Crusade of the Optimists

Britain's once famed and powerful Liberal Party, which produced such parliamentary lions as William Ewart Gladstone, Lord Asquith and David Lloyd George, has not played a decisive role in British politics since 1924. Nevertheless, a recent Gallup poll showed that 38% of the British electorate, weary of Clement Attlee's Socialism, distrustful of Winston Churchill's Conservatism, said that they would vote Liberal if they thought the party had a chance of winning. Last week both Socialists and Tories were ardently wooing the Liberals, and some observers thought that the third party's role might prove a decisive factor on election day.

Winston Churchill launched his campaign to capture the Liberal vote last month with a gallant gesture toward his old friend and Liberal leader, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, daughter of onetime Liberal Prime Minister Asquith. He offered to give her some of the Tories' free radio time. At the same time, Laborite Herbert Morrison was courting the political loyalty of another important Liberal, Lady Megan Lloyd George, daughter of Britain's last Liberal Prime Minister.

In 1945 the Liberals captured only twelve seats, seven of them in Wales. But they got 9% of the popular vote, and could have swung the balance in many constituencies. Most Liberal candidates lean more to the Tories than to the Laborites. If Churchill's attempt to enlist the Liberal vote had succeeded, a combined Tory-Liberal front would have been a formidable combination.

Last week, the Liberals were retaining their political independence despite Churchill's best efforts. Cracked the London Economist: "A follower of the British press . . . might have been pardoned . . . for imagining that the forthcoming election was a contest solely between Liberals and Conservatives, an election of 1900 rather than 1950 . . ."

One Liberal leader went on the air and flatly rejected Churchill's advances. "This election is not just between Mr. Churchill and the Labor Party," he said. ". . . We all respect Mr. Churchill as a wartime leader, but we are not at war." Following this line of thought the Liberals have put some 400 candidates in the field; few think that many of these can be elected.

At week's end there were signs that Churchill was about to give up his suit. Said he: "The authors of this demonstration [the Liberal crusade] hope to queer the pitch so that the result of the great electoral struggle may be meaningless."

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