The Challengers

From the steps of the Royal Exchange, the City of London's Common Cryer cried out: "Oyez, oyez, oyez! By the Queen, a proclamation dissolving the present Parliament and declaring the calling of another." So, last week, began Britain's fourth general election campaign since the closing days of World War II. The office-hungry Labor Party had only 20 days in which to wrest the government away from Sir Anthony Eden's Conservatives. The challengers went into the fight as underdogs, but only slightly under (by 1%, according to the week's News Chronicle Gallup poll). Their leaders wore chipper fronts, but in private were far from optimistic. "I shall enjoy every minute of it," promised old (72) but spry Party Leader Clement Attlee, as he plunged into his tenth election campaign.

Labor's chance to repeat its 1945 upset exists in the statistics at least: habit and party regularity promise Labor and the Conservatives just about 12 million votes apiece for certain. With another 1,000,000 votes likely to be sprinkled among the Liberals and lesser parties, the election will turn on the decision of from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 independents.

Papering Over. Labor's first disadvantage is its divided house. Nye Bevan is playing the good boy now. The party rift has been papered over with an innocuous manifesto composed at the leadership's bidding by two of the noisiest Bevanites : Richard Grossman and Tom Driberg.

For want of something better, Laborites pin their electioneering hopes on the wide spread British fear of the H-bomb (the Labor manifesto opposes more H-bomb tests, but stops short of opposing the making of the bomb). Topic B is the rising cost of living. But most curious of all, the word socialism is not even men tioned in the entire manifesto. The authors had in mind men like a London bus driver who explained last week: "I vote Labor because it speaks for the little man. But I can't stick nationalization and I don't like the ring to the word socialism. I won't vote for the Tories because they've never done a bloody thing for me. But I'll feel better about Labor if they drop socialism."

Swine Talk. Labor's staunch old familiars ranged out onto the hustings last week to address a country which seemed to be basking in a kind of prosperous complacency. Calm Clement Attlee hastened about in a Humber Hawk chauffeured by his wife Violet, got an affectionate wel come everywhere. City-bred Herbert Mor rison, the party's No. 2, headed for Lancashire with his bride, a Lancashire lass, to try his cockney wit in a strategic voting area where he can now claim kinship. Rebel Rouser Aneurin Bevan careened through the industrial towns and docksides to roll his rich Welsh voice behind Bevanite candidates and Bevanite notions. In a manner reminiscent of days gone by, when he likened the Tories to "vermin," Nye got off to an impish start by likening the Tories to the biblical Gadarene swine. ("I would rather move in a herd," replied Tory Rab Butler last week, "than be a solitary, lonely and disgruntled pig.")

Party Chairman Dr. Edith Summerskill, for whom Malenkov picked posies in Moscow last summer, based her electoral hopes on feminine intuition. "On two previous occasions when Labor had a woman chairman, " said she to a candidates' pep meeting, "the party was returned with a clear majority. I hope to make it a hat trick this year." As the campaign began, it looked as if Labor would have to rely on old habits and new hat tricks. It did not have much to offer in the way of ideas.

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