GREAT BRITAIN: The Final Week

Britain’s two living ex-Prime Ministers did their bit to breathe some fire into the electioneering. “Mr. Attlee is certainly tough,” taunted Sir Winston Churchill, “or he would not have kept the lead of his party for so long,” but since Labor is so divided, “the best he can do is be a piebald.” Replied Clem Attlee: “Sir Winston has always been a bit of a chameleon, a funny little animal that changes color. He began as a Conservative, was a Liberal for 18 years, then an Independent and … a Conservative again. I don’t know whether that makes him piebald, skewbald* or what.” Tempers Down, Issues Blurred. Piebald, skewbald or spavined, Britain’s first national campaign in 3½ years loped toward this week’s Election Day with small enthusiasm. The apathy of the public was matched by wordy routineness on the platform.

Public opinion polls showed the Tories another full point ahead of the Laborites (50.5% to 47%) over the week before; the odds rose to 5 to 1 against Labor.

Sporting Life even stopped publishing the bookies’ figures. For the first time last week, the phrase “Tory landslide” slid into some of the London newspapers, and the News Chronicle, on the basis of its Gallup poll, talked of a Tory majority of 100 or better in Commons (compared to 19 in the late Parliament).

“The government wants the running to be slow and easy, to keep tempers down and issues blurred,” grumped Leftwinger Aneurin Bevan, the campaign’s most vigorous performer. Even he conceded: “So far they have succeeded.” To console themselves, Laborites reminded one another of Harry Truman and 1948.

No dramatic issue emerged in the campaign. The prospects of Big Four talks cut the foreign policy issue out from under Labor, and though the Socialists tried to put this all down to an American preference for the Tories, the fact is that it takes four to have Big Four talks. At Vienna, Russia’s Molotov observed shrewdly to Conservative Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan, “We are helping you to win the election.”

Domestically, too, issues were hard to find; Labor’s complaints of rising prices were matched by Tory assertions that a vote for Labor was a vote for ration books. The lack of noteworthy issues was generally taken to mean that the country is probably satisfied with its economic well-being and Tory government.

Old-Maidish Restrictions. Laborite taunts that the Tories had forced Sir Winston Churchill out of office seemed to get weight from Churchill’s first speeches. Obviously he was irritated at the way Eden & Co. had reversed themselves and grabbed at his “parley at the summit” policy the instant he retired. But Sir Winston was too good a party man to let personal pique last the whole campaign. He tore into Labor “with all its paraphernalia of restrictions and regulations . . .,” lauded Sir Anthony as “a statesman long versed in parliamentary and cabinet government,” and urged Britons to give him “generous and effective support.” And in Essex he answered the Labor charge in his own way: “I gave up my office and responsibility because I thought it was my duty. I did not feel that at my age I should incur new and indefinite responsibilities.”

Both sides made hesitant, amateurish use of TV, handicapped by their own fears of it, and by the old-maidish restrictions of the government-owned BBC. On one TV press conference. Prime Minister Eden gathered his Cabinet stalwarts about him. There was only one declared enemy among the newsmen. “The criticism most frequently made of you,” said pro-Labor Editor Hugh Cudlipp, “. . . is that you are not well versed in home affairs . . . What do you feel?”

“Perfectly fair criticism, Mr. Cudlipp, perfectly fair,” replied Eden, smoothing his hair. “On the other hand, I have sat in Cabinets on and off for 20 years . . . and I’m afraid I have said more than somewhat sometimes about domestic affairs.”

This week some 30,000,000 Britons will decide whether, for another five years, Anthony Eden will have more than somewhat to say about their affairs.

* A skewbald horse is splotched with white and one of several shades of brown; a piebald is black and white.