tory recovery. The struggle within the party leadership reached its querulous climax just at the time of the indicative by-election mentioned above and had no doubt great effect on the outcome.

Bevan a captive

At the Labor Party’s annual convention in September, Aneurin Bevan’s rebels made their maximum bid to wrest power from the Old Guard leaders headed by Attlee. In the voting to choose a new executive committee to guide the party, the Bevanites achieved a sizable victory: they won six of the seven places on the executive committee that are allotted to local Labor parties to choose, knocking off the committee Herbert Morrison, who has long been considered second only to Attlee in command of the party.

Since most of the places on the committee are reserved to other bodies, such as the trade unions, to elect, the right-wing leaders were still able to retain over-all control of the committee. But Bevnil’s startling triumph in the limited field open to him was sufficient to stir the Old Guard at last to mount a counteroffensive.

The early winter rang with internecine battle, political rallies and counterrallies. As so often happens when heat replaces light in an argument, the battle degenerated from a conflict of issues to one of personalities. So much mud was slung by both sides that by the time of the crucial byelection all the Labor leaders had discredited themselves far more thoroughly than the Tories could have discredited them. Moreover, since the annual “policy-making” convention had been so completely devoted to internal Labor Party strife, there had been no time to compound a policy. With nothing new to offer the electorate against the Conservatives’ list of achievements, Labor was no match for the Government party.

Meanwhile, the long struggle for power within the Labor Party has at last reached a decision. The reaction which Bevan’s triumph at the convention called forth proved more powerful than the triumph which provoked it. When Parliament reassembled after the convention and Labor’s members of Parliament resumed their private weekly meetings to determine current parliamentary strategy, Attlee was able to muster a great majority for requiring the Bevanites to disband their tightly organized “party within the party.”

When the parliamentarians voted to choose their “shadow cabinet,” the twelve men who direct the Opposition in the House of Commons, some canny rewriting of the rule’s by Attlee enabled him to get Bevan elected with the lowest vote of the twelve who were chosen. In a minority of one against eleven, Bevan became captive. In accepting the situation, he once again, after a year and a half in the wilderness, came under official discipline, which means he cannot speak against official policy any longer, and thus has virtually admitted the failure of his rebellion.

“Never be completely right”

In the view of most political observers here, however, this last development should be considered not an end to the rebellion so much as a tactical retreat, an interlude for recovering breath. Bevan remains one of the only two exciting figures in British polities, and the only Labor leader, not excepting Attlee, who can draw an overflow crowd wherever or whenever he speaks.

Moreover there is a vital fact that has been generally clouded over by the bitter personal animosities of the struggle: that is, that on the central issue of the argument, Bevan was incontestably right and the other Labor leaders were wrong. Bevan resigned from the Labor cabinet in 1951 because, he maintained, it had projected an arms program too burdensome for the British economy to carry. Since his resignation, reluctant confirmations have come first from the Labor Government itself in its last months and then from the ensuing Conservative cabinet. Labor was forced to curtail the program once; Churchill has twice announced reductions because the British economy could not carry the load.

A few nights before Bevan accepted his lonely captivity in the “shadow cabinet,” he made what he called his last speech “as a free man” to a London gathering. “I do not want to tell you any of my and Jennie’s [Jennie Lee, his wife] secrets,” he said, “but I must give you some sound advice: In politics as in marriage, never be completely right.” Bevan had not only been right but had in the most irritating fashion rubbed it in. The orthodox leaders of Labor had to band together out of sheer embarrassment in an attempt to destroy him. If the Welsh firebrand has genuinely learned the lesson of diplomacy—his irrepressibly peppery personality raises doubts — he will remain a factor to be reckoned with in British politics.

Ike gives reassurance

Some observers here argue that a contributing factor to Bevan’s failure has been the aftermath of the American elections. However sound Bevan’s reasoning may have been, the emotional impetus which put it over wiih a section of the British public has been anti-Americanism. He had argued that Britain adopted the too onerous arms program because of American pressure, and that it is American policies alone that require heavy rearmament.

This line enjoyed great success during the American election campaign, when General Eisenhower was making so many oratorical concessions to keep right-wing Republicans campaigning for him — for example, his American Legion speech about “liberating ” the Russian satellites and his near-promise to take new measures to bring an end to the war in Korea (which was promptly translated here to mean that he would extend the war àa la MacArthur). Indeed, the General’s speeches provoked the British press to come out more outspokenly for Stevenson than it has ever dared for any other candidate in an American election.

What indices have registered here of the new President’s policies at this writing, however, have been greatly reassuring to the British. Especially the General’s provocative appointment of a Stevenson Democrat to his cabinet to handle labor relations, despite Senator Taft’s pained protest, has done much to restore the Eisenhower halo and to lessen the appeal of anti-Americanism to the British public. The conservative weekly Spectator put the general view: Until General Eisenhower gives reason to think otherwise, it wrote, he must be assumed to be a wise choice.