FOREIGN NEWS
Faced with the Labor Party's emphatic refusal to continue in his Coalition Government until the Japanese war was won (TIME, May 28), Prime Minister Winston Churchill moved decisively. First he canceled the fortnight's holiday he had planned in the south of France. Then, twice in a single day, he drove formally to Buckingham Palace—at noon to resign, four hours later to accept King George VI's invitation to form a new government.
Two days later Churchill handed His Majesty a list of his new Ministers, all familiar Tory faces but for a few equally familiar National Liberals and nonparty men who had served in the coalition.* Conspicuously absent from this "caretaker" government were Labor and Liberal stalwarts like Clement Attlee (formerly Deputy Prime Minister) and Sir Archibald Sinclair (formerly Minister for Air), who preferred to cross the Commons floor to the opposition benches. The government which had brought Britain through the war frorn the dark days of Dunkirk to the Nazi surrender at Reims, had become past history. Their future government was up to the British voters, who will elect it next July 5.
M & B. Most Britons, even the Conservatives, were divided on the wisdom of holding an election so soon, but Tories in general trusted Churchill's political instinct. Two of Churchill's Cabinet intimates—Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) and Brendan Bracken—had insistently urged an immediate election (for fear that Britons' wartime memories would dim). Just as insistently the Labor Party had urged delay till autumn (in hopes that they would). Quipped Labor's Arthur Greenwood of Max and Brendan: "M & B* can save a man once—it saved Winston when he had pneumonia—but M & B a second time can ruin a chap."
It would be Britain's third khaki election since the turn of the century. Both of the others (during the Boer War and after World War I) gave convincing majorities for the government in power. With Churchill at their head, the Tories hoped that the July vote would be a pro-Tory deluge.
Stunning Resonance. Meanwhile the Labor Party conference at Blackpool ended a week of stunning resonance with a series of verbal thunderclaps. The mood of British labor, echoing Europe's mood of social change, was grimly set by Aneurin Bevan, leftist M.P.: "We want the complete extinction of the Tory Party and 25 years of Labor government." The Labor Party's program was outlined in a sweeping nationalization program for "a Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain" (TIME, May 28).
For its prospective Prime Minister, the Labor Party picked amiable, colorless Clement Attlee, since a choice between strong-arm trade unionist Ernest Bevin and smart-policy exponent Herbert Morrison might split the Party. Ernest Bevin was tipped as prospective Foreign Secretary. Promptly he expounded Labor's foreign policy:
¶ On India: "If we are returned to power, we will shut up the India Office and transfer its affairs to the Dominions Office."
¶ On Russia: "We pledge ourselves never to use small states to play off against big states [Russia], and so get advantage. There should be cards on the table, face upwards."