On the Hustings

(See Cover) Here was Nottingham, where 300 years before, Charles I broke with Parliament and challenged Cromwell's Roundheads.

"I hear you like photo finishes," cried Anthony Eden to the horse-betting Nottingham crowd. "All right, but just get the right man ahead this time." Women craned and gawked to get a good look at the handsome, well-tailored Prime Minister of Great Britain, up there on the crude wooden platform. It began to drizzle. Eden patted his grey hair. "My word, it's rain. Well, never mind, I'm sure the sun will shine again." There were chuckles from the crowd. "The cost of living has gone up much less under us than under the Socialists . . ." Eden went on. "But the most important thing is peace. Peace.

Send us back! That is the last thing I want to ask you."

Then there was Buckinghamshire and a home named Cherry Cottage--or at least the best reproduction of it a London TV studio could manage. Inside a modest, chintzy living room, a camera settled on the figure of former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, slightly hunched over like a shiny-domed parenthesis. "We want only those restrictions which make life freer for the majority," explained the leader of Labor. ". . . The tiger in his cage is very fed up, but the rest of us are pleased he is behind bars. That is the only kind of restrictions we want." As for peace, of course the Tories are for it too. "But we believe in these things more dynamically and with a greater sense of urgency."

Wasted Years? And then there was Lancashire--a crucial place, Lancashire, with 10% of the seats in Commons and most of them closely held. Behind his Frigidaire exterior, Chancellor of the Exchequer "Rab" Butler was warmly familiar with the Lancashiremen's chief concern--with textile mills down, they are not sharing in the prosperity that bathes most of Britain. The Laborites were crying that the Tories had wasted their 3 1/2 years in power. "Wasted years!" snorted Butler. "Do they think the years were wasted which produced 1,000,000 houses?

Which ended the wars in Korea and Indo-China? Which solved the economic crisis they left behind? Ended the rationing?

Abolished the controls?"

Around dour Glasgow, there were seats to be won or lost by the hair of a sporran. Stubby Scotsmen in sack suits, caps pulled down and pipes jutting from the crags of their faces, listened to the rough organ music of Aneurin Bevan. "In the Labor Party, it's true we've been having an argument about the hydrogen bomb, and I've been in the middle of it to a certain extent." The crowd laughed appreciatively at his understatement. "We argue . . . over our policy . . . We don't reach our policy in quiet country houses.

Because we have been brought up pretty rough, we are usually quite loud about it.

Amongst the Tawies [Bevan's habitual pronunciation of Tories] there is peace and harmony--as there is in a graveyard.

The Tawies have no searching human perplexity. We want the House of Commons filled with men and women who share the perplexity of ordinary men and women."

Who Shall Rule? From Land's End to John o' Groat's, the spring air of Britain swirled alive last week with the sound of political combat--a noise deeply serious, bitterly contentious, sometimes strident with the ugly notes of class hatred, but for all that, comfortably reassuring. Election Day was coming again to the country where parliamentary democracy was born.

Who should rule Britannia? Suave Sir Anthony Eden, 57, ensconced at last in No. 10 Downing Street after faithful years in the shade of the giant Churchill? Or Clement Attlee, 72, the plain and comfortable architect of the postwar Welfare State? The Conservatives, heirs to Pitt and Disraeli and Churchill, scions of the best schools and families, trustees of the government for the past 3 1/2 years? Or ' the Laborites, offspring of the coalpits, workshops and the London School of Economics?

Some 35 million voters in 630 parliamentary constituencies had three weeks in which to listen, question, heckle and then, on May 26, to vote. Even before the first campaign oratory vibrated over trim farmlands, past black smokestacks, across cobbled village streets and town squares, the vast proportion had already made up their minds. Unless an astounding landslide is in the making--and few think one is--roughly 12 million to 13 million Britons are steadfastly for Labor and about the same number, or slightly fewer, are habitually Conservative. Perhaps 500 of Commons' seats are therefore already spoken for. But in about 130 other constituencies, locked in the elusive mood of Britain's several million wavering voters, lies the mandate to govern.

Over the Pans. To judge by their manifestoes, the antagonists had few real deep-down issues to differ over. Burned badly by their six-year watch over the hot pans of nationalization, the Laborites are no longer such strident advocates of Marxist Socialism. The once deep-blue Tories, turned pastel by the demands of a new, more progressive generation of Conservatives, have dismantled only a part of the Welfare State (public ownership of the steel and road transport). They have committed themselves to many of the economic and social concepts it was built upon. In foreign policy the two parties differ in tone, and sometimes in detail, but stand mutually for negotiation-through-strength in Europe and go-slow in Asia.

"Shades of grey" are the only differences London's Economist could see between the parties. Campaigns are designed to make those shades seem black and white. For Anthony Eden and the Conservatives, the May 26 election is a big gamble. With the prime-ministership, Eden inherited only a thin 19-seat majority from Sir Winston Churchill. Had Eden wished, he could have limped along for the remaining 18 months of the Conservatives' five-year mandate. But he chose to risk an election to seek a mandate of his own for a full five years, hoping to win a bigger majority.

The gamble was, of course, carefully calculated and nicely timed. As the campaign got going, the London bookies' odds (4 to 1) sharply favored the Conservatives. The Conservatives were ostensibly united and plainly well organized; the Laborites were divided between Attlee moderates and Nye Bevan rebels. The Tories could point to the highest level of prosperity in Britain's history, achieved while shucking off the controls which war and Socialist experimenting had imposed. The News Chronicle's Gallup poll last week showed a 2 1/2% edge for the Tories, a gain of 2% from late April. But above all, Eden was able to kick off his campaign with a promise of the long-awaited "parley at the summit." "If the Tories cannot win this election," said Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express, "then they can never win one."

"You, You!" The parley at the summit put a crimp in Labor's attempt to show themselves more appalled than the Tories by the H-bomb.

"There is in the international scene a feeling of spring after a long winter of discontent," cried Rab Butler at Liverpool. "It would be folly to change the government, which has done so much, just when perhaps we may win the first rewards of patient waiting."

Anthony Eden, gradually working off a slightly ill-at-ease manner and flashing quick, rabbity smiles, eagerly seized the opportunity. "Nothing is more displaced than the Socialist suggestion that we have been dilatory in our approach to Russia," he said. "I have talked across the table with the Russians for many years, probably more than any other man living," said Eden in his home constituency of Warwick and Leamington.* The response emboldened the man who had waited so long and now stood, at last, in the sun. "You must decide on May 26," he said at Reading of the coming Big Four meeting, "whether you want me to go or somebody else.'' ''You. you!" some of the listeners shouted. "It's very nice of you to say that," replied Anthony Eden.

The Laborites were chagrined and showed it. Eden's sudden fervor for a meeting of chiefs of government after months of discouraging Sir Winston Churchill from trying, grumbled Clem Attlee, was naught but "a deathbed repentance." "I do not believe the government have seized all the opportunities they might," said cockney Herbert Morrison, Labor's last Foreign Secretary, speaking at Eastleigh in Hampshire. "The Labor government would be more energetic. I mean, compare the mentality of the Tories and the Socialists. We're the lively lot, they're the slothful lot . . ."

To some, the Big Four move was a dirty American trick. "President Eisenhower has never believed that any good will come out of top-level talks," said Laborite Woodrow Wyatt. "All he is trying to do is to prevent the Labor Party from winning." Nye Bevan added bitterly, "There is no government in Great Britain that the American millionaires want more than a British government which represents British millionaires."

A Blind Eye. Both sides were like wrestlers, breathing heavily, circling and feinting to find the openings for a grapple hold on the other fellow. One corner of the ring was the "brick and Brussels sprouts" constituency of Mid-Bedfordshire. Mid-Bed was long a Liberal Party stronghold. In the increased polarization of politics, the Liberals have been everywhere crushed in the middle.

The once great party of Gladstone and Lloyd George was now contesting only 109 seats. Lloyd George's son Gwilym was now a Tory minister. Lloyd George's daughter. Lady Megan, last month gave up Liberalism for Labor, saying it was the only refuge for honest radicals. "We're gone now." an old Liberal in Mid-Bed conceded. "This year we haven't even got a candidate. There's some 6.000 of us has got to choose between the Tories and the Socialists."

Into Mid-Bed, on a cold, rainy day, went a Labor star, Hugh Gaitskell. once Chancellor of the Exchequer. "The Tories say that industrial production is at record levels," said Gaitskell. "They are right, of course, but 'record level' doesn't mean anything. It was at record levels all during the years of Labor government. What is important is the pace production is rising. From 1946 to 1951 [Labor years], production rose 35%, or 7% a year. Under the Tories in the last three years, it has risen only 10%, or 3% a year."

"We're at even eights in Mid-Bed," commented a Conservative shopkeeper.

"If you can guess which way we'll go you know more than anybody else hereabouts."

In the marginal division of Wycombe, bright young (38) Tory Minister of Supply Reginald Maudling agitated memories of austerity. "Either go ahead with us--less controls, more freedom, less taxes," said he, "or with Labor--more nationalization, rationing, more controls."

Across the Suffolk flatlands, Herbert Morrison, campaigning with his tour-tired bride of four months, accused the Tories of raising the cost of living 13% since taking office, and caustically read off comparative 1951 and 1955 prices for market-basket items. "To the housewives who needed pots and pans [the late Sir Stafford] Cripps and I had to say, 'Sorry, girls,' because of the foreign demand.

That was politically courageous." At Thetford (Tom Paine's birthplace), Morrison took off on big business, monopolies, and the impending start of commercial TV.

"I put it to you," said Morrison mildly.

"You ought to punish them for that. It really is very naughty."

Going to the Country. This kind of old-shoe geniality was also the style set by Clem Attlee. who tours the countryside in a car with his wife. Labor's most effective poster was a big photograph of him with the simple legend: "You Can Trust Mr.

Attlee." As usual, his words were unexciting but got their emphasis from a certain waspishness of voice. Of the Big Four meeting: "We are all glad to see this rather delayed improvement . . ." "Clem," summed up one old party man, "is the greatest asset we have." A pipe-smoking, Christian, suburban respectability is his appeal.

Nye Bevan, by contrast, was all slash and stab. "The Tawies have got the difficult task ... of trying to persuade the poor to vote the rich back into power . . . Eden has been the best-looking man in British politics for 40 years . . . He's been sitting on his charger waiting for Sir Winston to ride and . . . now he's a bit saddle-sore."

Nye Bevan's chosen enemy was not just Eden, but a' whole class--including the ten Etonians in Eden's Cabinet. At Scots-toun, near Glasgow, Nye singled out the Cecils, that historic family whose present member, Lord Salisbury is one of Eden's closest advisers. "Salisbury is a Cecil," Bevan almost spat the name at his audience. "The Cecils have been in the government of England since the Poor Law was enacted. They built country houses in the best parts of England, and they built workhouses in the worst parts. Youngsters who have come of age since the war have no idea what the workhouses were like, of the dread people felt that they would one day wind up in one. I am proud to have been the minister responsible for getting rid of the workhouses."

In the workers' streets and docksides and pitheads, there was no man who could stir the wind and grip the emotion like Welshman Bevan.

"The Americans don't like the way the Peking regime was established," he thundered. "How about the way America was established? It's necessary for us to tell our U.S. friends to grow up ... They must listen to us with more respect . . . We have acquired more wisdom than [America]. If this is the path she intends to tread, we don't intend to tread it with her."

"If there are any Tawies present." Bevan shouted to a steel and textile crowd at Kilbirnie, "I want to tell them that Tawies and Christianity are inconsistent with each other."

For pure roof-raising demagoguery and raking of old hatred, the Tories had nothing to match Nye Bevan. But then there were many who regarded Bevan as a liability when it came to getting the votes where Labor most needed them: among the middle class, which distrusted the upper-class overtones of Toryism but disliked the raucous dogmatism of Labor.

Rab Butler turned up in Newcastle, the shipbuilding, coal-mining Labor stronghold where in 1932 more than a third of the working force was on the dole, and where nobody forgets Jarrow, the nearby "town that died."

To an audience of Conservative faithful (admission was by ticket), Butler went through his usual list of Tory accomplishments and hopes.

"And this," said Butler at last, "brings me to the whole issue of the class war--whether you prefer a government which plans to divide the wealth before they think out how to increase it, or one which pushes forward and creates new wealth in which we all can share." He brought up the name of Nye Bevan. "I don't propose to waste much time on this fellah this evening," said Butler. "I was reading Pilgrim's Progress recently. In it, Christian meets up with a Mr. Talkative from Prating-row. I was very struck by something that Christian said of him. He said, 'All he hath lieth in his tongue.' " The crowd burst into applause.

The Hecklers. One familiar rumbling voice was unheard during the campaign's first week. Retired only five weeks from No. 10 Downing Street, Sir Winston Churchill was nominated without opposition in his old constituency of Woodford. In Eden's opening campaign speech to the country, Churchill was not even referred to. "There is of course no gratitude in politics," commented the Manchester Guardian. "But it... does seem a little curious that the Tory Party should have dropped Sir Winston . . . absolutely, as if he had become a liability, almost an outcast." Before the week was out, Eden dispatched an amends-seeking note to "the architect of our success . . . the leader under whom I have been so proud to serve." It was one of Eden's few fumbles, and betrayed his felt need to emerge from the shadow as a leader on his own.

Eden himself was not spared the heckling that is a public art in Britain. At one sunny stopover, Eden took off his coat and raised his voice to compete with roaring traffic. "The Socialists have been saying all we do is look out for the rich. We took sixpence off the income tax," he said. Besides, he went on, the Tories had raised old-age pensions.

A grey-haired lady shouted from the crowd: "Why did you wait three and a half years?" Angry bystanders jostled the lady and murmured, "Go back to Moscow." Eden put on the father-knows-best manner which comes all too easily to well-schooled, club-and-garden-party-trained Tories. "You ought to be ashamed to mention the matter, dear lady," ssaid Eden. "We have built more schools in three and a half years than the Socialists in six." "Not enough," snapped the old lady.

Touring London's suburbs at week's end, Eden ran into uglier heckling. "You're a traitor to Britain by giving arms to the Germans," a hoarse voice called out. and trailed off into an accusation that Eden and the Conservatives had sat back on chairs while Britons died in the war. Eden reddened and flared, "I lost two brothers in the first war and my son in the last one." The heckler howled: "You're a scoundrel!" Eden rejoined: "I am quite willing to be called a scoundrel, but I won't let anybody say that I and my family have not done their share for the country."

At another stop, heckled again about German rearmament, Eden replied: "I've fought two wars against the Germans. But if you are going to perpetuate hate, you'll never have peace. If you live in hate, you'll never bring peace to the world, my friend." The crowd loved it. "Bah," bellowed a husky throat. "Bah," echoed Eden. "Just listen to that answer. Any sheep can make that noise."

The first brisk 800-mile swing gave Eden a worn look but bouncy high spirits.

"I found our people everywhere in excellent heart, so I don't think you need worry about spirit in our camp," said he to one rainy-day crowd. "But there's one thing I worry about and I'd like you to worry about. Everyone must vote." Housewives shouted, "Hear, hear." "That's the stuff," replied Eden with a smile. "Please don't get overconfident."

So, with wit and wind, fact and fancy, rancor and fellowship, democracy worked its special ferment in Great Britain. At the campaign's halfway mark, big things like the Big Four meeting, little things like a drop in the price of tea, bred confidence in Tory meeting rooms. The Liberal London News Chronicle reported that in "Labor committee room after committee room, there is the grey admission that half the workers are disheartened, the other half defeatist." There were, of course, Laborites who would deny it. But most of the betting was that unless the wind turned full about, Britain was about to vote the Conservatives back in.

* Whose approximately 57,000 voters are the only ones in Great Britain who will find Eden's name on the ballot. The voters of Walthamstow West are the only ones who vote directly for or against Labor's Clement Attlee. Each constituency votes for its own M.P.: the party that elects the most organizes the government and installs its leaders.

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