NO BREATHER FOR BRITAIN

...If Labor can do that—perhaps in June, more likely in the autumn—it should be safely established in power for some years to come...

...Nowr in response to the pressure created by the party's slim majority, they are reluctantly watching the red figures appearing in their accounts...

...This was largely inevitable, because Labor didn't have at its command the financial resources, and therefore the number of full-time paid workers, that the Tories put to use...

...Even if there were some leeway in Britain's tight financial situation, trade unionists are clamoring to take it up in the form of higher wages...

...ter mechanical job of getting out the vote...

...Stephen Taylor, saw his 1945 majority of 700 turn into a Tory majority of 10,500...

...On another occasion recently an M.P...

...It looks as if the only prospect for Conservative successs in the coming months is some massive failure of the Government, say a new devaluation of the pound, which would disillusion its supporters...

...But they were bitter against the Labor Government, which they felt had ground them down with high taxes while favoring the manual workers...

...Given a complete break-up of the Liberal Party, the Tories might, at the outside, win the sort of paper-thin majority that Labor holds now...

...The trouble is that the people who feel as keenly as he does are steadily diminishing in number, as the hard times of the inter-war years recede...

...Attlee to drop extensive public ownership as an ultimate goal...

...Some workers were already saying in February: "You tell us that the Labor Government, has helped the workers...

...It's true that more than a quarter of the working class continues to vote Tory...

...The Conservatives have little reason to reproach themselves...

...If we get a solid working class vote, we can win...

...There was at first a tendency to treat Bevan and people like him as the scapegoats for Labor's meager victory...

...These are the hardest places for Labor activists, largely town-bred, to reach...

...The salary of an M.P., $2800 a year, is hardly enough for life in London, particularly since there is no allowance added for office or staff...

...As men of affairs, they were never as regular in Parliamentary attendance as their Labor colleagues...

...Now that the whips are really enforcing their presence, they find Parliament less the pleasant social club it used to be...

...But Labor now knows where the critical constituencies are, and can concentrate its paid workers where they can do most good...

...and popular columnist: "The commonest remarks made by half-friendly, neutral voters were: 'I think you've done quite a lot of good things, but I don't want any more of this nationalization,' or, 'Where is all this nationalization going to stop?'" Winston Churchill shrewdly exploited this feeling by quoting what Fulton Oursler, in his LooA: article, alleged that Mr...

...The division has been so close that twice Labor M.P.'s have been carried in on stretchers in order to cast their votes...

...came dashing in to vote in a close contest...

...Said' Tom Driberg, Labor M.P...

...With others, it's a form of snobbery...

...Yet they said very little about public ownership in the campaign, either to justify tie steps already taken or to advocate new measures...

...From the purely mechanical point of view, their 1950 campaign was the best-organized election effort in British history...

...One thing it certainly has not done is to generate crusading enthusiasm...

...But when they can be reached, and particularly if somebody in the village can be found to spark the effort, they yield a rich harvest of votes...

...If forced to, they are likely to say something of this sort: "Don't get us wrong...

...It is probable that Labor will take the cautious, step-by-step Morrison line, seeking at the next election to do a better job at getting out the vote, particularly from the villages, and making no important change in its February strategy...

...There will be leisurely studies and investigations, but little action...

...If Labor had not already lost the confidence of many middle class people who supported it five years ago, the Conservative press would not have been able to distort and exploit so effectively isolated phrases in the speeches of some Ministers...

...Feudal ways of behavior still persist, and when the villagers go to church and sing: "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate," they're singing about life as they know it...

...Two questions therefore preoccupy Parliamentarians as they carry on a weary guard duty at the House of Commons...

...Taylor's thorough canvass enabled him to put his finger right on the trouble...

...Many Laborites are privately sorry they ever proposed to take it over, but now that they have committed themselves they do not dare withdraw...

...Such a man, if he's fired with real enthusiasm, can turn his whole village solidly Labor...

...Labor politics in the big towns is old stuff, but in the villages it's nothing less than a social revolution...

...Time after time such phrases as "vermin" (applied by Health Minister Aneurin Bevan to pre-war Tory leaders, but quoted constantly by the Conservative press as if it referred to the entire middle class) were repeated against Labor in his public meetings...

...Thus far, thereis complete agreement among Laborites...

...It was precisely in these constituencies that Labor suffered its heaviest losses in February...

...Yet, at the same time, it is difficult even for so moderate a man as Mr...

...Unfortunately, this is the very thing the Labor Government is least able to do...

...It is, in fact, the very perfection of the Tory effort which presents their strategists with the toughest problems for the next try...

...The issue is most likely to fade quietly into the background, as it has already with Scandinavian socialists...

...In some areas, they did very well...

...There would appear to be two ways to resolve this dilemma—either to drop fresh plans for public ownership for an indefinite period to come, or to conduct an all-out campaign in befalf of nationalizations past and future...

...This is certainly what Herbert Morrison would like to do...

...some of them rather like to mix with the Young Conservative country club set...

...The Tories are, on the average, more prosperous, but they are also more likely to feel the demands of varied business and financial interests...

...Often the man who takes the lead is some World War II veteran who, after fighting for democracy all over the globe, is fed up with taking off his hat every time the local squire passes by...

...The constituency includes every type of voter—the well-to-do, the white-collar and professional class, industrial workers, farmers and farm workers...

...He's been identified with "consolidation" ever since he shocked the zealots at the 1948 convention of the Labor Party by first using the word...

...It has only to do a very little better to get a working Parliamentary majority, since the Tories have already shot their bolt...

...They did not abandon nationalization...

...This shows up most clearly in the case of the steel industry...

...Nearly every Tory voter who could be led or carried to the polls actually did cast his ballot...

...It proved much harder for Labor to redeploy its volunteer workers than for Lord Woolton's smooth-running Tory machine of professionals to master such new situations...

...only the Swedes and the Norwegians match the British performance...

...We're still socialists, and we still stick by the principles...

...Labor Members, of course, are hardest hit by the sharp drop in Labor strength in the House of Commons...

...But we've bitten off all we can chew for the moment...

...Nothing can stand between a nation and its goal...

...The improvement of the public school system would also help...

...It seems likely that only a new economic crisis could bring Bevan to the fore, particularly if it came about in a way that could be blamed upon "American capitalism...

...First, they can do a betDAVTD C WILLIAMS is stationed in London as British representative of Americans for Democratic Action...

...But it takes patience and hard work to find people of this sort...

...Mr...

...Attlee replied that Oursler had garbled his answer, but Labor campaigners, from the Prime Minister down, never seemed to meet this question squarely...

...But they cannot do more, unless something happens to cause a real movement of public opinion...

...In 1945 about a quarter of the middle class voted Labor—not much, but enough to swing many mixed middle and working class constituencies, particularly on the outskirts of London, into the Labor column for the first time...

...It came among the white-collar workers...

...Much still remains to be learned about the effective operation of nationalized industries and services...

...Taylor could do or say made any impression upon these deeply-entrenched hatreds...

...Proxy voting, which is customary in France, could solve the entire problem, but would be a shocking innovation to the tradition-bound British political mind...

...In such a situation, Bevan might well lead the party along more "socialist" lines, particularly if the measures he proposed seemed to point directly to economic independence from the United States...

...Like most European socialists nowadays, British Laborites are rather reluctant to discuss the subject...

...Gone are the times when the top-heavy Labor Party majority insured a comfortable existence for both Labor and Conservative members of Parliament who, with Labor's margin so overwhelmingly decisive, could come and go without great concern that their vote was vital in the outcome...

...5 These people are hard to convert...

...in others, badly...

...Where can relief be found...

...But second thoughts made it clear that such phrases were only the froth on the wave...

...His articles on Great Britain have appeared in The Nation, New Republic, Commentary, and the New Leader, while his interpretations of American political developments have been Pushed in Tribune and other British publications...

...That's something that would have a big appeal even to many middle class people, who tend to be more nationalistic in their outlook than the workers...

...It's when it comes to the so-called "middle class" vote that the fur begins to fly...

...Laborites also think they didn't get the support from farm workers to which they felt entitled...

...IV It looks, then, as if Labor will continue to have an ambiguous attitude about public ownership...

...There's a general feeling that Labor's February campaign fell between two stools, particularly on the subject of nationalization...

...by putting a Tory poster in the window, they show that they're a cut above their neighbors on a working-class street, and they can mingle with the gentry at occasional Tory social gatherings...

...If Labor sought to establish the practice, it might well be swept away in a wave of popular indignation at the next election...

...He fell as he ran into the building and broke his leg...

...Even Labor's chief campaign slogan of "full employment" had little force with new voters, who had never known anything else...

...It goes right on...

...Pairing—the practice by which a Member refrains from voting to accommodate a Member on the opposite side who must be absent— does take place, although on a smaller and less formal scale than in Congress...

...Young Welsh miners of the present day are making good wages, eating and dressing comparatively well...

...Harold Laski, an old firebrand himself, joined in the chorus of reproach in an article written a few days before his death...

...also, the closer the vote, the more the party officials frown upon it...

...Attlee had told him, when he asked where socialism would stop in England: "It doesn't...

...Most of them do so because their fathers and grandfathers did before them...

...Aneurin Bevan, on the other hand, would like to whip up the class struggle...

...Actually, the real mood of the party was probably reflected accurately in the ambiguities of the campaign...

...It did not come from well-to-do idealists, for the same 10% or so who voted Labor in 1945 stuck with him this time...

...Nothing Dr...

...But he stayed long enough to vote before being removed to . the hospital...

...Nonsense —it's our union that has...

...Second—and the answer has an important bearing on the first question—how can "we" (Labor or Tory) win a comfortable majority next time...

...indacd their program, in addition to pledg-ing the nationalization of cement, sugar, and meat wholesaling, included a number of statements which could be construed as blank checks for further instalments of ownership...

...After four and a half years of great difficulty, it boosted its vote by a million and a third...

...Public ownership to date has had some real advantages, but it has also thrown up some difficult problems...

...This need be no cause for regret...

...Labor's achievement was outstanding by American standards, but fell well below the superb performance of the Tories...

...The outcome largely depended on whether they had been able to establish functioning local organizations in the farming villages...

...Such a constituency is Barnet, north of London, where its Labor M.P., Dr...

...With coal, transport, gas, electricity, and possibly steel publicly owned, Labor Herblock in The Washington Port will have plenty of scope for its still limited supply of skilled administrators...

...Nothing — absolutely nothing — would make so big an appeal to the white-collar voter as the reduction of taxes...

...In easier times, many Laborites took on outside jobs to balance their family budgets...

...Labor's backroom boys have more hope of improving their showing next time...

...It would also appear that the nationalized sector is already large enough to serve as an effective buffer in case of an economic depression...

...Indeed, there may be a leakage the other way...

...II Now that the urgency of the need is clear, Labor should have even greater financial support from the trade unions, although its fighting fund will hardly match that of the Tories...

...Even Prof...

...The National Health Service, of course, has won some middle-class friends for Labor...

...On the whole, opinion within the party has moved his way...

...Taylor himself...

...This latter middle class group had nothing against Dr...

...All in all, Labor's showing was a most creditable one...

...He still feels strongly his sufferings as a young Welsh miner under Tory rule...

...At present, many white-collar families are sacrificing everything else to send their children to private schools...

...First, how long will it last...

...Now, when we go to our union officials, they say: 'Don't embarrass the Government by asking for higher wages.' I'm voting Tory, so we'll have a Government we can embarrass...

...Substantial improvement in Britain's still-lagging public school system might make these sacrifices unnecessary, bul they will take time, money, and scarce materials and manpower Some Laborites, in despair, eyes "Don't worry about the middle class at all...

...Its 46J/£% of the total vote puts it in the front rank of European Labor parties, none of which has achieved a popular majority...

...III Most Laborites, therefore, have decided they must somehow make a stronger appeal to the middle class...

...It's still, in terms of smaller classes, better teaching, social prestige, and job opportunities, one of the best investments a far-seeing family can make...

...Though strenuously anti-Communist, Bevan also thinks that Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps have been much too soft with the Americans...

...This lack showed up particularly in the "new" constituencies—that is, constituencies so radically altered by the 1948 redistribution that they had little likeness to any that existed before...