Wide Open

For a year, like a prominent married couple on the verge of divorce, the rival factions of Britain's Labor Party had been protesting publicly that their differences were really nothing at all. Any minute, said both sides, would see the start of a second honeymoon. Last week, in the theoretical privacy of the party's 51st annual conference at Morecambe, a Lancashire seaside resort familiar to many a honeymooner, the pent-up emotions in both factions exploded in a headline-making brawl.

Love Your Enemies. At a service conducted by the Archbishop of York in the local parish church the morning before the conference opened, conscientious Clement Attlee read a lesson from St. Luke: "Love your enemies; do good to them that hurt you; bless them that curse you and pray for them that despitefully use you." That afternoon, the party's executive committee met in a session so secret that even the waiters at Morecambe's old-fashioned Grosvenor Hotel were barred. "This is it," muttered one party leader ominously to a friend when the meeting was done.

At the conference itself, Aneurin Bevan, the errant mate in Labor's house, started the fur flying with a pyrotechnic display of wit, venom, vituperation and mock humility. "The U.S.," he told the conferees, is "hagridden by fears: fear of war and unemployment, and fear of peace." He accused Churchill and the U.S. of tying Britain's "economy to a perpetual war machine. This is rake's progress." However, the pink-cheeked Welshman twinkled cheerfully as he castigated his private enemies and Britain's friends alike, "I know I must be careful, lest I make a controversial speech." The audience roared with delight.

Responsible Attleeites were still seething over Nye's performance next day when the results of partywide elections for membership in the new executive committee were announced. In the seven constituency elections, which are the best barometer of rank & file party sentiment, the Bevanites won six out of seven seats. Bevan himself got the biggest vote (965,000), followed by red-haired Barbara Castle (868,000) and cocky Tom Driberg (744,000). For the first time in 23 years, Attlee's faithful lieutenant, Herbert Morrison, the lifelong trade unionist who became Foreign Secretary, was voted off the executive. He was beaten by Dick Crossman, a facile and erratically brilliant Johnny-come-lately to the Bevanite camp. The uproar in the meeting hall was deafening.

Throughout the vote, Bevan sat smugly with lips pursed, eyes straight ahead and plump fingers tipped together. Morrison was motionless. Clement Attlee stared into space, lifeless as a wax model.

The Attlee defeat was not as bad as it sounded at first. Party machinery sets aside many votes to be cast in blocs by the trade unions and other special groups. These votes gave Attlee 21 seats on the executive as compared to Bevan's six. Attlee still runs the party, though his ineffectual resistance to Bevan at Morecambe cost him prestige. Herbert Morrison would continue on as Attlee's deputy leader in the House of Commons. "I will allow no bitterness to poison my soul," Morrison told the conference, in a moving speech which earned him renewed respect. The shock of the Bevan victory had already begun to soften.

Next day, the Transport Workers' testy Arthur Deakin rose to make his speech as "fraternal delegate." Flushed with rage, Deakin cast all pretense at fraternity to the winds. "Organization was set up," he shouted, "to secure the Bevanites their place on the national executive. Very well, then, organization will be set up to counter them." This was equivalent to an open declaration of war on Bevan from the trade unions. "Tell him to sit down," shouted somebody, "he's losing us the next election."

Concede to Your Partner. That afternoon, respected ex-Miner James Griffiths, the only Attleeite to win a place on the executive in the constituency elections, reminded the dizzied and bewildered delegates that there was still a threat in the east called Soviet Russia, which had proved no very good friend to either Britain or Labor. His eloquence brought the conference down to responsible earth again, and succeeded in knocking out, by two-thirds majority, a Bevanite resolution condemning Britain's whole arms and defense program.

For the moment, the Bevanite landslide was halted, but ambitious Aneurin Bevan's irresponsible larking might still cost the party its good reputation. "In any alliance that is becoming uneasy, from the military to the matrimonial," said the Economist, "it is always the partner who values unity most highly who has to make the most concession." Aneurin Bevan's new power, the Economist continued, might well mean a Labor foreign policy "shot with ideological distrust of Britain's allies and with starry-eyed illusion about its enemies."

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