Chapter III: Part 3

The Conservative Party arouses and holds some strange allegiances. I remember Michael Foot, the editor of the left-wing weekly _Tribune_, saying that in his old constituency of Devonport there were solid blocks of Conservative votes in the poorest areas. Foot could not understand it. The rather contemptuous explanation offered by a Conservative Party organizer was: "Why not? People who are poor aren't necessarily foolish enough to buy this socialist clap-trap."

The Conservatives have been making inroads into the new middle class created by the boom of 1953-5. This group emerging from the industrial working class was formerly strongly pro-Labor. There are indications that the more prosperous are changing their political attitudes as their incomes and social standing improve.

The Conservatives concentrate on a national appeal. Labor by its origins is a class party. In a country as homogeneous as Britain, the Conservative boast that they stand for all the people rather than for merely one class or one geographical area is effective. To this the Tories add the claim that they are the party most suited by training and experience to deal with the international problems faced by the nation.

This assumption of the right to rule is not so offensive to Britons as it might be to Americans. There is little historical basis for it. If an aristocrat, Winston Churchill, led Britain to victory in World War II, a small-town Welsh lawyer, David Lloyd George, was the leader in World War I. Nevertheless, there is a tendency--perhaps a survival of feudalism--among some Britons to believe that their affairs are better handled by a party with upper-class education and accents. And of course the Conservatives look the part. Mr. Macmillan, the Prime Minister, is a far more impressive figure than Hugh Gaitskell, who probably would be Prime Minister in a Labor government. The accents, the clothes, the backgrounds of the Tory leaders give the impression of men born to conduct government. Brilliant journalists have argued that the class they represent is unrepresentative, and that the Suez crisis proved its inability to understand the modern world. Surely the present Conservative leaders and their predecessors have been guilty of quite as many errors as the Socialists and Liberals of the past. However, they give the impression of competence. As any politician knows, even in the most enlightened of democracies such impressions are as important as the most brilliant intellects or the wisest programs.

The Conservatives enjoy another important political advantage. Until the present the leaders of the party generally have been drawn from one class, the old upper middle class. They went to the same schools, served in the same regiments. Families like the Cecils, the Churchills, the Edens, the Macmillans intermarry. The closeness of the relationship breeds coherence. Basically there is an instinctive co-operation when a crisis arises. The manner in which the Tories closed ranks after Sir Anthony Eden's resignation was an example.

The upper ranks of the civil service, of the Church of England, and of the armed services are drawn largely from the same class. Usually this facilitates the work of government when the Tories are in power. But recently there has been a change. In their drive to broaden the base of the party, the Conservatives have introduced to the House of Commons a number of young politicians who do not share the Eton-Oxford-Guards background of their leaders.

The environment and education of this group and their supporters in the constituencies is much different. For Eton or Harrow, substitute state schools or small, obscure public schools. Some did go to Oxford and Cambridge, but they moved in less exalted circles than the Edens or Cecils. They are usually businessmen who have made their way in the world without the advantages of the traditional Tory background, and they are highly critical of the tendency to reserve the party plums for representatives of its more aristocratic wing.

They seem to be further to the right in politics than such "aristocrats" as Macmillan, Butler, Eden, or Lord Salisbury. They have risen the hard way, and they are more interested in promoting the interests of the business groups for which they speak than in the traditional Tory concept of speaking for the whole nation. This national responsibility on the part of the "aristocrats" was in many ways a liberal attitude. Macmillan and Butler, for instance, appear much more responsive and tolerant on the subject of trade unions than most members of the new group.

As the power of this group increases--and it will increase as the Conservative Party continues to change--sharper disputes on policy, especially economic policy, can be expected. This encourages some Socialists, naturally sensitive on the point, to believe that their opponents are headed for a period of fierce feuding within the party. Their optimism may be misplaced.

The Tories are adept at meeting rebellion and absorbing rebels. The indignant "red brick" rebel of today may be the junior minister of tomorrow whose boy is headed for Eton. Despite the advent of these newcomers, the party does not appear so vulnerable to schism as does the Labor Party with its assortment of extreme-left-wing intellectuals, honest hearts and willing hands from the unions, and conscientious and intelligent mavericks from the middle class.

Finally, the power of what has been called the "Establishment" is primarily a conservative power that wishes to conserve the governmental and social structure of Britain against the majority of reformers. On great national issues this usually places it upon the side of the Conservative Party. If it can be defined, the Establishment represents the upper levels of the Church of England, of Oxford and Cambridge, _The Times_ of London, the chiefs of the civil service. The direct power of this group may be less than has been described, but few would deny its influence.

The common background has served the Conservatives well in the past. Open political quarrels within the party are rare. (The conflict over the Suez policy was an exception.) "The Tories settle their differences in the Carlton Club," Earl Attlee once said. "We fight ours out in public. We're a democratic party that thrives on contention." Perhaps, but the contention nearly wrecked the Labor Party between 1953 and 1955 and had much to do with its defeat in 1955.

Much of the comparative tranquillity of the Conservative Party is due to the power of the party leader. Nominally, he is elected by the Conservative Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, all prospective Tory candidates for Commons, and the executive Committee of the National Union. But, as Robert T. McKenzie has pointed out in his _British Political Parties_, the leader is often selected by the preceding leader of the party when it is in power. Thus, Sir Winston Churchill made it clear that Sir Anthony Eden was his heir as leader, and Sir Anthony was duly elected.

A different situation arose when Sir Anthony resigned as Prime Minister because of illness. In that instance the Prime Minister was selected before he became leader of the party. It was widely believed outside the inner circles of the party that there was a choice between Harold Macmillan and R.A. Butler. Actually the leaders of the party, including Sir Anthony, Sir Winston, and Lord Salisbury, and a substantial number of ministers, junior ministers, and back-bench Members had made it clear that their preference lay with Macmillan.

The structure of the British government and of the Conservative Party give the leader a good deal more authority over his party than is enjoyed by a President of the United States as the head of the Republican or Democratic Party. In power or in opposition the leader has the sole ultimate responsibility for the formulation of policy and the election program of his party.

The annual party conference proposes, the leader disposes. Resolutions passed at the conference do not bind him. The party secretariat (the Central Office) is in many ways the personal machine of the leader. He appoints its principal officers and controls its main organizations for propaganda, finance, and research. Consequently, it is unlikely that a Conservative politician would challenge the authority of the leader as sharply and directly as Senator McCarthy challenged the authority of President Eisenhower in the latter's first administration. The conclusion is that, although Tory democracy is an attractive political slogan, it has little connection with the almost autocratic authority of the party leader.

In the field of political tactics moderation is the guiding principle of the new Conservatism. This became evident in the election of 1955, which the Tories fought soberly and efficiently. Pointing to Britain's evident prosperity--the stormclouds were already piling on the horizon, but campaign orators seldom see that far--the Conservatives asked the people if this combination of good times at home and easier relations abroad (the summit conference at Geneva was in the offing) was not better for the nation than revolutionary policies and hysterical oratory.

The party's appeal for votes seemed to reflect a surer grasp of popular attitudes than the Labor Party's. In retrospect the Conservative message was a consoling one. Everyone had work. Almost everyone had more money than he had had three or four years before, although the established middle class already was feeling the effect of rising prices and continued heavy taxation on real income. The roads were filling up with cars that should have been sold for export, running on gasoline that was imported with an adverse effect on the balance of trade.

During six years of Socialist control the Labor politicians had informed the British that a return to Conservative rule would mean a revival of the bad old days of unemployment, dole and hunger marches, strikes and lockouts. Yet here were Sir Anthony Eden patting the unions on the head and Harold Macmillan talking warmly of the chances of a successful conference with the Russians at Geneva. It was all a little confusing and, from the Conservative standpoint, very successful.

Traveling around Britain during the weeks prior to the 1955 election, I was struck by the number of people of both parties prepared to accept the Conservatives' contention that their party was, by some mysterious dispensation, uniquely suited to the business of conducting the nation's foreign policy. In some areas, notably in the North and the Midlands, this seemed to spring from Eden's long and, on the whole, successful record in international affairs. In others I encountered a feeling that the withdrawals from India and Egypt and such blunders as the loss of the Abadan oil refinery had lowered the prestige of the country. Certainly the Tories were not guiltless. Nonetheless, there was a persistent conviction that the Tories handled foreign affairs best. Occasionally--this was at the nadir of Socialist fortunes--I met Labor supporters who subscribed to this view.

The first public reaction to British intervention in Egypt in 1956 was a triumph for organized public opinion as directed by the Labor Party. From the resolutions that flooded into London from factory and local unions, one would have concluded that the whole of the British working class was violently opposed to governmental policy. Actually, a number of public-opinion polls showed that the country was pretty evenly divided. My own experience, traveling around Britain in January and February of 1957, convinced me that, on the whole, the working-class support for the Suez adventure was slightly stronger than that of the professional classes. Of course, as in most situations of this kind, the supporters did not bother to send telegrams of support.

The Labor Party in the House of Commons made a great offensive against the Conservative position on Egypt. This played a part, but not the dominant part, in the cabinet's decision to accept a cease-fire. The paramount factor was the indication from Washington that unless Britain agreed to a cease-fire, the administration would not help Britain with oil supplies and would not act to support the pound sterling, whose good health is the basis of Britain's position as an international banker.

The Socialists' attack did result in the emergence of Aneurin Bevan as the party's principal spokesman, and a most effective one, on foreign affairs. This is an area where the Labor Party has been weak in recent years. Death removed Ernest Bevin, a great Foreign Secretary, and Hector McNeil, the brightest of the party's younger experts on foreign affairs.

Moderation, a national rather than a class approach, the middle way--all these sufficed for the Tories in 1955. Two years later there are abundant signs that a sharper policy will be necessary to meet international and internal situations vastly more difficult. Drastic policies invite harsh argument in their formulation. Can the Conservatives continue to settle their differences in the Carlton Club or will these spill out onto the front pages of the newspapers?

The primary political problem the Conservative government faced before Suez was whether it could continue its policies, especially where they related to defense and taxation, and retain the support of a large and influential group of Conservative voters. This group is offended and rebellious because, although the Conservatives have now been in office for over five years, it still finds its real income shrinking, its social standards reduced, and its future uncertain. It regards the moderate Conservatives' economic policy and attitude toward social changes as akin to those of the Labor Party. By the middle of 1956 its resentment was being reflected by the reduction of the Conservative vote in the elections.

The group can be defined as the old middle class. During the last century it has been one of the most important and often the most dominant of classes in Britain. Its fight to maintain its position against the challenge of the new middle class and the inexorable march of social and economic changes is one of the most interesting and most pathetic parts of Britain's modern revolution.

The leaders of the old middle class represented a combination of influence and wealth in the professions, medicine, the church, the law, education, and the armed forces. The members of these professions and their immediate lieutenants administered the great institutions that had established Britain in the Victorian twilight as the world's greatest power. They were responsible for the great public schools, the Church of England, the Royal Navy, the banks, the largest industries, the shipping lines, the universities.

They were not the aristocracy. The decline of the aristocracy, with its ancient titles, its huge estates, and its huge debts, began over a century ago. The old middle class began life as the aristocracy's executors and ended as its heirs.

The pattern of life in the old middle class was shaken by World War I, but it existed relatively unchanged in 1939. The class was the butt of the bright young playwrights of the twenties and has received the acid attentions of Mr. Somerset Maugham. It supported Munich and Chamberlain, and it sent its sons away to die in 1939.

As a group, the class was well educated. The majority of the men had been to a public school and a university. Both men and women bought and read books and responsible newspapers. They traveled abroad, they knew something about the world. Some had inherited wealth. Others invested their savings.

Beneath this upper stratum of the old middle class was a lower middle class that sought to rise into it. This was made up of shopkeepers, small manufacturers, the more prosperous farmers, the black-coat workers in business, and the industrial technicians.

The future welfare of these two groups is the political problem that the Conservative Party must face. Since the decline of the Liberal Party, the Tories have counted upon the support of this class. There were many defections in the election of 1945, but it is probable that a more important reason for the Tory defeat that year was the party's failure to win the support of a new middle class that was then arising as a factor in British politics.

The chief reason why the old middle class is defecting from the Tory standard is that it believes that the Conservative governments since 1945 have not done enough to halt the drain on its incomes. Prices have risen sharply in the years since Chamberlain went to Munich. One estimate is that the 1938 income of £1,000 a year for a married man with two children would have to be raised to £4,000 to provide the same net income today. But in this class the number of men whose incomes have quadrupled or even doubled since 1938 is small.

What do the figures mean in terms of a family's life? They mean that to send the children to a public school, which the majority of this class regards as indispensable from a social and even occasionally from an educational standpoint, the father and mother must do without new clothes, books, the occasional visit to the theater. Instead of two regular servants, the family must "make do" with a daily cleaning woman. The family vacations in some quiet French or Italian seaside resort must be abandoned. The father and mother are unable to save and are increasingly worried about their future. They see a future decline in the family's social standards and economic health.

All this is aggravated in their minds by the appearance of a new middle class arising from a different background and doing new and different jobs. Its income, its expense accounts, its occasional lack of taste stir the envy and anger of the old middle class.

What the old middle class asks from the government--and, through the government, from the big trade unions and the big industrialists--is an end to the rise in the cost of living which it, subsisting chiefly on incomes that have not risen sharply, cannot meet. Directly it asks the government for an end to punishing taxation and to "coddling" of both the unions and the manufacturers.

The dilemma of the Conservative Party and its government is a serious one. To lose the support of the old middle class will be dangerous, even disastrous. For although the Tories have attracted thousands of former Socialist votes in the last two elections, these do not represent the solid electoral support that the old middle class has offered.

Perhaps in time the government may be able to reduce taxation. Before this can be done, it must halt inflation, expand constructive investment in industry, and increase the gold and dollar reserves. Each of these depends to a great degree on economic factors with world-wide ramifications. The old middle class understands this and is justifiably suspicious of "pie in the sky" promises.

Such suspicion is increased by the understanding of the other serious long-term problems that British society faces. We need mention only one in this context: how is Britain to maintain its present standards of life and the present levels of government expenditure when it is faced with the coming change in the age distribution of the population?

The steady fall in death rates and the low birth rates of the years between the two world wars are beginning to increase the proportion of elderly people, and thus to reduce the proportion of the working population to the total population. The size of the age groups reaching retirement age increases yearly. It is predicted, on the basis of present population trends, that over the next fifteen years the population of the working-age group will remain about the same but that the number of old people, persons over sixty-five, will rise over the next thirty years by about three million. At the same time the number of children of school age is expected to increase.

Britain thus is faced with a steady increase in the number of the aged who need pensions and medical care and the young who need medical care and education. This charge will be added to the burdens already borne by the working-age group.

The country needs more hospitals and more schools. It needs new highways. It has to continue slum-clearance and the building of homes. Yet Britain has been spending $7,000,000,000 a year on social services and $4,200,000,000 on defense. Under existing circumstances, and in view of present Conservative policies, can the old middle class look forward to an important reduction in taxation under any government?

Reduction of taxation was one of the goals sought by Conservative government when it planned a revision of Britain's defense program. This revision, first planned by the ministry of Sir Anthony Eden and given new impetus by the Macmillan government, has other objectives, including the diversion of young men, capital, and productive capacity from defense to industrial production for export. But an easing of the defense burden would create conditions for tax relief in the Conservative circles that need it most.

The reduction of defense expenditures places any Conservative government in a dilemma. The party expects the government to maintain Britain's position as a nuclear power--that is, as a major power. The political repercussions of the Suez crisis showed the depth of nationalism within the party, and, indeed, within the country. Yet it seems plainly impossible for the Tories to reduce taxation of the middle class drastically without cutting the defense expenditure that has maintained Britain, somewhat precariously, in the front rank of world powers.

Of course, tax relief will not fully answer the difficulties of the old middle class. Its incomes, ranging from the pensions of ex-officers to the profits of small businessmen, have lagged behind prices. Stabilization of prices is essential if this class is to maintain its standards.

The rebellion of the old middle class against Tory policy and leadership, if carried to the limit, might result in the creation of an extreme right-wing party. Such a party would be brought into being more easily if the sort of inflation which helped wreck the German democracy after World War I were to appear in Britain. Would the political good sense of the British enable them to reject the vendors of extreme political panaceas who would appear at such a juncture?

The old middle class contains today, as it has since 1945, persons and organizations fanatically opposed to the unions and to labor in general. Extremist organizations, some of them modeled on the Poujadist movement in France, have appeared. In many cases the opposition to labor policies and personalities has been expanded in these groups to include the "traitors" at the head of the present Tory government, who are considered betrayers of their party and their class.

There is a reasonable expectation that Britain will continue to encounter economic problems whose solution will involve economic sacrifices by all classes in the future. The old middle class feels that it has sacrificed more than any other group. There is thus a potential of serious trouble within the Conservative party. The most probable development, it seems to me, is an attempt by the right wing of the party to win and hold power. But a rapid deterioration of the economic situation under a moderate Tory government followed by the return to power of a Labor government might well encourage the transformation of the Tories into a radical right-wing party.

At the moment the right wing of the Conservative Party wants too much. It asks for an uncontrolled economy and is restless under the measures imposed to defeat inflation. But it also wants a stabilization of prices. It wants a "tough" foreign policy, but it opposes the taxation necessary to make the arms on which such a policy must rest. It has an almost reckless desire to curb the trade unions without reckoning the effect on industrial relations.

The moderates who fashioned the present Conservative Party and who now lead its government appear to understand their country and its position better than their critics on the right wing. In addition, their programs have attracted the attention and support of young people to a degree unknown on the right wing.

In the late thirties, when I first was indoctrinated in British politics, it was smart to be on the left. The young people before the war were very certain of the stupidity of the Conservative government policies, at home as well as abroad, and their political convictions ranged from communism to the socialism of the Labor Party. "All the young people are Bolshies," a manufacturer told me in 1939. "If we do have a war, this country will go communist."

A good proportion of young people still are on the left. But they do not seem to hold their convictions as strongly as those I knew in the pre-war years. On the other side of the fence there has been a movement toward an intellectual adoption of conservative principles. In some cases this verges on radicalism, in a few almost to nihilism: the "nothing's any good in either party, let's get rid of them both" idea.

There is always a danger to democracy in such attitudes. They are encouraged in Britain by a tendency in some circles to adopt an arrogant, patrician distaste for all democratic politics. This is understandable. The revolution that began with the war has weakened the economic and political power of a once dominant class. But that does not excuse those who seek to destroy faith in democratic processes.

The position of the Conservative Party is both stronger and weaker than it appears. There are reasons for believing that by the next general election, probably in 1959 or 1960, the policies of the government will have relieved the more immediate problems such as inflation and the need for increased exports. This success will not change Britain's position as a comparatively small power competing militarily, politically, and economically with the larger established powers, such as the Soviet Union and the United States, and the reviving powers, Germany and Japan.

The dominant group in the Conservative Party and government has, however, a considerable degree of competence and experience in government. It has an effective parliamentary majority during the present administration. Against these positive factors we must place the probability that some of its policies will continue to alienate an important group of its supporters; the result may be a rebellion within the party or worse.

The Tories are not politically dogmatic. Like the people, the whole people, they claim to represent, they are flexible in their approach to policies and programs. They change to suit economic conditions and political attitudes. In Britain's present position, the appeal of a party that contends it is working for the nation rather than a class or a section should not be minimized.

But it is precisely Britain's position in the modern world that forces upon the Conservatives today, and would force upon Labor if it came to power tomorrow, certain policies that are at odds with the principles of each faction. The Tories, for instance, must manipulate the economy. The idea of "getting government out of business" may be attractive to some industrialists, but in the nation's situation it is impractical and dangerous. Similarly, the Labor Party, despite its anti-colonialism, must follow policies that will enable Britain to keep her investments in Malaya's tin and rubber and in the oil of the Middle East.

We see the two great parties meeting on such common ground. Perhaps because they are less restricted by dogma and can boast greater talents at the moment, the Tories appear slightly more confident of their ability to meet the challenges of Britain's position.

V. _The Labor Party_

POLITICAL MACHINE OR MORAL CRUSADE?

_The idea of Socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state of society cannot be manufactured--it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine._

HENRY GEORGE

_We are all Socialists nowadays._

EDWARD VII WHEN PRINCE OF WALES

"The Tories won the election because they understood the changes that had taken place since 1945," said a Labor politician in 1955. "We misunderstood them and we lost. Yet we call ourselves 'the party of the people.'"

This assessment, made on the morning of defeat, explains to some degree the Labor Party's defeat in the general election of 1955. It raises the question of whether the party, as now constituted, is in fact a working-class party. The growth of the Labor Party, the emergence of its saints and sinners, the triumph of 1945, the disaster of 1955 make up one of the truly significant political stories of the century.

For Americans it is especially important. The British Labor Party is the strongest non-communist left-wing party in any of the great democracies of the West. Granted the normal shifts in political support, it will be back in power sometime within the next ten years. The government and people of the United States must regard it as a permanent part of British political life, and they will have to understand it better than they have in the past if the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom is to prosper.

The British Labor Party is the political arm of what the old-timers like to call "the movement." And it is as well to remember that not so very long ago--Winston Churchill was a young politician then and Anthony Eden was at Eton--it was a "movement" with all the emotional fervor the word implies. The men who made the Labor Party a power in the land were not cool, reasoning intellectuals (although, inevitably, these assisted) but hot-eyed radicals who combined a fierce intolerance with a willingness to suffer for their beliefs.

The movement includes the Labor Party itself; the Trades Union Congress, known universally in Britain as the TUC; the Co-Operative Societies; and some minor socialist groups.

The Trades Union Congress is one of the centers of power in modern Britain. We will encounter it often in this book. Here we are concerned with its old position as the starting-point for British working-class power. The first Labor Party representatives who went to the House of Commons in 1906 were supported almost entirely by members of unions. The Parliamentary Labor Party came into being as an association of the Labor members of the House of Commons. Today it includes members of the House of Lords. There was originally a much closer co-ordination between the unions and the Labor MP's than exists now.

Today the TUC, although it exerts great political power both directly and indirectly, is important principally as the national focus of the trade-union movement. All the unions of any size or importance except the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Local Government Officers, and some civil-service staff associations, are affiliated with it.

Its membership is impressive. The unions have a total membership of 9,461,000, of which 8,088,000 are affiliated with the TUC--this in a population of just over 50,000,000. The TUC's power is equally impressive. It is recognized by the government as the principal channel for consultation between the ministries and organized labor on matters affecting the interests of employees generally.

This power is not unchallenged. One of the disruptive situations in the Labor movement today is the restlessness of a number of constituency labor parties under the authority of the TUC. The constituency labor parties are the local organizations in the parliamentary constituencies or divisions. A number of them are and have been well to the left of the official leadership of the party. In them Aneurin Bevan finds his chief support for the rebellion he has waged intermittently against the leadership during the last five years.

Another source of anxiety to the TUC is the unwillingness of some unions--mostly those infiltrated by the Communists--to follow its instructions in industrial disputes. The TUC leaders with whom I have talked regard the strike weapon as the hydrogen bomb in labor's armory. They oppose its indiscriminate use. But in a large number of cases they have been unable to prevent its use.

The labor movement represents generally the industrial urban working class in Britain. But it is no longer an industrial urban working-class party. The modern movement relies on other sections of the population for both leaders and votes. Just as there are working-class districts that vote Tory in election after election, so are there middle-class groups who vote Labor.

Horny-handed sons of toil still rank among the party's leading politicians, but the post-war years have seen a steady increase in two other types. One is the union officer, whose acquaintance with physical labor is often somewhat limited. The other is the product of a middle-class home, a public-school education, and an important job in the wartime civil service. Hugh Gaitskell, the present leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, is a notable example of this second group.

The party still includes intellectuals treading circumspectly in the footprints left by the sainted Sydney and Beatrice Webb. The intellectuals, perhaps in search of protective coloring, often assume a manner more rough-hewn than the latest recruit from the coal face. Incidentally, it was my impression that the defeat of 1955 shook the intellectuals a good deal more than the practical politicians. They departed, as is their custom, into long, gloomy analyses of the reasons for the defeat. They, too, may have been out of touch with the people.

Of course the defeat of 1955 did not finish the Labor movement in Britain any more than its victory in 1945 doomed the Conservative Party. True, the Labor vote dropped from 13,949,000 in 1951 to 13,405,000 in 1955 and the party's strength in the House of Commons fell from 295 to 277 seats. But the prophets of gloom overlooked the movement's immense vitality, which comes in part from its connection with certain emotions and ideals well established in modern Britain.

Within the movement the accepted reason for the defeat was the interparty feud among the Bevanites on the left and the moderate and right-wing groups. The moderates, representing the TUC and the moderate elements of the Parliamentary Labor Party, provided most of the party leaders in the election campaign. But in the year before the election the squabbling within the party in the House of Commons and on the hustings created a poor impression. One leader went into the campaign certain that the party had not convinced the electorate that, if elected, it could provide a competent, united government. These bickerings thus were a serious factor in the Socialist catastrophe.

They were related to what seems to me to have been a much more important element in the defeat. This was the party's lack of understanding of the people, a defeat emphasized by the politician quoted at the start of this chapter. There were times during the campaign when Socialist speakers seemed to confuse their audiences with those of 1945, 1935, or even 1925. This was understandable, for the Labor Party owes much of its present importance to its position in the twenties and thirties as the party of protest. There was plenty to protest about. There was poverty--black, stinking poverty, which wears a hideous mask in the bleak British climate. There was unemployment--the miners stood dull-eyed and shivering in the streets of the tidy towns of South Wales. There was the dole. There was, in London and other big cities, startling inequality between rich and poor, such inequality as the traveler of today associates with Italy or France or West Germany's Ruhr.

Memories of those times scarred a generation. The bitterness spilled out of the areas worst hit and infected almost the entire working class. During the 1955 election I talked with a group in Merther Tydfil in Wales. They were working, and had been working for ten years at increasingly higher wages. They were well dressed, they had money to buy beer and to go to see the Rugby Football International. The majority--young fellows--seemed satisfied with their lot. But one elderly man kept reminding them: "Don't think it's all that good, mun. Bad it's been in this valley, and it may be again."

Just as the Democrats in 1952 harked back to the days of Hoover and Coolidge, so the Labor orators in 1955 revived the iniquities of Baldwin and Chamberlain. They saw behind the amiable features of R.A. Butler and the imposing presence of Anthony Eden the cloven hoofs of the Tory devils. They warned, with much prescience, that the economic situation would deteriorate. They cajoled and pleaded. They waved and sang "The Red Flag." It didn't work.

One statistic is important in this connection: since 1945, millions who had voted for Labor in that election had died. It is reasonable to assume that a high proportion of them were people with memories of the twenties and thirties who would have voted Labor under any circumstances.

Some died. Others changed. The spring of 1955 marked the zenith of Britain's first post-war boom. A very high proportion of the population felt that they had left the hard road they had traveled since 1940, and had emerged from war and austerity into the sunny uplands of peace and prosperity. They felt that to a great degree this change had been due to their own efforts, which was true. They believed they had earned the right to relax. It may be that a decade hence Britons will look back on that period as a golden echo of the great days of the Empire. Perhaps never again will Britain know a comparable period of prosperity and peace.

Given this primary circumstance, it was almost impossible for a party of protest to win an election. The industrial urban working class to whom the Socialists chiefly appealed were doing nicely. The workers had houses and television sets (known in Britain as "the telly"); bicycles and motorcycles were giving way to small family cars. There had been a steady rise in the supply of food, household appliances, and other items for mass consumption.

A large group of Labor voters were consequently not so interested in the election as they had been in the past. They voted, but in smaller numbers. Some votes switched to the Conservatives, but I do not regard this as a substantial element in the Tory victory. What did hurt Labor and help the Tories was the apathy of many Labor voters. Repeatedly I visited Labor election centers where a few elderly and tired people were going through the motions. The Tory centers, on the other hand, were organized, lively, and efficient.

For decades the Labor Party had promised the industrial workers full employment, higher wages, social security. Now there was full employment, wages were higher, present medical needs and future pensions were assured by national legislation. To a great degree these things had been achieved by the Labor governments of 1945 and 1950. But monarchies can be as ungrateful as republics, and the Tory boast that its government had ended rationing and produced prosperity probably counted as much as the benefits given the industrial working class by the socialist revolution carried out in six years of Labor government.

Another factor operated against the Labor campaign. There was then and still is a perceptible drift from the industrial working class into a new middle class. Later this drift must be examined in detail. It is part of the pattern of constant change in British history, a change that provides much of British society's strength. It is a change in which new blood constantly flows upward into other classes, a change in which the proletarian becomes lower middle class and the lower middle class becomes upper middle class in respect to income and social standing.

Here we are concerned with the political change. In many cases the industrial worker who becomes a foreman and then a production chief moves politically as well. He may still vote Labor, but it is increasingly difficult for him to identify himself with the proletariat or with Marxist doctrines. He lives in a better home, away from his old associates. His new friends may spring from the same class, but they are no longer preoccupied with the political struggle; often they are enjoying the fruits of its victories.

Nor is he worried, politically. For the Tories' return to power in Britain in 1951 did not produce a reactionary government. Sir Winston Churchill, once regarded by the workers as a powerful and unrelenting enemy, appeared in his last administration as a kindly old gentleman under whose sunny smile and oratorical showers the nation prospered. Why, he was even trying to arrange a talk with the Russian leaders! The absence of openly reactionary elements in the Conservative government, despite the presence of such elements in the party, and the promotion of moderation by Conservative speakers encouraged a gradual movement of the industrial working class away from the standards of pre-war socialism.

The changes in British society between 1945 and 1955, the people's refusal to respond to the old slogans in their new prosperity, the damaging split within the Parliamentary Labor Party all are contributing to the evolution of a new Labor Party that seems to be a better reflection of its electoral support than the one which went down to defeat in 1955. This does not mean, of course, that it is better fitted to rule Britain.

Almost all the leaders of the Labor governments of the post-war years have gone. Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps are dead. Clement Attlee has passed from the House of Commons into the Lords. Herbert Morrison and Emanuel Shinwell are back benchers in the Commons, exchanging grins with their political enemy and personal friend Sir Winston Churchill.

These men represented the old Labor Party. Bevin, Morrison, and Shinwell were hard, shrewd politicians, products of the working class they served. Cripps and Attlee were strays from the old upper middle class who had been moved to adopt socialism by the spectacle of appalling poverty among Britain's masses and what seemed to them the startling incompetence of capitalist society to solve the nation's economic and social problems.

This group and its chief lieutenants were bound, however, by a common fight. They could remember the days when there was no massive organization, when they had stood on windy street corners and shouted for social justice. They remembered the days when "decent people" looked down their noses at Labor politicians as unnecessary and possibly treasonable troublemakers.

It was inevitable, I think, that this group would pass from the leadership of the Labor party. When they did, however, the party lost more than the force of their personalities. It lost an emotional drive, a depth of feeling, that will be hard to replace.

Fittingly, the new leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, Hugh Gaitskell, is an exemplary symbol of the new party. He is a man of courage and compassion, intellectual power and that cold objectivity which is so often found in successful politicians. He represents the modern middle-class socialists just as Attlee two decades ago represented the much smaller number of socialists from that class.

Attlee, however, led a party in which the working-class politician was dominant. Gaitskell is chief of a party in which the middle-class intellectual element and the managerial group from the unions and the Party Organization have become powerful if not dominant.

Clement Attlee was leader of the party for more than twenty years. Gaitskell has the opportunity to duplicate this feat. But he must first heal the great schism that has opened in the movement in the last five years, and to do so he must defeat or placate the left wing and its leader, Aneurin Bevan.

Although the split within the Labor movement distresses all good socialists, it has added notably to the vigor and, indeed, to the gaiety of British politics. Aneurin Bevan was moved to flights of oratorical frenzy and waspish wit. Nor is it every day that one sees Clement Attlee temporarily discard his air of detachment and descend into the arena to entangle his party foes in the streamers of their own verbosity. It was a great fight, and, fortunately for those who like their politics well seasoned, it is not over yet.

For the quarrel within the movement represents forces and emotions of great depth and significance. In moments of excitement men and women on both sides have described it as a battle for the soul of the party. It may be more accurately described, I think, as a battle to determine what type of political party is to represent the labor movement in Britain.

Since the center and the right wing of the movement today dominate the making of policy and fill most, but not all, of the important party posts, it is the left that is on the offensive. But the left itself is not a united band of brothers. It has its backsliders and its apostates who sometimes temper their criticisms when they think of minor government posts under a Labor government headed by Hugh Gaitskell. But, personalities aside, convictions are so strongly held that there seems to be little likelihood of an end to the offensive.

What, then, does the left represent? One definition is that it represents those elements in the party who seek to complete the revolution of 1945-51. They want the extension of nationalization to all major industries and some minor ones. Aneurin Bevan, who enjoys making flesh creep, once told a group of Americans that he wanted to nationalize everything "including the barber shops." Extreme, of course, and said in jest; but "Nye" Bevan is an extremist, and many a true word is spoken in jest.

The left wing would move, too, against the surviving citadels of pre-war England such as public schools and other types of private education, and the power of the Church of England. It would impose upon Britain an egalitarianism unknown among the great powers of the West. It would limit Britain's defense efforts--this was the issue on which Bevan broke with the party leadership--to forces barely sufficient for police operations. It would liquidate as quickly as possible the remains of the Empire. Finally, it would turn Britain from what the radicals consider her present slavish acceptance of United States policy to a more independent foreign policy. This would mean that Britain would quit her position at the right hand of the United States in the long economic and political struggle with the great Communist powers and adopt a more friendly attitude toward Russia and Communist China. Bevan has descried, along with a great many other people, important economic and political changes within those countries, and he pleads with the Labor movement for a more sensible approach to them.

Naturally many members of the movement's center and right subscribe to some of these ideas. The admission of Communist China to the United Nations is an agreed objective of the Labor movement. It is even favored "in due course" by plenty of Conservative politicians. The explanation is a simple illustration of British bipartisanship. China means trade, and Britain needs trade. There are other considerations involving long-term strategic and political planning, including the possibility of luring China away from the Russian alliance. But trade is the starting-point.

The left wing boasts that it speaks for the fundamentalists of socialism, that it echoes the great dream of the founders of the party who saw the future transformation of traditional Britain with its economic and social inequalities into a greener, sweeter land. There is and always has been a radical element in British politics, and, on the left, the Bevanites represent it today.

The term "Bevanites" is inexact. The left-wing Socialists include many voters and politicians who dislike Aneurin Bevan and some of his ideas. But the use of his name to describe the group is a tribute to one of the most remarkable figures in world politics today. Aneurin Bevan has been out of office since 1951. He has bitterly attacked all the official leaders of his party, and he has come perilously close to exile from the party. His following, as I have noted, is subject to change. He often says preposterous things in public and rude things in private. He has made and continues to make powerful enemies.

"After all, Nye's his own worst enemy," someone once remarked to Ernie Bevin.

"Not while I'm alive, 'e ain't," said Ernie.

Bevan is a man of intelligence, self-education, and charm. At ease he is one of the best talkers I have ever met. He has read omnivorously and indiscriminately. He will quote Mahan to an admiral and Keynes to an economist. He has wit, and he knows the world. He likes to eat well and drink well.

Bevan, in his eager, questing examination of the world and its affairs, sometimes reminds his listeners of Winston Churchill. Each man has a sense of history, although the interpretation of a miner's son naturally differs from that of the aristocratic grandson of a duke. There is another similarity: each in his own way is a great orator.

To watch Bevan address a meeting is to experience political oratory at its fullest flower. He begins softly in his soft Welsh voice. There are a few joking references to his differences with the leader of the party, followed by a solemn reminder that such differences are inescapable and, indeed, necessary in a democratic party. At this point moderate Socialists are apt to groan. As Bevan moves on to his criticisms of the official leadership of the movement and of the Conservatives, it is clear that this is one orator who can use both a rapier and a bludgeon. He is no respecter of personalities, and at the top of his form he will snipe at Eisenhower, jeer at Churchill, and scoff at Gaitskell. He is a master of the long, loaded rhetorical question that brings a volley of "no, no" or "yes, yes" from the audience.

Much of the preaching of left-wing Socialism is outdated, in view of the changes in the urban working class. But Bevan is the only radical who is capable on the platform of exciting both the elderly party stalwarts who hear in him the echoes of the great days and the younger voters who, until they entered the hall, were reasonably satisfied with their lot. This is a man of imagination and power, one of the most forceful politicians in Britain. One secret is that he, and precious few others, can re-create in Labor voters, if only momentarily, the spell of the old crusading days when it was a movement and not a party.

As Bevan typifies to many anti-Americanism in Britain, it should in justice be said that he is not anti-American in the sense that he dislikes the United States or its people. Nor could he be considered an enemy of the United States in the sense that Joseph Stalin was an enemy. Bevan believes as firmly as any Midwestern farmer in the democratic traditions of freedom and justice under law.

But in considering the outlook on international affairs of Aneurin Bevan and others on the extreme left of British politics there are several circumstances to keep in mind. The first is that, due to early environment, study, or experience, they are bitterly anti-capitalist. The United States, as the leading and most successful capitalist nation in the world, is a refutation of their convictions. They may have a high regard for individual Americans and for many aspects of American life. But as people who are Marxists or strongly influenced by Marxism they do not believe that a capitalist system is the best system for a modern, industrial state--certainly not for one in Britain's continually parlous economic condition. In power they would alter the economic basis of British society, and possibly they would change the government's outlook on trade with the Communist nations. This means a friendlier approach to the Russian and Chinese Communist colossi and a more independent policy toward the capitalist United States. The attractions of such a position are not confined to Aneurin Bevan; one will hear them voiced by members of ultra-conservative factions of the Tory party.

For a man who vigorously opposes all kinds of tyranny, Bevan has been rather slow to criticize the tyranny of the secret police in the Soviet Union or the ruthless methods of those Communists who have won control of some British unions. There is in Bevan, as in all successful politicians--Roosevelt and Churchill are the best-known examples in our day--a streak of toughness verging on cruelty. This may explain his apparent tolerance of some of the excesses of totalitarian nations. Again, as some of his followers explain, Nye expects everyone to realize that such tyrannies are culpable and to understand him well enough to know that he would never give them the slightest support. Or, they suggest, Bevan takes such a comprehensive view of world affairs and has such a glittering vision of man's goals that he has no time to concentrate on minor atrocities. Perhaps, but the excuse is not good enough. The great leaders of Western democracy have been those who never lost the capacity for anger and action against tyranny whether it was exercised by a police sergeant or by a dictator.

Bevan has made a career of leading the extreme left wing in British politics since 1945. He is sixty this year. If he is to attain power, he must do so soon. How great is his following? What forces does he represent?