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By far the most impressive of the senior Tory leaders is 51-year-old Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, sometimes known as "deadpan David." A lawyer, he "took silk" when he was 33; only one man in British legal history did it at an earlier age, and that was in 1668. Attorney General in 1945, he was deputy chief prosecutor at the N¨urnberg trials.
He is a man with an absolutely first-class mind. If the Tories get in, Sir David will probably be Minister of Labor. This would be a key job in any Tory government, because success in the No. 1 aim of Conservative policy—to step up production—could obviously be attained only with cooperation from the trade unions.
Maxwell Fyfe has a nervous manner, is a poor public speaker, and has little crowd appeal. But these are not insurmountable handicaps in British politics, and success in dealing with organized labor could make him the most important Tory in the land. He is a hero to many of the young Tories.
Bigger Cake & Lingering Controls The clash between the young Tories and the "flannel group" is shown in Tory policy, as set out in convenient lack of detail for the election. Churchill himself is suspicious of new approaches to economic problems, and recently growled at a specialist: "You economic experts always make it sound so complicated. After all, it's only barter." (Deep and disgusted Churchillian accent on the last word.) In emphasis, the split among Tories is as sharp as it is between Attlee and Bevan. The young men, for example, want to attack monopolies immediately. There is no anti-trust legislation in Britain, and about one-third of British industry is monopolistic. In denationalizing steel, the seniors are thinking of refloating the industry on the old lines, while the juniors would like to have blocs of small shares either given or made available to workers employed in the industry.
The older men mean to cut taxation first by reducing government expenditure and then by gradually building up production. The young Tories want to go all out for increased productivity from the start: "We are much more interested in having a bigger cake than in reallocating this one." The divergence does not lie simply between the young and impatient and the old and wary. Some of the latter are not fully aware of the importance of directly associating the workers with their efforts, and perhaps underestimate the extent to which Britain can still be galvanized by inspiring leadership in a well-explained common cause.
The emphasis which all Tories place on the re-introduction of incentives to work and the competitive element does not mean that they could abolish controls overnight. The coal, railroad and road transport industries will not be denationalized. But they will be decentralized, state control will be made remoter, and management transferred as far as possible from Whitehall. The free national health service will certainly take a slash
from the Tories, who say with sincerity that there is