Osmosis in Queuetopia

(See Cover) To mark an event which will put his name in the history books for generations, Clement Attlee slipped one afternoon last week into a crowded room of London's India House. When flashbulbs flared, he grimaced and ducked behind his wife. Politely, the photographers went away, and the Prime Minister who had given India its freedom stood quietly sipping his tea in the midst of an austere celebration.* At one point, Attlee chatted with Tory M.P.

Anthony Eden. They agreed that electioneering was' hard work. Attlee added: "I like my jigsaw puzzles in the evening." Despite his self-effacement, Clement Attlee's mark was all over the Indian In dependence Day tea party. The tea came in thick cups because Britain's fine china must be exported. The cream on the cakes was synthetic because Britain must keep her imports down. Under their gossamer saris, many of the Indian women present wore homely sweaters because Britain's coal must not be wasted.

In four years and five months as Prime Minister, Clement Attlee had not only given freedom to India, Burma, Ceylon (combined pop. 411 million), he had also given to Britain a new way of life. Some of Attlee's followers called it Socialism; some called it "fair shares for all"; some called it the welfare state. Winston Churchill last week scornfully snarled out another name for it: "Queuetopia." Spendthrift's End? Whatever it was, the regime of queues and 40% taxes and womb-to-tomb security had come to judgment. On Feb. 23, Britain's voters would decide whether the Labor Party should have another five-year grant of power to continue and extend their experiment.

Speaking for the Tories, Winston Churchill last week brought in a partisan but elo quent indictment: "We now approach the crisis to which every spendthrift comes when he has used up everything he can lay his hands on, and everything he can beg or borrow, and must face the hard reckoning of facts . . . With the immense aid given us by the U.S. and our dominions from overseas, there was no reason why [Britain] should not have got back by now to solvency, security and independence . . .

"This has been denied us not only by the incompetence and maladministration of the Socialist government and their wild extravagance, but even more by the spirit of class hatred which they had spread throughout the land, and by the costly and wasteful nationalization of a fifth part of our industries. 'All men,' says the American Constitution, 'are born equal.' 'All men shall be kept equal,' says the British Socialist party."-

The Labor Party election manifesto, said Churchill, contains "an effective design, or plot--for that is a truer term--to obtain power .over their fellow countrymen such as no British government has ever sought before . . ."

These were harsh words to apply to the party headed by Clement Attlee, Deputy Prime Minister in Churchill's cabinet from 1942 to 1945. By temperament, training and conviction, Attlee was as far from being either a spendthrift or a dictator as any man could be. Yet his party's record in power and its program for the future had frightened many a less partisan Briton than Winston Churchill.

The seeming contradiction between the gentle Attlee and the frequently ungentle Labor Party could not be explained by brushing Attlee off as a figurehead. In actual power over party decisions, quiet, little (5 ft. 7 1/2 in., 140 Ibs.) Clem Attlee stood head & shoulders above his fellow Laborite leaders. This was true even though he lacked Aneurin Bevan's fiery eloquence, Herbert Morrison's parliamentary skill, Sir Stafford Cripps's brilliance and Ernest Bevin's command of the warm loyalty of millions of unionists. What Attlee did have was political balance and a sense of timing. These faculties were all-important as the Labor Party walked a tightrope with militant socialism on its left and a wary middle class on its right. Labor would need the support of large sections of both groups to survive. If any man could appeal to both, Attlee could.

His political life story throws considerable light on i) what British Socialism is, 2) how it reached power, 3) why it used its power as it did, and 4) how voters may judge it on Feb. 23.

Socialist's Beginning. Clement Richard Attlee was born (1883) into a staid, middle-class family in Putney, a staid, middle-class suburb in the southwest section of London. He was tutored at home until he was nine years old--first by his mother, and later by a governess, a Miss Hutchinson, one of whose earlier pupils she remembered as a "strongwilled child" named Winston Churchill. Attlee went off to boarding school at nine, and he has described his subsequent years in terms remarkably like Churchill's account of his own school days. Wrote Attlee:

"The general arrangements were very rough. Lower boys had to pig it in form rooms or class rooms where there was no privacy and a good deal of opportunity for bullying . . . The games worship was at its height . . . No one was considered anything unless he was good at games, and the result was to create an inferiority complex in the unathletic."

Whether or not poor athlete Attlee had an inferiority complex, the mild popularity he found at Oxford came as something of a surprise. Untainted by university radicalism, he took a modern history degree in 1904. Attlee remembers that he had "fallen under the spell of the Renaissance. I admired strong and ruthless rulers. I professed ultra-Tory opinions."

Attlee studied law, unenthusiastically entered his father's firm prepared to practice a little and to read a lot of history on the side. He might have continued on that placid course but for an old schoolmate who invited him to spend an evening at Haileybury House. This was a settlement house run by Attlee's old school in London's Limehouse district. Attlee began helping out at Haileybury House a few evenings a week. The experience changed his life. "The condition of the people in that area, as I saw them at close quarters, led me to study their causes and to reconsider the assumptions of the social class to which I belonged . . ."

Roy Jenkins, Attlee's official biographer, says: "By the end of 1907 he was a Socialist, in the very practical sense that he wished to devote his life to the improvement of working-class conditions."

From then to the outbreak of World War I, young Socialist Attlee worked with Sidney and Beatrice Webb for the repeal of the Poor Law, lectured at Ruskin College, Oxford, on trade unionism and trade-union law, and later on social science at the London School of Economics. He became a member of the Fabian Society and of the Independent Labor Party.

On & Off the Soapbox. In one year, he addressed some 115 open-air meetings for the Independent Labor Party. "Sometimes I carried the soapbox," Attlee recalls, "sometimes' I stood on it--and sometimes I got knocked off it."

Shortly after World War I began, Clement Attlee volunteered, fought in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and France with the South Lancashire Regiment and Tank Corps, returned home four years later with a major's crowns, a D.S.O. and the scars of two severe wounds. He went back to Limehouse, and Charles Griffiths, his old army batman, went with him. Despite incessant attacks of dysentery, which Attlee had picked up during the war, he worked all day and many a night as well, speaking at meetings, getting the lads of Limehouse out of trouble and lending his kind, mild counsel to anyone who needed it. "A woman 'ud call about 'er rent," Griffiths recalls. "She 'adn't any money, see? 'Pull up ter th' fire, mother,' the Major 'ud say (they still call 'im Major down Limehouse way). 'Make a pot of tea, Griff, and get a piece of cake. Now you stop crying, mother, and we'll soon get things settled.' " Such is Limehouse's loyalty to Clement Attlee that even today the patrons of the Castle pub along Commercial Road will say: "If yer wants ter get yer face bashed in, just run 'im dahn, that's all."

Despite Equals Because. In 1922, loyal Limehouse sent Attlee to Parliament. In the first Labor government (1924) he was Under Secretary for War. Later India became his specialty. He served on the Simon Commission (1927), made two trips to India. In 1931 Labor's Ramsay MacDonald failed to carry the bulk of the Labor Party with him when he formed a coalition government with Stanley Baldwin's Tories. Old George Lansbury became head of the Labor Party for a time, but the reins of power soon passed into Attlee's hands.

Accounts of Attlee's unexpected elevation usually contain some such phrase as "despite his colorless personality." As is often the case, the phrase "because of" can substitute for "despite." MacDonald was colorful to the point of flamboyance, and Labor's ranks had loved him dearly. After MacDonald's "betrayal," the embittered Laborites wanted no more color; they wanted a man they could trust. Attlee's sincerity and staying power were patent; the Laborites gave him the leadership when Arthur Greenwood and Morrison, in bitter rivalry, knocked each other out of the ring.

Through the '30s, Attlee held the party together, ready to profit from the unparalleled record of blunders by Baldwin and his successor, Neville Chamberlain. In that decade, many Britons learned (as Attlee had learned in 1905) to "reconsider the assumptions" of the British middle class. Through the election of 1945 and into the campaign of 1950, such doubts continued to be a major source of the Labor Party's strength.

As Churchill's deputy in the coalition war cabinet, Attlee acquired immense administrative experience and developed his sense of balance and timing. Colleagues noticed that when he presided in Churchill's absence, the cabinet got a lot of business done. But Attlee, perhaps still resenting the Baldwin-MacDonald deal, has always hated coalitions. He left the war cabinet as soon as he could, and surprised the world with the smashing Labor victory of 1945.

Doodles. Immediately, uncomplimentary legends began to cluster about Attlee's retiring and "colorless" personality. Such cracks as "An empty limousine drew up at the gate and Attlee stepped out" or "This would never have happened if good old Attlee had been alive" became standard cocktail-party fodder. Attlee's shyness is not that of an insecure or a frightened man. He wants to be alone because he likes it that way. In committee meetings, at parties or in the House of Commons, he seems to have the gift of becoming invisible. As the debate in the House grows hotter he slumps down, his feet on the table, his bald head slipping until it is about level with the top of the bench back. he voices grow more strident, but Attlee hardly stirs. He might be asleep. But no, his hand is moving through a strange intricate pattern. He is doodling. Some knitted through France's revolution.

Attlee has quietly doodled through many of the great crises in Britain's.

His ability to be placid in the midst of storm and stress has given him his peculiarly firm hold over the Socialist Party. He cannot be rushed. He cannot be stampeded by a flood of oratory. In the cabinet room of No. 10, even the most eloquent minister may find that during his choicest arguments Attlee has been deeply absorbed in some pencil design on the paper before him. It is maddening, but there is no penetrating this kind of defense. Attlee in his cool ivory tower quietly sorts out the pros & cons and comes to a decision in his own time.

At home, the Prime Minister is more animated as he jokes with his family and friends. If anyone happens to show an interest in nursery schools, he pins him down. He will probably rope the victim into his favorite charity, the Margaret MacMillan Memorial Fund, pledged to raise -L-250,000 to establish nursery schools in Britain's poor districts.

Three Black Marks. Britain, however, is no nursery school. Labor's record in guiding Britain's destinies will be judged by results, not by devotion or good intentions. In 1945 Labor won with the slogan "Labor Faces the Future." In 1950, as Labor faces the voters, it stands on a record made as the party in power.

In foreign policy, Labor started with a blind bias toward Russia, but Attftfe and Bevin saw the menace of Russian aggression more quickly than President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes. It was Bevin's bearlike rush at the January 1946 U.N. meeting in London that woke the free world from its complacent friendliness to Russia. In this, Attlee and Bevin were a long way ahead of their party. Pro-Rursian sentiments among Laborites died slowly.

Dislike of the capitalist U.S. died even more slowly.

Today Britain is the strongest and most reliable U.S. ally, although Laborite suspicion of non-Socialist European countries acts as a brake on European economic cooperation.

Foreign policy, however, is scarcely an issue in the present campaign. In the assault on Labor's record-at-home by Conservative campaigners, voters will hear attacks in these three sections:

1) The economy as a whole.

2) Nationalization.

3) The welfare state.

There have been three great economic crises which will stand, fairly or unfairly, as black marks against the Socialist government's handling of the nation's economy. First there was the fuel crisis (February 1947), which brought the whole nation to a grinding halt in the depth of a terrible winter. Then came the convertibility crisis (August 1947), when the financial reserves drained away at an alarming rate until exchange control was quickly restored to plug the leak. Finally, there was last September's devaluation.

The average Briton is likely to assume that the government at the wheel must be to blame for these recurring jolts. But then his memory of each jolt tends to fade quickly as soon as the road gets smoother. The task of the Conservatives in this election is to make vivid recall of these crises to show, if they can, that they were blunders characteristic of Labor's rule.

Remember the Brontosaurus. Geoffrey Crowther, brilliant editor of the Economist, in a series of broadcasts this month put the British economic situation in careful perspective. Said he:

"In my opinion there isn't very much that's wrong with the British economy. Or rather, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there's plenty that's right with it ... Everyone who wants a job has a job and that's a great improvement on some past periods . . . There's rarely been a time when there was so little real poverty in the country as today . . .

"What I find alarming in the present state of affairs is the failure of the British economic machine to, adapt itself to the new circumstances of the postwar world . . . The salient fact is that those efforts [we have made] have not been enough . . . Our system is stiff and rigid and unadaptable. We all know what happened to the brontosaurus because he could not adapt himself to new circumstances, and the fear that I have about the British economy is that it is getting a little into the state of the brontosaurus . . .

"I do not find the causes of our present troubles--certainly not the main causes--in anything that has been done or left undone in these last five years. It goes much further back than that and if you want to seek the real cause of the mischief, then I think you go back a full generation . . . In 1913 Britain was a highly efficient community; we earned more than we needed . . . After that first war, when we began to get into difficulties we simply let that margin vanish--we lived on the fat ... If you take the volume of our imports--I don't mean the value in money, I mean the volume, the weight, the quantity of goods we bought--you will find that in 1938 it was 20% larger than in 1913 . . . And if you similarly take the volume, the weight, the quantity of our exports in that 25 years you would find that it had gone down by 40%. That means to say that the average Englishman over those 25 years, came to consume--to eat if you like--20% more of other people's production and give in return 40% less of his own production. Well of course that's a wonderful state of affairs so long as it lasts. But it can't go on forever."

The Boss Is Still Boss. In other words, the Socialists cannot be blamed for Britain's major ills, but they have not cured those ills. Labor has done little, if anything, to correct this brontosaurian rigidity which frightens Crowther. On the contrary, the setting up of large bureaucratic organizations to run the nationalized industries has added to the prevailing clumsy rigidity of the economy.

Nationalization is not a burning issue in the present campaign. If the Tories win they will repeal the bill nationalizing steel (passed, but not yet effective). The Tories will not denationalize coal, rails, electricity, the main airlines or the Bank of England. If they are elected the Laborites promise to nationalize a few more industries, but only a fraction of what they have taken over to date.

This practical agreement between party programs on nationalization does not mean that the average Briton likes nationalization and wants more of it. Far from it. Years ago, many Laborites thought that nationalization would usher in a Utopia where the servant would be master. It has not worked out quite that way.

From the worker's viewpoint, nationalization has not gained much. The boss is still the boss and the state turns out to be an even more remote and impersonal employer than a private corporation. That is why nationalization as an idea has lost its magic appeal. Who cares whether he owns the railways or not when the trains are just as dusty and drafty and the fares are higher than they ever were before?

The welfare state is largely responsible for the crushing tax burden (including local as well as national taxes) borne by the average Briton, estimated at about 40% of his total income (against 25% in the Fair Deal U.S.). British taxes dry up incentive for production and progress; they raise production costs and thus drag down Britain's exports.

Nevertheless, the welfare state is in Britain to stay, barring economic calamity. The argument between Tories and Socialists is not whether the welfare state is a good or bad thing; the scramble is for the credit of having invented it. No British politician would now suggest abolishing it, any more than he would suggest abolishing state-paid policemen or firemen.

Dangers Ahead. What would happen if the Conservatives should win the election?

One Tory leader recently answered frankly: "We would run their Socialism a damn sight more efficiently than they do themselves."

And what if Labor should remain in power? Is Churchill right in saying that the Labor program seeks; unprecedented controls over British life?

Certainly men such as Clement Attlee are not avid for arbitrary power. But whatever they do or do not seek, it is a fact that Socialism destroys some of the bases of personal independence. Britain's strict labor control laws have been rarely invoked in the last five years. So far, only 657 applications for permission to change jobs have been actually refused, but the laws remain on the books and there is no doubt that thousands of workers are hesitant to change their jobs because of them. Some Laborites, e.g., Nye Bevan, regularly use the vocabulary of class warfare. Given a period of sharp economic stress, British Socialism might take an ugly, dictatorial turn.

Some contend that there is no "might" about it--that Socialism must necessarily drive more & more deeply into the liberties of the individual. On this point, Eric Gibbs, chief of TIME'S London Bureau, cabled an observation:

"So far as there is any actual experience of the working of Socialist governments in parliamentary democracies, the evidence seems to point the other way. Instead of the Socialist machine accelerating in a grim geometric progression towards an infinity of state control, the British and Scandinavian models seem to have some inner friction or contradiction which soon brings them to a halt.

"In Britain, Norway, Sweden and Finland, whenever I have asked Socialist leaders about further nationalization, the reaction has usually been strangely identical: a slightly sheepish smile, an embarrassed shrug, some evasive words amounting to this: 'Don't get us wrong, we're still Socialists, mind you, but you see this isn't quite the time . . . etc. etc.' "

Tighten Your Belts. The British Labor Party has carried out a high proportion of the promises it made in 1945; yet many of its 1945 followers feel let down. These disillusioned Laborites are the Tory hope for Feb. 23.

One of them is Albert Sewell, a middle-aged schoolteacher who grew up in a working-class home. In the 1945 election, Sewell voted Labor. This year he will vote Conservative for the first time. "Labor's greatest failure," says Sewell vehemently, "is that it has not made ordinary working people realize that unless we first tighten our belts and then get down to the business of producing hell-for-leather, this country will go bankrupt and there will be millions out of work."

Of Labor's welfare services, ex-Socialist Sewell had this to say: "It's been done too quickly, with inefficient planning, inaccurate estimates and an enormous costs, just when the country can least afford it. It's all very fine, but it seems likely to ruin us."

A few months ago shrewd observers believed there were enough Albert Sewells to insure a Tory victory. Now they are very doubtful. The British Gallup poll (which has been accurate in the past) shows that Labor reached a low point last November when it had 38% to the Tories' 48%. Labor's strength grew through December. It took a further spurt when the election date was announced. Faced with an actual immediate choice, grumblers against the government shut up and returned to the Labor fold. A Gallup poll this week showed Labor 45 1/2%, Tories 44%.

If the pollsters are right about the trend, then only an all-out crusade can put the Tories in office. Last week there was no sign of a crusade. The Tory campaign manifesto tried to sound as Laborite as possible and the Labor manifesto tried to sound as Tory as possible. This political osmosis, familiar in U.S. politics, is relatively new to Britain. Unless the Tories can break out of the "me-too" pattern and wake the voters to a sense of Britain's economic and political perils, it is hard to see how the Tories can win.

Between one queuetopian brontosaurus and another, many voters will choose the brontosaurus they have.

*For an account of a celebration of India's independence with more traditional British pomp & circumstance, see below. * Although Churchill started writing a History of the English-Speaking Peoples in 1936, he has yet to learn the difference between the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. His misquotation is from the Declaration.

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