Over to Peace

Industrialists, bogged down with orders, begged for manpower. Servicemen, eager to work, begged to be demobilized. To bosses and workers it seemed a simple issue: Britain needed the goods and they were ready to make them. Then why the delays? This week the thorny, interlocking problems of reconversion and demobilization confronted the new British Government with its first real home-front crisis.

The biggest blast came from the five million men in uniform. Most of them had voted Labor, all of them expected to go home as fast as possible after V-J day. The headlines made their pulses race: "Millions of Orders Pour Into Britain," "Britain Enters Great Enterprise of Peace." There would be good jobs and good pay for all.

The Government's dampening answer to the "demob" cry came from pale-eyed, mild-mannered Minister of Labor George Isaacs. The Government, he said, would stick to a modified version of the plan drafted by his potent predecessor, Ernest Bevin, six months ago: 1,110,000 men would be released this year, "specialist workers" could go at once. The rest would have to wait.

"The Great Letdown." From the forces came a full-throated roar of anger. Protests began to deluge M.P.s and party organizers. Wrote a sergeant from Germany: "This demob news shook the boys more than anything." Embittered Tommies, watching boatloads of G.I.s heading home each week, took to advertising in their home papers for jobs. The Government was likened to Ethelred the Unready (see cut). Stocky, quick-firing Garry Allighan, Labor M.P. for the blitzed Gravesend dock area, staggered out from under 2,000 demobilization letters a day to cry: "You must solve this--or have revolution. It's serious."

It was indeed. To the microphone went Prime Minister Clement Attlee himself. But he had only cold comfort to give. Said he: Britain cannot shirk her obligation to maintain forces in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East; hence the Bevin plan for gradual demobilization must stand. Two days later, Isaacs again endorsed the plan. "Hell," said a colonel over from Germany, "these aren't the men we voted for."

Nor could employers understand why economic interests should not be paramount now. The war had ended like the fall of a guillotine blade; let reconversion come as speedily. Already the dammed-up orders from a goods-starved world were flowing in.

Bombers to Beds. The famed Mosquito bomber plant had begun producing utility furniture for newlyweds. Austin and Morris, Britain's top two car makers, were pouring out a stream of shiny new automobiles. The Sunbeam Co. had started on three great fleets of busses for South Africa. Tractors and cars were to go to Turkey and the Middle East. Several aircraft plants had swiftly switched to making prefabricated houses and car parts. A sprawling airplane equipment factory in Speke was turning out children's pumps and women's corsets.

Amid the tall chimneys of Lancashire a score or more cotton mills had reopened. The radio industry bulged with orders. Shipyards boomed under six-year backlogs. Through the foggy mists of Liverpool rose a forest of cranes, "demobbing" big liners from war to peace.

For the present, most of this business was headed overseas. More than ever now, Britain must export or die. Thus, for a time, there would still be queues and shortages at home. Dresses were still scarce, tailors still took six months to deliver suits. Soap was still short, shoes still sold out inside an hour. Newlyweds still had to wait weeks for beds and tables.

Guns to Go-Carts. But it was not all gloom. The pubs were reconverting fast to real beer, suburban gardens to flower bulbs from drumhead cabbages and King Edward potatoes. Cosmetic shops were selling out of evening rouges and eyeshadows. In tony Mayfair a great West End mansion, Lord Kemsley's Chandos House in Queen Anne Street, was first to reconvert, in a blaze of lighted windows. In the country, reconversion glided in so smoothly that the strapping, brush-loving Duke of Beaufort would be able to hunt four days a week this winter. Already the Crawley and Horsham are cub hunting for the new season.

Brightest reconversion item came from Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade. Said the solemn, long-faced Minister, in words that stirred every mother's heart: London's famed Woolwich Arsenal, which has equipped British armies for centuries, will henceforth make perambulators, go-carts, playpens, kitchen utensils. Explained Sir Stafford dryly: "I take advice from my wife, Isobel."

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