LONDON COMMENTARY

...IV London is coping with two of those architectural disputes which ramble on for weeks in the correspondence columns of The Times...

...and, above all, the hostel will be built at the expense of ruining Mecklenburg Square, one of the last gems of Georgian Bloomsbury...

...It could mean unemployment—or adverse changes in working conditions and wages —for the British steel and coal industries...

...It may even postpone the take-over of the steel industry, already authorized by legislation...

...In that case, Labor could afford to make some further material concessions which might swing back enough votes to provide a genuine working majority in Parliament...

...In short, Labor would come forward more as a reformist than a Socialist party, putting the finishing touches on the Welfare State it has been building, and trying to step up the housing program—for all the postelection studies show that housing is the weightiest problem among the voters...

...Yet productivity has gone up more than was estimated—by more than 5% in the last year...

...Some have even derided the group around Health Minister Nye Bevan—who wants to press on with nationalization...

...S. publications...

...There has been little of the sense of release you usually feel here in June, when the countryside is green again, and summer clothes come out from the back of the wardrobe...

...They made no specific decisions—that is the job of the National Executive of the Labor Party —but there was general agreement that Labor should now try to consolidate the advances made in the last five years rather than try to break new and greatly disputed ground...

...at least, that is what is feared here...

...If efficiency can be achieved in other ways, they ask, why risk electoral defeat by stirring up an agitation about something that is irrelevant to national recovery...

...That is why, for instance, in spite of the official welcome offered by Premier Attlee to the Schuman Plan for European coal and steel, there is much suspicion of the Plan...

...Other cities have complained at being assigned a quota to raise when the hostel will be in London...

...The touring cricket team from the West Indies has been too cold to find its form, and Londoners streaming out to Epsom Downs for the Derby, usually one of the big summer holidays, wondered whether to wear waterproofs or topcoats...

...Yet by the beginning of June, there was talk that this Parliament might last out a year, if Labor could avoid being defeated on a snap vote in the Commons...

...If the next election program reflects the sense of the Dorking meeting, it will drop further schemes of outright nationalization...

...III On the home front, the most pressing problem for the Government in the next few months will be the demands for wage advances to meet the rising cost-of-living...

...Why not...

...The official policy is not to oppose it, but to mark time until either it dies a slow death in an international committee or it is defined more clearly, so that Britain can see what sort of horse is being offered for sale...

...If we can ensure full employment and social security, they say, without taking over more industries, why bother...

...The unions have held their members back for a long time now, and they agree with Cripps when he argues that large-scale wage concessions might wipe out the competitive advantages of sterling devaluation...

...It is not only the weather that has been to blame...

...But the fact remains that the lower-paid workers are having a hard time, especially in those industries where time-rates prevail and there is no chance to earn overtime or piece-work bonuses...

...But the situation may change in the next six months or so...

...The Cabinet believes that another election under present conditions would produce much the same result as in February...

...The difficulty is that the unions do not want to abandon their traditional wage structure and methods of collective-bargaining, while the advocates of a "national wages policy," who are becoming increasingly vocal, want to allocate wages a fixed proportion of the national income and work out new methods of dividing it up among the workers...

...The rank-and-file of the Labor Party would probably accept this new line without much protest, for even former Leftists in the party are now arguing that there is little point in nationalizing for nationalNORMAN MacKENZIE, an associate editor of the British publication, New Statesman 8 Nation, has contributed to a number of II...

...there have been queries about color bar policy...

...And as both profits and prices have moved up too, the unions are naturally anxious for their cut...

...The difference is that Bevan regards public ownership as a means of economic power, while the moderates view it merely as a means to economic efficiency...

...The optimism about the economic outlook that you now find in Whitehall is one of the reasons why Britain is not too enthusiastic about European "integration...

...Stafford Cripps and the economic planners are optimistic at the moment, arguing that if the U. S. boom continues, then Britian's economic position may be better by Christmas than at any time since the war ended...

...Time, office, and the rift with the Soviet Union have changed the outlook of the Labor leadership considerably since the heady days of 1945...

...ization's sake...

...The second argument is about the name of the South Bank of the Thames, which is being reconstructed for the Festival of Britain next year...

...To the unions this sounds like the 19th Century Iron Law of Wages...

...The hostel will be built...

...His "London Commentary" articles in The Progressive have appeared at frequent intervals during the past two years...

...The cherries were hung with the snow of a late blizzard, and a freak tornado near London turned a few villages into something like news-reel shots from Kansas or Nebraska...

...There is another, though seldom voiced argument for shelving nationalization...

...The British economy is run on different lines from the taissez-faire systems across the Channel, and Britain has overseas assets and liabilities that do' not fit neatly into the European scheme of things...

...It will concentrate upon improvements in the existing public enterprises in some ways...

...Whatever name is chosen, my guess is that Londoners will sensibly go on calling it South Bank, just as Avenue of the Americas always was Sixth Avenue to a New Yorker...

...The first springs from a proposal to build a hostel for overseas students, paid for by public donation, as thanks for the food parcels and other help sent to Britain...

...The election deadlock created a tense and confusing situation, and it was only after living with it for three months or so that the country found that government was going on much as before, in spite of sharp divisions in the House and worsening tempers among politicians due to the strain of constant attendance at Westminister...

...II This thought was in the minds of the fifty-six Labor, trade union, and cooperative leaders who recently spent a week-end in the country, at Dorking, to hold a post-mortem on the election and to talk over Labor's future plans...

...Why, they ask, risk an election now which might let the Tories slip in and reap the political benefits of an economic recovery actually achieved by Labor...

...In an increasingly critical international situation, why divide the nation with such squabbles, when national unity is sought on wider issues...