THE BRITISH VERDICT
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends The British Verdict By William Henry Chamberlin FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO the British Labor party, fighting its campaign on a program of moderate socialism, received a...
...One of the wisest remarks of Winston Churchill was that the things which unite Englishmen are far deeper and mere important than those which divide them...
...3. Churchill's cheap appeal to the people's genuine desire for peace undoubtedly won many votes for his party...
...unsatisfactory to Labor and Conservative stalwarts...
...And now, as a final insult...
...FULL EMPLOYMENT and expanded-sochtl services were trump cards of J^oor election propaganda...
...but these groups by no means expressed a popular rightward* movement...
...One interesting and heartening trend of the election was...
...There was a surprising measure of agreement that the election, which was already being much talked of, would be so close as to be almost unpredictable...
...Britain's Elections WE ARE DISAPPOINTED at the outcome of the British election...
...The reason these figures were not reflected in a larger Labor Parliamentary majority is that the election was fought out on a district basis, where a few votes one way or the other can elect or defeat a candidate...
...Where the News Ends The British Verdict By William Henry Chamberlin FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO the British Labor party, fighting its campaign on a program of moderate socialism, received a Parliamentary, majority of almost 150 seats over all other parties and groups...
...Labor's tiny Parliamentary majority makes it difficult for Britain to act boldly at a time when bold action is most needed...
...diehard Armour...
...OUT OF TUNE New songs are needed, it was explained, because Communists have taken over the best of American labor tunes.—News item...
...However, the result corresponds very closely with the mood which I found in Britain in the course of a trip there last summer...
...there were preferential arrangements for children and nursing mothers...
...Food rationing was maintained long after it had been dropped in most Continental countries, in line with a policy of providing "fair shares" for all.- Social services were expanded all along the line...
...They've stolen our atom secrets...
...The verdict was neither wholehearted endorsement nor sweeping repudiation...
...We feel certain that progressive-minded people the world over must be reacting similarly...
...It is also disappointing to some observers in this country who would like to see...
...But Britons who travel on the Continent and hear or read the stories of returning travelers cannot help yearning for a more varied and appetizing diet...
...Taking forty per cent of the national income by taxation is pretty rugged...
...WELL...
...What they would really do once in power is another question, but on the hustings they sounded like socialists themselves...
...And with the Tories lip-serving the welfare state but unwilling to face some of its unfavorable consequences, Labor cannot implement those domestic measures—maintenance of full employment, increase of industrial and agricultural output, reduction of high prices, and completion of the housing program — which are required to strengthen Britain internally...
...the blotting out of the Communists and of the near-communist fringe, the people whom the British call "crypto-communists" and the Americans "fellow-travelers...
...This had nothing to do with socieiiami rather, ¦ ii»put Churchill, temporarily, in the fellow-traveler camp...
...THE RETURNS ARE IN and enthusiastic partisans on both sides feel the kind oi disappointment that supporter of two college football teams, traditional rivals, feel when the game ends in a tie...
...But the British, of ail peopiea(, are best qualified by temperament and experience to find a means of not letting matters drift into hopeless deadlock...
...We felt -strongly that another Ave years of Labor rule (despite its shortcomings) would have demonstrated to the world that there is a way out of the general crisis short of communism or unrestrained capitalism...
...In the free countries of Continental Europe the issue, "for or against socialism," has never been posed quite as plainly as in Britain, because of the multiplicity of parties...
...Fair shares" sounds inspiring...
...Important decisions lie ahead and the difficulties which confront a government with such a narrow majority as Attlee now possesses are obvious...
...This result is, of course...
...And, for once, pre-election forecasts were correct...
...What, then, has caused the shift of some eighty seats from the Labor to the Conservative column...
...The election of February 23 gave every promise of being one of the most interesting and important in Britain's long constitutional history...
...J^aJl CS^OH^J^a^ ai^cla^O^ One very Important thing, And that lav In Russia, labor Light'hearted enough to sing...
...The two Communists who formerly sat in Par' liament were eliminated, and along with them several Labor party "rebels" who specialized in pleas for appeasing Stalin...
...On the other hand, there is no mandate for the Conservatives to take over and pal their program into action...
...Gone is the comfortable majority of 1945, which made it possible for the Labor party to pass any law it desired...
...Universal health insurance has been, on balance, a popular measure, although there are still bi£ gaps to be filled in the provision of doctors and hospital facilities before complaints about long waits and slow, inadequate attention are eliminated...
...I was empressed by the fact that neither Labor nor Conservative spokesmen anticipated a landslide...
...The many controls which Labor spokesmen justify as the only means of insuring full employment and "fair shares'' have also asked aad wtiatavt» good many Britons outside the ranks of the obvious Tories...
...But the combined Conservative-Liberal popular vote exceeded the Labor vote...
...Voting there has been a mere act of self-preservation, not an expression of-favorable or unfavorable judgment...
...Our bast scientific boons...
...They'vs stolen our labor tunes...
...2. The Conservatives did not campaign on an anti-welfare state platform...
...The tax collector's bite is felt not only by the whole middle class, but by the more skilled workers...
...Elections" in the Soviet Union and in the "people's democracies" of Eastern Europe, as in Hitler's Third Reich and Mussolini's Italy, have been fraudulent farces...
...Labor still remains the largest pary in terms of both the popular votes and seats in parliament...
...With a strengthened Conservative party pursuing the Churchill line of seeking new and wasteful atom talks with Stalin, Labor is hardly in a position to insist on speaking to Stalin in the only language he understands— that of vastly increased economic, political and military power...
...We had hoped for a decisive Labor victory...
...The answer, I believe, is that the welfare state is expensive and that what has been given to the poor has been taken not only from the rich, a vanishing class in Britain, but from a wide range of middle income people...
...On our part, we do not read any pronounced "rightward swing" into it, because: 1. Labor's percentage loss of votes from 1945 was only 1.5...
...There has never been an electoral ordeal quite like this...
...At any rate, a new election is almost definitely in the cards...
...During its term of office, this program was very largely carried out in legislation: Coal and railways, gas and electricity, the Bank of England and inland transport were transferred to public ownership...
...After a reasonably long trial of moderate socialism in practice, the people were called on to pronounce a verdict in an election held under conditions of scrupulous fairness...
...If our own Tories can salvage any satisfaction from this situation, they axe welcome to it...
...the Conservatives, gained only 3.5 Labor's total popular vote actually increased by 1,255,000...
...We admit that the rural and middle-class swing to the Tories was probably motivated by fear of socialism, and was perhaps decisive...
...Labor and Conservatives, after all, are' not representatives of hostile classes, leager to fight it out on the barrieadea oc class was...
...in London a.government backed by a strong parliamentary majority and hence able to act confidently and vigorously...
...We hope that at that time the British people will speak for Labor with their customary vigor...
...The Consejjjaflves tried to take the partisanship out of these issues by giving full employmejat s/nigh priority and promising to keep^^Kesocial services, merely running them more efficiently and economically...
...to insurance payments and, more recently,'to a small fee for prescriptions...
...medical treatment was made free to everyone, subject...
...The new Labor majority is so small that the least gust of wind (absence or defection of a handful of Labor members on an important division in Jhe House of Commons) could upset the Government and force a new appeal to the polls...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 9
