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¶ On France and Italy: "France is going left, and left understands left, but right does not. France will come back, and there will be confidence between her and us. Nor is it Labor's intention to go on treating Italy as though Mussolini were still in power."
The Labor Party's left wing centered its fire on the Conservative domestic program, past & future. Cried its spokesman, Aneurin Bevan, whose leftism is far afield from the orthodox trade unionism of Bevin: "Britain is an island bedded on coal and surrounded by fish; only an organizing genius could produce a coal shortage and a fish shortage simultaneously." Cried fiery, diminutive Ellen Wilkinson: "For the major task of reconstruction we obviously cannot work with the Conservatives."
But to win power the Labor Party needed 321 seats in the new, enlarged House of Commons, considerably more than Labor had ever won before. The Party could count on its solid trade union core and on a substantial section of the 4,000,000 voters in uniform. Harry Pollitt, Communist Party secretary, promised to throw the Communist vote behind the Labor Party except in districts where Communists were candidates. But for whom would the new electors—a whole generation of them under 30—cast their first votes? The answer to this question might decide the election.
. . .
While the Labor Party was denouncing him at Blackpool, Winston Churchill, bareheaded in a drizzling rain, opened his reelection campaign at Woodford, Essex. Early comers to Woodford Green huddled under the lofty trees and hoisted umbrellas (as did Mrs. Churchill). Cattle, which had been grazing in the village, lumbered away as the crowds increased a few minutes before Churchill arrived. There were lots of children, waving British flags.
Churchill spoke from the back seat of his car, which was parked at the side of the road. Traffic continued along the highway. Seeing the Prime Minister, a bus conductor stuck his head out of a second-deck window and yelled: "Hi, Winnie!" Everybody laughed.
* Among them: Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary: Sir John Anderson, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Woolton, Lord President of the Council; Lord Leathers, Minister of War Transport; Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Privy Seal. Brendan Bracken (formerly Minister of Information) was promoted to be First Lord of the Admiralty, Richard Austen Butler (formerly Minister of Education) to Minister of Labor. * M & B is the British trade name for the sulfa drugs—M (for May) and B (for Baker), who market sulfa.