A Bit of a Blow

The Tory battle cry was "Bread!" Winston Churchill stumped for the Conservative candidate in the Bexley by-election (one of three held in Britain last week). "In the darkest days of war we managed to keep [bread rationing] from you," cried Churchill. "Socialism means queueing."

This was the typical Tory line, and it was only partially effective. Rebellious British housewives and bakers submitted to bread rationing, and the Labor candidates won the by-elections. But the margin of victory had been narrowed. The coal and steel workers of Pontypool, Monmouthshire rejected 24-year-old "Workingman Tory" Peter Welch (his father is a local coal merchant who still drives his cart through town) by 14,198 votes, a 26% loss for Labor since last year's national election. Labor also won only limited victories in the whitecollar, middle-class suburb of Bexley (loss since 1945: 84%) and in blitz-shattered, slum-infested North Battersea (loss: 29%).

When the results were announced at the Battersea Town Hall, waiting crowds burst into The Red Flag:

. . . Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,

We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,

The sturdy German chants its praise.

In Moscow's halls its hymns are sung,

Chicago swells the surging throng. . . .

Labor's leaders, fearing that they had been overconfident, were less triumphant. Said Herbert Morrison: "[The party] must keep busy all the time ... or we are lost."

Tories had nothing to sing about either. Said a realistic young Conservative M.P. over his dinner of creamed chicken and peas (on the a la carte section of Labor's new House of Commons menu): "It's been a bit of a blow to the Government . . . but I don't know that it has given us Tories much more hope."

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