Embattled Liberals

In London last week a Liberal Party conference, called to draft election plans, produced two assets Liberals badly needed: a policy and a personality.

The policy included the Beveridge Plan for full employment (TIME, Nov. 20), a housing program calling for 750,000 new houses a year for five years. The personality was the conference's dominating president, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, 57, brilliant daughter of the late great Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. A great friend of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lady Violet said: "As the Tories once sheltered behind the Chamberlain umbrella, they will at the next election try to shelter behind the Churchill tank. . . . I would cut off my right hand for the Prime Minister, but I would rather die than have that right hand vote Tory."

Lady Violet Bonham Carter will carry her rejuvenated party's program to the country, plead for support for 500 Liberal candidates in Britain's general election, slated for this year. Said Lady Violet: "We fight for power." If the election race between the Conservative and Labor Parties should be close, and if the Liberal Party could win 50 or 60 seats in Parliament, they would have the next best thing to power--a balance of power.

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