Showdown

In the Grand Committee Room of Westminster, Britain's Parliamentary Labor Party faced up to the question that it had so long evaded: What is to be done about the Bevanites? Fears of a party split that would jeopardize Labor's chances in the next British election hung heavy in the air, but to Clement Attlee, back from a squally powwow with Europe's splintery Socialists, the time seemed ripe for a showdown.

Flicking out his words like whisks of a schoolmaster's cane. Attlee moved what amounted to an either-or ultimatum to the Bevanites: disband and shut up, or get out of the Labor Party. And no argy-bargy about what is or is not a party-within-a-party. "You can't define an elephant," snapped Attlee, "but you can recognize one when you see it."

Bulky Nye Bevan obviously did not think it was time for a showdown. Nye had been expelled by the party once before (in 1939, for peddling Popular Frontism); what's more, he did not have the votes to challenge Attlee. "There is nothing sinister in the Bevan group," he said, hand on heart. "Let us put off [a vote] until the next session of [Parliament]." But the majority turned him down. By 188 votes to 51 (with 53 Laborites absent or abstaining), the Parliamentary Labor Party endorsed Attlee's ultimatum. The Bevanites would probably disband as a group, but this would hardly stop them from getting together informal-like, and thinking and talking alike.

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