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Where the Tories are confident of having made inroads is not in the organized union vote, but in areas of small industry and commerce. I found on a trip through the Midlands that the lack of incentive to do a good job worried people.
"I want to farm," said a gaitered man from Leicester. "If I have a hand who works better than the others, I want to pay him more. That's good for him, and good for me—good for everyone, isn't it?"
Abbey House (Tory headquarters in London) knows that the rising cost of living, and especially the absence of any constructive Labor approach to current and looming threats to the standard of living, are the Tories' best talking points.
Britain, on the threshold of 1951's winter, must cope with a mounting and perilous trade deficit. Her money has lost a quarter of its purchasing power in six years. She is taxed to the hilt. Prices have inflated faster than pay packets, and food this summer was 40% more expensive than in 1947. Dissatisfaction with nationalization and with controls is rife.
"Hundreds of new, unnecessary jobs . . . The old bosses weren't much good, but at least you knew who they were. And they never put experienced chaps under some young cocksparrer from Whitehall," complained a railroadman in Coventry.
And yet—the Tories have not fully exploited these openings.
Memories of Dewey & Victoria
It took me days to get close to real Tory intentions on certain issues, so it is easy to understand the busy voter's uneasiness, about the generalities with which he is being fed.
Partly this is because Tory leaders themselves are vague or divided about just what they would do if returned to power, and find more convenient an empirical attitude: "We'll see when we have to tackle the problem and get all the facts"—which also assumes that those problems will be better tackled by practical Tories than by Socialist theorists. Partly it is due to what Lord Woolton—"Uncle Fred," the mild, silvery-haired and able chairman of the party's central office—calls "Deweyism." Overconfidence, that is, which in this case takes the form of assuming that the Tories can ride to office on Labor's bad record.
"What we tend to forget," said a Tory campaign manager, a brainy and broadminded Yorkshireman, "is that Labor also rests on its record. We tend to forget that a grumbler is not necessarily a Tory convert. We tend to forget the vast blocs of solid Labor voters—the millions of workers who don't realize that it was Hitler, who beggared the world of goods, and not the Socialists, who created the conditions for full employment."
The obverse is also true. There are millions of Britons who have been taught to revile the consequences of the harsh Victorian economy, and who are convinced that the Tory aim is to restore the privileges of the governing class.
To win, the Tories will have to convince these millions that they are a truly national party. First evidence of the transformation of the Tory Party since the shock of its 1945 defeat can be seen in its very structure. Then it had three-quarters of a million dues-paying members—now it has 2,500,000, including 200,000 members aged between 18 and 30.
Accent on Youth