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Said a docker on the Thames near Westminster Bridge (on which only two lights burned): "This is the proof of 20 years of rotten government. If the Conservatives had harnessed hydroelectric power 20 years ago, this would not have happened.* The Government can count on us dockers."
In a Whitechapel pub, the Northampton Arms, a tailor's cutter discussed The Crisis. No, he couldn't blame the Socialists. Then he reflected the typical defensive class-consciousness of many Laborites: "Still, I don't think they've had enough education to deal with the twisting coal owners."
Did any of this rumbling mean that the Laborite Government's voters might swing away from it because of The Crisis? Candid Tories did not believe so. Said William Wallace, ex-president of Edinburgh's Chamber of Commerce: "I have a bet on that the Government will run the full five-year course. I should like to pay, but I'm afraid I shan't."
Double Error. Laborites, Tories and everybody else had the same whipping boy for The Crisis. Balding, garrulous Fuel Minister Emanuel Shinwell had been warned, as early as mid-October, by Tories and Laborites alike that there would be a serious coal shortage. Shinwell gambled on a green winter (as had some politicians before him in comparable situations). He then made a serious political error as well as a bad bet: he kept his gamble to himself. Had he put the choice up to the House of Commons and the country, perhaps a majority of politicians and plain citizens would have gone along with him. After all, the alternative was a winter of fuel rationing and curtailed production; Britons had had a bellyful of such austerity. When his gamble did not come off, Shinwell had no plan to meet the emergency.
Shinwell took a merciless thumping in most newspapers (which were back to wartime four-page skimpiness).* Shinwell became a byword and a hissing. A music-hall comedian punned: "Be sure your Shinwell find you out." The House of Lords cheered as Viscount Swinton belabored him with "We suffer not from an act of God, but the inactivity of Emanuel." Shinwell got a bomb threat, and Scotland Yard put four constables around his small house in Tooting. Tooted Mrs. Shinwell: "Let them try to harm him!" Would her husband resign (as the Tory press had demanded and some Laborites had privately suggested)? Said Mrs. Shinwell: "I don't see why. I should like to see the man who could do the job better."
There were more politically practical reasons why Shinwell would not be ousted from the Cabinet now. He was still extremely popular with the miners; if he were axed, there might be trouble in the pits. A measure of that factor came last week in a by-election in the Yorkshire mine area of Normanton. There the Labor candidate got 80% of the total vote, a drop of only 4% from last year's general election.
Inequalities & Inefficiencies. In a pine-paneled office of a closed engine plant in
Coventry, an industrialist who had been in charge of large aircraft undertakings during the war talked about the economy under Socialism. His conclusion: "In a human sense it's regrettable, but inescapable. Nationalism and equality are inefficient."