Macmillan and Migration

...The majority of prospective emigrants are skilled workers, technicians, professional men and others whom the country cannot easily spare...

...Compared with these considerations, all others are secondary...

...That problem quite simply is to make the British public understand that Britain is no longer what is called a Great Power, and furthermore that the world does not owe the British a living, let alone their present living standard—which, though inferior to that of Sweden or New Zealand, is nonetheless pretty high for a country that has emerged impoverished from two world wars...

...There are as yet few signs that such a conversion from New Elizabethan rhetoric to postwar realism is under way...

...An early election would probably produce a grand but empty confrontation between Tory flag-waving and Labor pacifism, followed by a relapse into the stale routine of party warfare at Westminster, whichever side emerged with a handful of extra seats...

...The real failure was visible in the Eden Government's grotesque inability to conduct political warfare against Nasser...

...but in substance his choice signifies no more than that the Tory party prefers to be led by someone it likes and trusts...

...But Macmillan has the great advantage over Eden of understanding economics and taking a businesslike view of the imperial firm over which he presides...

...For the commentators, Sir Anthony Eden's resignation and Harold Macmillan's emergence were the sort of thing they had almost ceased to hope for: Here was high drama of the kind that keeps both the historians and the gossip-writers busy for years...

...In fact it does not do so, save on a few issues of minor importance...

...To read the drivel which in recent weeks has poured forth in torrents from the pens of what Orwell used to call the Pansy Left, one would imagine that the most urgent tasks of a British government at present are (1) to apologize to Colonel Nasser...

...The public's reaction was quite different...

...It is unfortunately impossible at the moment to claim with any degree of honesty that a Labor government would offer a better alternative...

...The public quite rightly suspects that when a Prime Minister quits office something must have gone very seriously wrong, and it reacts by taking a gloomy view of affairs...

...The combined efforts of Churchill, Eden and Lord Salisbury —his old allies from Munich days— to put him in office may account for his triumph over Butler, whom Churchill has never forgiven for backing Chamberlain and "appeasement...

...Macmillan & Migration Britons fleeing to Canada, Australia pose challenge to Premier By G. L. Arnold London Commentators are never more buoyant and happy than when there is a first-rate political crisis...

...To them a crisis and a change of government are the very bread of life...

...Since the habit of make-believe was closely associated with the personality and the policies of Sir Anthony Eden, it is for once not out of place to speak of a new era...

...2) to abolish child marriage in Basutoland...

...They know, of course, that serious issues are involved, but professional excitement prevails even among people who are themselves front-rank politicians— in or out of office, and doubly so in the case of Opposition leaders...

...Eighteen months later, when defeat and illness had finally driven him from office, the political columnist of the arch-Tory Daily Mail recalled this early fiasco and quite correctly described it as "the act of a man relying on gesture without substance...

...With Eden's fall ("Better to sink beneath the shock/Than moulder piecemeal on the rock," declaimed Randolph Churchill in his Evening Standard column where for a year he had been planting wooden daggers in Eden's back), the high command of the Tory party had to make a quick decision between the two rivals...

...On none of these issues did the Opposition have anything interesting or helpful to say...

...The taxes, after all, pay for the welfare state...

...If it does not, it will have failed of half its purpose...

...It remains to be seen whether the economy drive will go far enough to enable the crushing load of taxation to be lightened...

...The impression that Macmillan's emergence as Prime Minister represents a victory for the Tory aristocracy over the party's big-business wing has just enough plausibility to reconcile the Tory right-wingers to the policies he is plainly going to pursue...

...Besides, Butler lacks the common touch even more than Macmillan, who is capable of occasional flashes of demagogy, and what is needed now is someone who will put a brave face on the defeat Britain has suffered, dramatize the inevitable retreat and maintain public morale...

...The Eden myth has been the biggest sham in British politics for the past twenty y ears...

...The real issues—inflation, production, European unification—would promptly re-emerge to plague the winner...

...Besides, the field of possible selections was not exactly brilliant, though either Butler or Macmillan would have been preferable...

...Taxation apart, the arms program (which should never have been undertaken) throws an intolerable burden on the engineering industry, which must be the spearhead of the export drive, today and in the future...

...of course, the opposite effect...

...In the end, the resultant internal stresses helped to catapult Eden into his Sue/ adventure, which w as meant to show the party and the electorate that he was equal to his lask...

...The choice of Macmillan was basically dictated by the desire to reinforce party unity during a period of economic stringency and more or less orderly retreat before the Moscow-Cairo Axis...

...and in its fumbling approach to European unification...

...It is, however, not sufficiently realized that they had their counterpart on the home front...

...On present evidence there is little to suggest that the Macmillan Government is capable of making a truly radical break with the disastrous record of the entire postwar period —not just the years when Labor happened to be out of office...

...This is not what is meant by saying that the Conservative party has so far failed to modernize itself...

...If so many people are willing to risk a fresh start under less comfortable conditions, they must have made up their minds that the welfare state is not worth having at the present rate of taxation and inflation...

...It is, however, revealing...

...Labor no less than its opponents is in need of modernization...

...It is, in fact, no longer possible to pretend that Britain can spend 10 per cent of the national income on arms —more than any other country in Europe—and continue to meet the export competition of other countries, notably Germany and Japan, which are almost entirely free from this particular burden...

...This argument can canl\ he ill-torted into a semblance of the kind of nonsense in which the organs of the London literary intelligentsia specialize...

...The personal element, on which the editorial writers and columnists have dwelt so feelingly this past month, is relevant only insofar as it manifests the underlying tensions which finally provoked the upheaval that drove Eden from office...

...As regards the collapse of Britain's traditional Middle Eastern policy in the face of Egyptian intrigues, Soviet threats and American indifference, these tensions have been fairly widely diagnosed in recent weeks...

...On this there is now such general agreement that a Conservative government can safely confront its supporters with decisions that would evoke dismay if adopted by a Labor cabinet...

...Quite different is the attitude of the professionals who live in, or close to, the great world of political intrigue...

...The Eden Government's failure to cope with the problem <>( Egypt's blackmailing tactics had its roots in the Conservative party s antecedent failure to make a success of its chief task, which was to modernize itself and to streamline its approach to domestic affairs...

...Within three months of becoming Prime Minister in April 1955, he showed by his inept handling of the railway strike and the complete emptiness of his hollow declamatory prose on the radio that he was totally unfitted for the task thrust on him by Churchill's long-delayed exit...

...A Butler government would have pleased the Liberals, mollified Labor and reassured the City, but it might have driven the Tory right-wingers into open rebellion...

...No one, indeed, can miss the significance of the sudden six-fold rise in emigration figures since the collapse of Eden's Suez campaign and the consequent imposition of new gasoline taxes and restrictions...

...It may do so in a year or two, especially if the Labor party gets rid of its Nasserite and pacifist "tail," which in recent months has been wagging the dog to an extent that Hugh Gaits-kell must have found disturbing...

...it had...

...It is an unquenchable illusion of many Labor supporters that the party must strike any unbiased observer as immeasurably more intelligent and progressive than the Tories...

...The present experimental stage in the refashioning of British party politics after the Suez catastrophe does not permit any predictions as to the extent to which both parties will try to rid themselves of their ideological ballast...

...On many others, it gives evidence of a kind of well-meaning imbecility which may be more appealing than Tory diehardism, but does not support the claims made on its behalf...

...Talk of the Lumpenbourgeoisie trying to escape to pleasanter climes is nonsense—the sort of nonsense that the Labor party had better forget if it wants to win the next election...

...He is not as close to the City as R. A. Butler—hence the barely suppressed dismay with which his appointment was greeted by the Economist—but neither is he the old-fashioned Tory aristocrat of the political cartoonists, who are now doing their best to immortalize his Guards moustache and his impeccable Edwardian manner...

...There is to be an end to make-believe, whether it is a question of maintaining an army 011 the Rhine until the end of the century, subsidizing unreliable client states like Jordan, or pretending that Britain can carry out political strokes in opposition to the United States...

...It is true that many seem to want to get away from high taxation, but that is not in itself a criminal motive...

...At first sight it seems curious that this retreat from unreality should be generaled by a man who, if anything, has outdone Eden in striking the traditional Tory note...

...and (3) to reform the laws concerning homosexuals...

...There is no substance in the claim that Churchill wanted him as successor— he simply did not want anyone else...

...But exactly the same could have been said of his imposition of pseudo-sanctions on Mussolini during the Ethiopian affair in 1936, or of his so-called resignation from Chamberlain's government in February 1938 (he was, in fact, driven out by the pressure of his chief and his colleagues...

...This gulf between the pleasurable excitement of the professionals and the emotions of the ordinary man and woman must be kept in mind when trying to sort out the meaning of the political upheaval during the first half of this month...

...It expressed itself chiefly in lengthening emigration queues...

...Eden's personal inadequacy, which so enraged the Tory columnists who are now shedding tears over his political grave, was both a factor in his government's collapse and a reflection of unresolved tensions in British Conservatism...

...But neither can one say with certainty that a Labor government would do significantly better...

...In this, they differ from the ordinary man and woman...

...Ideally, both parties ought now to admit (at least to themselves) that they have taken turns in deluding the electorate with promises of higher living standards and enhanced national prestige in the world, when they should have preached austerity a I'outrance, the tightest economy in defense expenditure, and a resolute renunciation of Great Power attitudes, coupled with a realistic defense of legitimate positions against the onslaught of the Moscow-Cairo termites...

...There is talk of slashing defense expenditure—the long-postponed solution at which Macmillan himself hinted last year in at least one public speech...

...To judge from the tone of most informed comments on the new Prime Minister and his team, the seriousness of this matter is not realized in Whitehall and Westminster...

...It does not mean that there is a genuine difference between Macmillan's and Butler's approach to the chief problem any British government now has to face...

...The huge surge of prospective emigrants to Canada and Australia— several hundred thousand are apparently determined to leave this year, if there is enough shipping to take them—has now reached proportions alarming to the editorialists of such stoutly Conservative newspapers as the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times...

...A slow and partial retreat from Great Power extravagances in the foreign and military fields is one aspect of that rationalization of British policies which the new government plainly intends to bring about...

...As for the London literary intelligentsia, which largely determines the tone of "progressive" opinion, it has in recent months supplied fresh proof of its congenital asininity by adopting Colonel Nasser as its mascot...

...in its helplessness when faced with a railway strike and other inflationary pressures...