Truculent Truce

In an atmosphere hot with the steam of seething tempers, the riven ranks of British Labor met last week in a parliamentary committee room to patch up their difference--or open the rift irrevocably. For once, Party Leader Clement Attlee had thrown his native caution to the winds. He came to the meeting armed with a resolution demanding that the rebel Bevanites come to heel, without reservation. They must support, among other things, rearmament. Bevan himself, in a speech in his own constituency of Ebbw Vale, had all but threatened to withdraw from the party if such a resolution were pressed.

At the party meeting, Bevan taunted Attlee by saying, "Clem, you're a liar." Attlee sputtered back: "You are!" At that warm moment, Tom O'Brien, leader of the studio and theater workers' union, broke in: "May I propose that we transfer this meeting to Westminster Hall where we can have a brass plaque inserted in the floor to record for history, 'On this spot, the Labor Party committed suicide, aided and abetted by Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan'?"

His quip did the trick. The tension relaxed; sanity and even some order were restored. A moment later, onetime Bevanite John Strachey claimed the floor to introduce a compromise resolution urging re-establishment of the old rule that Laborites must promise to vote with the party except on "matters of conscience," e.g., pacifism. Still quivering, Clem and Nye were both persuaded to accept the motion. Labor's rift was thus papered over for the time being--but the crack was still there.

Five days later, in Durham, Nye Bevan aired a few of his current opinions:

P: U.S. policy is "doing more damage to Europe than Stalin could ever do."

P: Socialists all over Europe should unite in a coalition against the policies of both the Soviet Union ("poisoned by years of frustration") and the U.S. ("dominated far too much by capitalism and financiers"). "I am not anti-American. I am not anti-anybody, but I don't believe the American nation has the experience, sagacity or self-restraint necessary for world leadership at this time."

P: The idea that Russia has any notion of making war on Western Europe constitutes "a monstrous misreading of history."

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