Win with Winnie

Not until the stroke of noon on the second day of the conference did Winston Churchill arrive in theater-like Central Hall, Westminster. He made his entrance with the grandeur of royalty. In front, with mincing step, walked Party Chairman Ralph Assheton. Behind came a retinue of Cabinet Ministers. The 2,000 delegates waved agenda sheets in well-bred excitement, burst into a politely modulated For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. Rosy-cheeked and beaming, in tail coat and striped trousers, "Winnie" waved back. Then he launched into his speech.

The scene was the annual conference of the Conservative Party, in London. Over the meeting loomed the prospect of a general election, Britain's first in ten years, due to follow V-E day. The fact that Winston Churchill had chosen to talk to the Tories as a Tory looked like electioneering, and his speech was definitely that.

Foolproof Formula. The speech was one of Churchill's best: a masterly mixture of lofty patriotism and adroit politics. Well brushed, well tailored old metaphors ("We held aloft the flaming torch of free dom when all around the night was black as jet") clothed his sturdy Tory form ("We have endured patiently, almost silently, many provocations from that happily limited class of left-wing politicians to whom party strife is the breath of their nostrils"). By the time he reached his glowing peroration, 43 minutes later, the Tory leader had shown how he proposed to win the general election.

It sounded like a foolproof formula: "We have to finish the war. We have to bring the men home. We have to get our dear country on the move again and into its full swing of natural health and life." The Conservatives would promise no "easy, cheap-jack Utopia of airy phrases . . .windy platitudes." For Britons in & out of uniform, weary of restriction and regulation, the Party offered "a large release from the necessary bonds and controls which war conditions have imposed."

Said the Prime Minister: "It will fall to us, as the largest Party in the existing House of Commons, to arrange for a general election. . . . Should we be successful in the election a very happy burden will fall upon our shoulders. . . . The job has to be finished and I am here to tell you that we must brace ourselves. . . ." Caretaker Coalition. This much was not unexpected, but what set party quid nuncs a-buzzing was Churchill's next canny pronouncement: "Should it fall to me, as it may do, to form a Government before elections, I shall seek aid not only of Conservatives, but of men of good will of any party or of no party." In other words, he would invite Labor and the Liberals to maintain the wartime coalition until the elections. Since both Parties have already agreed to secede from the Government on Germany's fall, they will be weakened if they accept, or be accused of self-interest if they refuse.

Liberals, with little to lose, scornfully rejected the "caretaker coalition" proposition. Labor, with a bigger stake in the Government, wanted to think it over first. But time was short: clearly the Conservatives were bent on the earliest possible Win-with-Winnie campaign.

The cards seemed to be stacked for the Conservatives. And Winnie, by his clever stand--against continued Government controls, in principle, and for them, in practice (see below)--had arranged the deck very neatly. In spite of Britain's moderate swing to the left, the Tories would take a lot of beating.

In the election Churchill would have the odds in his favor. The real test of strength would come when the Japanese war ended and the country returned to full party politics. Then, in the first postwar general election, even a Churchill might not-be enough to resist the will to change.

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