Under Way

In a flourish of ceremony and sentiment, Britain's 41st Parliament-last week held its final session. Wigged and white-ruffled, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod summoned M.P.s to hear Queen Elizabeth's dissolution speech. Less than an hour later, the Queen's writs went out to 630 parliamentary constituencies, and Britain's 1959 election campaign was officially under way.

Already both of Britain's major parties were flexing their muscles for the march to the polls on Oct. 8. With the immemorial piety of the ins, Tory Party Chairman Lord Hailsham earnestly proclaimed: "I repudiate mudslinging and hope that neither party will indulge in it." Dutifully echoing this sentiment, Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell nonetheless could not resist the opportunity for a gibe at Hailshau:. "Any repentant sinner," said Gaitskell, "is always welcome."

"The Envy Tactic." As events were quick to prove, one man's mudslinging is another man's honest examination of the issues. Launching Labor's manifesto, Britain Belongs to You, at a televised press conference, Gaitskell confirmed Tory predictions that Labor's campaign weapon would be "the envy tactic," although Gaitskell obviously did not use the term. The ordinary Briton may be better off these days, conceded the Labor manifesto, but "the contrast between the extremes of wealth and poverty is sharper now" than when the Conservatives took power eight years ago. To remedy this state of affairs --the existence of which foreign observers frankly doubt--the Labor manifesto demanded an end to "the businessman's expense-account racket," called for a tax on capital gains and measures to block loopholes in the inheritance-tax laws.

Obviously convinced that there is no longer any electoral mileage in nationalization of industry, Labor's planners said almost in passing that they would renationalize steel and road transport (denationalized by the Tories since 1951), and let it go at that. But Gaitskell obviously hoped to make big campaign capital of Labor's promise of an immediate 20% boost in old-age pensions, and other welfare benefits, all to be paid for by "planned expansion" that would also get Britain back into "the race for higher productivity among industrial nations."

"Obsolete or Obsolescent." Gaitskell's lavish promises promptly evoked an outraged reply from Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcot Amory. The Labor program, said Heathcot Amory, is "irresponsible," could only result in "huge increase of public expenditure, sharp rise in taxation, and a return to inflation with severe danger to our balance of payments."

Fact was, however, that the Tories were showing themselves scarcely less socialist than the Socialists. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan opened his personal campaign for re-election in the London suburb of Bromley with a slashing attack on Labor's "obsolete or obsolescent" economic policies, and the Tory manifesto ringingly declared that "at the very forefront of our program we place a strong pound, expanding trade, and [labor-management] unity." But the basic theme of the Tory campaign was "Don't let Labor spoil it," which in practice seemed to be a boast that the Conservatives had demonstrated they could give Britain a bigger and better-managed welfare state than the Laborites. Among the Tory Party's campaign pledges of government-bought welfare: new homes for a million Britons, doubled outlay for national health, a boost in old-age pensions, a big sports program for youth.

The Common-Room Vote. Macmillan had called for a Conservative victory to give him authority to "go to the summit conference" this winter. But some pundits argued that Labor's clear intention of attacking Macmillan as "a man of violence," responsible for the Suez fiasco, the Cyprus bloodshed, and the African concentration camps, was sure to give Labor the edge in foreign policy--particularly with the intellectual "senior common room" vote in the universities. Presumably, however, Britain's dons had nowhere to go but to the struggling Liberal Party, and Liberal Leader Jo Grimond himself, opening his party's campaign in London, honestly conceded that it looked like another Tory victory. Undaunted, Laborites noted with determined cheerfulness that Old Moore's Almanack, which had accurately predicted a long, dry summer for 1959, also predicted "a general election set for October which Labor will win."

* Since Britain's 1801 union with Ireland, from which the present counting system dates.

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