For the first time in 50 years, because of Britain's economic crisis, Budget Day had been moved up early, before the new fiscal year begins. Members of the House of Commons overflowed the benches and squatted on their haunches in the gangways when Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard A. Butler strode in with an old red dispatch box in his hand. The ragged little red box was the same one in which keepers of the British Treasury since Gladstone's day have brought the annual budget to the House. Never did it contain one that was more grimly awaited.
A Little Lubrication. The day was crucial also for "Rab" Butler, who, at 49, is already crowding Anthony Eden as heir to Winston Churchill in the Conservative Party. The ordeal of the budget speech has made some politicians (outstanding example: Gladstone, in 1853), and unmade others. Rab Butler, a dryly confident man, disdained the traditional liquid comfort allowed Chancellors of the Exchequer on Budget Day: Disraeli nipped brandy; Gladstone used to ease the long, wordy way with sips of a mixture of eggs and sherry; Winston Churchill drank a weak mixture that looked suspiciously like brandy; Sir John Simon felt the need of a concoction of honey, lemon and brown sugar; abstemious Sir Stafford Cripps drank orange juice.
Rab Butler, as cool and austere as a London winter, primly sipped from a glass of water, and launched into a speech that was to veer Britain away from six years of Socialist economics.
New Sacrifices. Quickly he reviewed the past twelve months of Laborite rule: "Unfortunately," he said, " 'Great Expectations' was followed by 'Bleak House.' " Then he painted a picture of Britain's bleak house—a massive rearmament program piled on top of an already overstrained economy, a country galloping toward hopeless indebtedness to the outside world and runaway inflation at home. Matter-of-factly he called for new sacrifices.
¶ A £100 million cut in British imports.
¶ A drastic increase in the British bank rate—from 2½% to 4%—to make bank borrowing costlier and credit tighter.
¶ A hefty (30%) excess profits tax on business and industry.
¶ A 9¢ increase in gasoline taxes. Gas will now cost 59½¢ a gallon. Also increased: taxes on tickets to cricket and soccer games, telegrams, telephone calls.
So far the news was bad, but not catastrophic; the House rustled with uneasy expectations. But Chancellor Butler was not yet done. "We mean to try to take a new line to get us out of our difficulties," he told Britons. "I am asking you to face up to the reality of what things cost . . ."
On the Opposition benches, the Laborites stirred uncomfortably as Rab Butler recalled some words of Sir Stafford Cripps —words that were critical of the great funds the government was spending on food subsidies, a wartime device which the Laborites continued in peacetime to keep prices low in the marketplace. Then Butler let the ax blade fall.