In Dubious Battle

At polling places in 630 parliamentary constituencies throughout the British Isles this week, 34 million voters will decide whether to give Britain's Conservative Party an unprecedented third straight general election triumph. Upon their choice will turn the management of Britain's foreign policy, economy and continuing social revolution for anything up to five years to come. Last week, as it became apparent that this glittering prize was genuinely up for grabs, Britain's politicians took off the gloves and began to slug it out barefisted.

In the first fortnight of the campaign, Labor's keen, highly organized drive in the crucial "marginal" constituencies had reduced the Tories' once commanding public opinion poll lead to a slim 1 1/2 points. At first, while Labor bored in, the

Tories had behaved much like the U.S. Republicans of 1948, campaigning decorously on the confident assumption that all they needed to do was to avoid rocking the boat. But unlike Tom Dewey's cohorts, the Tories awoke in time to change their campaign style. "Attack," ordered Tory Chairman Lord Hailsham last week. "Expose the grisly Socialist record. Ridicule their crude pretensions."

Even Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan hastily dropped his unruffled "Supermac" pose. "The Labor Party is deeply divided," he told a London suburban crowd. "Some are practically fellow travelers, some almost Communist." And in speech after speech during a tour of Scotland the Prime Minister boldly laid claim to credit for the greatest diplomatic event of the year. "Do you think," he asked, "that Mr. Khrushchev and President Eisenhower would have been discussing together at Camp David if I had not decided to break the ice and go to Moscow last winter?"

And Boo to You. Every bit Macmillan's match at making politics with peace and prosperity, the Labor Party's Hugh Gaitskell coupled pie-in-the-sky welfare promises with reasons for tax reform that came oddly from the lips of a man whose brushes with manual labor have been at best fleeting. "People making these capital gains," he had intoned, "should pay tax on them so that we who live by the sweat of our brow, or with our hands, could have it a little bit easier." In the thickening fog of oratorical battle, Labor hecklers twice howled down Tory Macmillan's attempts at street-corner speeches in Scotland and Yorkshire. And at Swansea, as Macmillan walked wearily toward a railroad station entrance after a seven-speech day, a woman bystander suddenly assailed him with a loud "Boo-oo-oo." Rounding on his tormentor, the Prime

Minister of Great Britain shouted at her: "And boo to you, too."

Off with your Taxes. In his new aggressiveness, Macmillan early in the week fired off a taunt that overnight came to dominate the political infighting. Reeling off the list of Gaitskell's promises (retirement at half pay for all, more schools, hospitals, housing), Macmillan asked: "How can you pay for all you promise?" Stung to anger, Hugh Gaitskell, onetime professional economist, retorted with yet another piece of pie-in-the-sky: "There will be no increase in the standard rate of income tax under a Labor government so long as normal peacetime conditions continue." And from London, Labor Party headquarters chipped in: "We are going to abolish sales tax on such essentials as clothes, furniture and many household goods." In shocked response, newspapers, Tory candidates--and voters--all over Britain began to echo the question: "How will it all be paid for?'' Macmillan pressed his advantage. "A gross piece of electioneering," he sniffed. "They'd be driven to printing money.''

At week's end, the argument that still raged on TV and on the hustings was whether Britain's prosperity was being properly distributed and who could best spread it and keep it going. As Britain's ruling party for the last eight years, the Tories could claim with some truth that they were the builders of Britain's current boom. But against that. Labor could appeal to the deep-rooted British feeling that no party should be kept in office too long. As election day approached, most of Britain's political experts cagily refused to make predictions and many of London's "turf accountants," i.e., bookies, were refusing to handle election bets. At week's end those who would were offering odds of 5-to-3 against Labor.

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