GREAT BRITAIN: Middle-Aged Party

A half century ago, under flickering gaslight in London's Memorial Hall, a group of cloth-capped proletarians and tweed-bearing intellectuals founded the organization that was soon called the British Labor Party. At the next general elections the party boasted two Members of Parliament: Keir Hardie, a Scottish miner, and Richard Bell, a railwayman. Both would have looked out of place at the party's 49th annual conference in Margate last week. Klieg lights poured down on Prime Minister Attlee, six Cabinet Ministers and hundreds of well-dressed Labor Members of Parliament. Among them: seven...

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