Close Ranks, Men!

As a result of skillful maneuvering, aided by earnest oratory from Attlee, Bevin, Bevan, Morrison and Cripps, the British Labor Party closed its conferences at Blackpool last week on a note of determined unity against the Tory opposition, which was dangerously on the upswing.

Labor faced bleak, uncertain months before the 1950 elections.* The leaders did not smother criticism from the delegates; they simply prevented any resolution from reaching the floor which could not command a resounding vote in favor. Fiery Minister of Health Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan did not denounce the opponents of full-speed nationalization. He seemed to have moved into the moderate camp of House Leader Herbert Morrison. What Bevan and Morrison asked the delegates for, and got, was a mandate to adjust the speed of nationalization to the economic and political weather ahead.

The mood of the conference, grim at the start, had perked up considerably by closing day. Said one departing delegate: "I wonder if their enthusiasm will fade when they come down to earth back home." Replied another: "Why should it? It's unrealistic not to believe in miracles these days."

No miracle seemed capable of brightening Britain's dark economic prospect, which included declining exports, talk of devaluing the pound, and growing pressure on Labor's "full-employment" dikes. But as the cabinet held another emergency meeting to deal with wildcat strikers, the strikers themselves showed signs of coming to heel. In Liverpool 8,000 dockers voted to go back to work. For the fifth successive Sunday, striking locomotive crews dislocated rail traffic; but the stoppage was less severe than on previous weekends, for some crews worked in defiance of the strike leaders' pleas.

*Labor must hold the elections some time before August 1950, but it can choose the time.

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