This Last Prize
GREAT BRITAIN
(See Cover)
In an hour of gathering darkness and discouragement, the people of Great Britain turned again to a leader who had served them well before. The message, "Winston is back," flashed through the world as it once flashed through the British fleet, carrying with it a quickening reassurance and a leap of hope.
If all had been well with Britain, Winston Churchill might never have been called. It was not the fate of Britain's greatest leader to serve his people in prosperity. Six years ago, in the hour of his country's greatest triumph, his leadership had been decisively dismissed. Grateful for victory, but nursing prewar grievances against the Tories and the upper classes, a majority of the British turned away from Churchill to the brave new world of Socialism. Now that world, so hopefully launched, was waterlogged and awash. But grievances and memories die hard in class-torn Britain. Churchill, trying for office last year, was narrowly defeated. Last week he was narrowly victorious.
The Lord Warden. The crisis Britain faced had none of the sharp, agonizing pain of Dunkirk. It was. rather, a dull ache brought on by years of seeming hopelessness and actual attrition. A new Churchillian call for blood, sweat, toil and tears might not now find the same response as it had before, but for the moment at least, there was reassurance in the old familiar, dogged smile beneath the square black hat. There was an encouraging echo of the good old days in the sight of Churchill making the V sign from his big, black Humber, the red, blue & gold flag of his honorary title, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, bravely flying from its fender, and the deep blue ribbon of Conservatism decorating its hood.
At 76, Churchill was not the man he had been ten years before. His shoulders were rounder; his jowls hung looser beside his bulldog jaws. But his step was still springy, and under his beetling brows his eyes could still smolder and twinkle with their old fire. During the last years of his eclipse, old friends and enemies alike had noticed in Churchill's speech a tendency to slur and meander, but in the heat of this latest campaign, with victory once more within his grasp, the old leader gave no sign of such deterioration.
"Good old Winnie," "Good luck, sir," cried the crowds that pressed in on him as Churchill, beaming broadly, smoking a huge cigar and jauntily swinging a cane, called last week at Buckingham Palace to submit his new cabinet to the King.
Eight key members of his new cabinet were with him, and each one drew a separate cheer as he came out. To his admirers, it was another reassuring sign that Churchill had chosen as his aides many of the same men who had served with him through the war (see box), and that he had made himself Minister of Defense as well as Prime Minister-a clear sign that he intended to take full charge.
In a campaign restricted by both parties to generalities, Churchill had promised his people nothing but leadership. By a narrow margin, the British electorate decided to take up that promise.
Anything You Can Do. "I wish," said Lord Woolton, who had organized the Tory campaign, "that the majority had been much bigger. I believe it would have been, if the election had been fought on the domestic issues and the financial issues facing the country. Unfortunately, it has not been; it's been fought on the cry of 'warmongering,' and that I believe is the most ungrateful cry anybody could have raised against a great man to whom the nation is vastly indebted."
Crisis after crisis (Iran, the Suez Canal, the announcement of a whacking new dollar deficit) had smitten the country just before and during the campaign, but none had found more than a hollow echo in the banalities of electioneering. They were too much a fault of the times to provide political ammunition. The necessity for rearmament was not an arguable point but a sober fact, demanding some -L-1,300 million of expenditure by the voters in 1951-52, regardless of which party won.
With winter just around the corner, neither side offered much of a solution for the worst fuel shortage since 1947, for the inadequacies of transport, the scarcities of raw materials, a foreign trade balance $340 million in the red and a cost-of-living index rising weekly. Conservatism skirted the issues and harped on Labor's mistakes, confidently asserting, "Anything you can do, we can do better." Labor responded by screaming "warmonger" at every Tory plea for strength.
To refute this "cruel and ungrateful charge," in a speech at Plymouth, Winston Churchill begged, with tears in his eyes, for a chance to lead his country again to greatness and to peace. "It is the last prize I seek to win," he said.
The big fact of the Churchill victory was the closeness of it. The election showed that Britain is still sharply divided. The two great masses-Tory and Labor-held immovably to their positions in the 3950 election. The only movement in Britain's electoral machinery was that of the Liberals. In some 500 constituencies where there was no Liberal candidate, the Liberal voters were forced to choose between extremes they disliked or to abstain from voting. Those who voted went Tory three times out of five. The results:
Seats Vote Percent Conservatives 321 13,721,346 48.0 Labor 294 13,945,263 48.7 Liberals 6 723,000 2.5 Communists 0 22,000 .1 Others 3 177,000 .7 100 Labor actually had a popular vote of 224,000 votes over the Tories, but the big leads they ran up in their stronghold constituencies were, in effect, wasted votes. The Tories have a parliamentary majority of only 18, and a majority of 27 over Labor, much too close for comfort.
Solemn Choice. "The people have cast out a party they no longer want," groused London's News Chronicle, "in favor of one they do not trust. No one has any right to be pleased." To a large extent, no one was. Labor didn't like defeat; Liberals didn't like hard choices, and Conservatives didn't like their small majority.
The voting itself was quiet. The electorate took their time about going to the polls. In London, tired housewives queued patiently to do their daily shopping before going to vote. Near Manchester, where autumnal hills and fields, gowned in the Labor Party colors of red and yellow, were beginning to fade, a farm wife was asked if her husband had voted yet. "Nay, nay," she answered, "he's ower thrang [too busy] yit, he's got his coos to milk." But the voters turned out-82% of them, as compared with 51% in the last U.S. presidential election.
What excitement there was came after the balloting. In London on election night, crowds 15,000-strong thronged the traditional gathering places, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, to watch the returns posted on huge bulletin boards. Balloon hawkers ("Red, a tanner, blue, a tanner") did a brisk business in party symbols, while raucous students, their colleges identifiable by the color of their scarves, greeted the election results with boos and cheers. The crowd's mood was more festive than partisan. Piccadilly's streetwalkers were out in three times their usual force, and a cordon of policemen surrounded the boarded-over statue of Eros to ward off the drunks who always want to climb it on such occasions. At the Savoy, a gilded party of 2,000 (including Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Merle Oberon and Sharman Douglas) joined Press Lord Viscount Camrose of the Daily Telegraph to sip champagne and watch a private bulletin board.
As the tally was recorded, famous names were called in victory or defeat. P:J In Devonport, Randolph Churchill, Winston's only son, failed to unseat Bev-anite Michael Foote by 2,390 votes. But Churchill's two sons-in-law, Duncan Sandys (husband of Diana) and Christopher Soames (husband of Mary), won their Conservative seats.
P:Rebel Aneurin Bevan piled up a heavier than usual majority in the Welsh constituency of Ebbw Vale. The two Ministers who resigned with him, Harold Wilson and John Freeman, held their seats. So did the rest of the small camp of Bev-anites, including Sevan's own wife, Jennie Lee. Mr. and Mrs. Bevan are the only man & wife team in the House of Commons. P: In Plymouth, John Jacob Astor, parachutist son of a famed spitfire parliamentarian, Lady Astor, wrested his mother's old Commons seat from Laborite Lucy Annie Middleton by 710 votes. Brother William Waldorf Astor also got elected. Father, a viscount", sits in the House of Lords.
P:In Anglesey. Wales, Lady Megan Lloyd-George, left-leaning Liberal daughter of a famed Liberal father, lost the parliamentary seat she had held for 22 years. But her brother, Gwilym Lloyd-George, styling himself a Liberal Conservative, got elected. P: In Colne Valley, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, right-leaning Liberal daughter of another Prime Minister, Asquith, and a friend for whom Churchill himself had campaigned, went down to defeat.
When the election was announced in September, Tory leaders had looked for a landslide. Early public opinion polls led them to hope for a majority of 100 seats. As election day drew near, the prophesied margin grew narrower. The first returns blasted all hopes of a big victory. The Tories gained a few seats in Labor's strongest bailiwicks, the cities, but the Laborites were still well ahead at the end of the first day's counting. Next day the Tories pulled up even and went out ahead in numbers of seats won. But at the end of the tally. Party Secretary Morgan Phillips was able to look up from the nightmare of figures sprawled on his desk at Labor's headquarters and announce with a sudden happy smile: "Well, whatever's happened, we've secured the biggest vote of any party in history.'' "We'll be back again in six months." said one of his henchmen. "Well, maybe not six. but anyway 18," said another.
It was cold comfort. Late that night, the headquarters in Transport House bore the unmistakable signs of defeat. Ticker tape littered the floor. Torn scribble sheets covered with outdated calculations were piled on desks. Campaign posters as anachronistic as Christmas cards in July hung sheepishly on the walls. A few party workers popped out fora beer, but most just slumped, sucking stale cigarettes over milky cups of tea.
Six Years of Work. At 5 o'clock Friday afternoon. Clement Attlee <
Postwar Britain proved a rocky soil for a Socialist Jerusalem. The lower classes ate better, but the middle class was leveled flat. Millions enjoyed better medical care (the Tories had to learn that false teeth and free specs aren't jokes to people grateful for them), but the government lived beyond its means. Even the doctrinaires learned that nationalization-cures nothing. The best of Labor's leaders died (like Ernie Bevin). wore themselves out (like Sir Stafford Cripps). or proved inadequate forthe highest tasks (like Herbert Morrison at the Foreign Office). Clement Attlee. conscientious and Christian, carried on-not an imposing figure. but a decent one. He was badgered by Tories in front of him, by crises and muddle around him, and by Aneurin Bevan on his flank.
What of Attlee now? He knows as well as any of his followers that to keep the party together he must stay on as leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Many a Laborite hopes and expects to find the Tory government up to its neck in trouble before too long. "They'll begin to get the blame for unavoidable discomforts, the same as we did," said one. "A lot of people who are expecting them to work miracles will be sadly disappointed. Take that Glasgow woman on the BBC the other night. She planned to buy a cooker, she said, but when the election was announced she decided to wait till the Tories brought the prices down."
If a new election threatened soon, Clement Attlee would be badly needed to head his party's' candidates. If, on the other hand, the new government held on, he would be just as badly needed to protect the party from Rebel Aneurin Bevan.
And what of Bevan? As of now, Attlee securely holds the party's reins. But many observers, including Lord Beaverbrook's stoutly Tory Daily Express, saw in 53-year-old Nye Bevan the real victor in this election. Despite his popularity in his own constituency, his antics had undoubtedly scared many Liberals into voting Tory. "He can claim," said the Daily Express, "to have brought the Tories to office on terms they may well find embarrassing and unprofitable. In opposition, his star will rise still higher."
What were the Tories' prospects of resisting the onslaughts of Bevanism?
Talk About Fun. "It is a pity," remarked Britain's Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in 1915, "that Winston hasn't a better sense of proportion ... I don't think that he will ever climb to the top in English politics." If the prophecy was a poor one, the charge was just. Young Churchill, a rough rider in Cuba before Teddy Roosevelt ever got there, author, soldier, hero and cabinet minister all before he reached the age of 40, never did get the knack of seeing things from the narrow perspective of lesser men. Where they saw despair, he saw hope; where they saw defeat, he saw challenge; where they saw surrender, he saw opportunity to attack. When in 1940 such darkness as Britain had never known loomed over his country, Winston looked at the future from his peculiar perspective and dared to tell history and his people that this was "their finest hour."
Churchill's courage is as desperately needed by Britain today as it was in 1940. He moves in an aura of historic destiny at the very center of the stage, basking in the glow of great events. "Talk about fun," he wrote home from Omdurman, where he served with Kitchener in 1898, "where will you beat this? On horseback at daybreak, within shot of an advancing army, seeing everything and corresponding direct with headquarters!" The 76-year-old Churchill of 1951 has changed amazingly little from that galloping, youthful enthusiast. This old lion can still rouse the sluggish and the faint of heart to follow a forlorn and glorious hope.
The Grand Scale. Such hardheaded, competent Conservative administration as Churchill's deputies, Eden, Butler, Maxwell Fyfe and the rest, offered Britain would undoubtedly bolster her tottering finances at home and strengthen her relations abroad. Tory policy has long stressed the necessity of a sound economy and a closer cooperation between Britain, the U.S. and Western Europe. Churchill will give his aides every encouragement to put such policies into practice, but his own contributions will be on a far grander scale.
Winston Churchill is Conservative in name only. His unpredictable boldness so horrified diehard Conservatives like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain that for ten years between 1929 and 1939 they never trusted him with a cabinet position. Churchill has no patience with the fussy arithmetic of economics or the meeching niceties of diplomatic negotiation. His style is more the "parley at the summit," the face-to-face bargaining of great leaders holding the destinies of millions in easy command. In a disillusioned era which now regards Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam as places where presumed friends made regrettable decisions, such tactics may no longer be practicable, but as long as Churchill is around to propose them, Anglo-American affairs are sure to rise from the slump of wary boredom into which they have fallen. Whatever their differences may be, the U.S. likes Churchill, Churchill likes the U.S., and Britons like a good show.
"I've Seen Worse." Last week, in his capacity as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, Winston Churchill picked up the reins of government with a pitifully small parliamentary majority to work with. His first effort to swell that majority, by offering Liberal Leader Clement Davies a place in the cabinet, failed. Davies refused the job and promised only qualified support. But Churchill the man had won support before where Churchill the politician had failed. "It is because things have gone badly and worse is to come that I demand a vote of confidence," he told Parliament in 1942. And he got the vote. If anybody could do it again, Churchill was the man.
"There lies before us now a difficult time, a hard time," Winston Churchill told a group of Britons in Abbey House last week. "I have no hesitation in saying that I've seen worse and had to face worse. But I do not doubt we shall come through because we shall use not only our party forces but a growing sense of the need to put Britain back in her place-a need which burns in the hearts of men far beyond these shores."
The old lion was still a lion.
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