The Iron Curtain was raised dramatically last week to admit eight of Britain's top Socialists, who stepped through happy in the conviction that their hosts would really show them something worth seeing, convinced that they themselves could not be fooled, and appalled that anyone might think that the Communists could make fine propaganda use of them.
In this complacent state, they put down first at Moscow en route to Peking. Heading the pack was former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, accompanied by Nye Bevan, Labor Party Secretary Morgan Phillips, Labor Chairman Wilfred Burke, onetime Minister of National Insurance Edith Summerskill and Trade Union Leaders Harry Earnshaw, Sam Watson and Harry Franklin. Moscow's richest and reddest carpets were rolled out. A flecon of Russia's finest perfume, "The Spirit of the Red Army," was waiting in her hotel room to greet Dr. Summerskill, the only woman in the party. Soviet Premier Georgy Malenkov even went so far as to drive over to the British embassy and drink a toast to Queen Elizabeth.
Hot Bricks. Conscientious Clement Attlee had been frank to admit beforehand that on such a tour "you are often shown only what your hosts want you to see." It was Attlee's hope nonetheless that a look at the cloistered rulers of Communism, who have never seen or been seen by top Westerners, might prove instructive in many ways, provided one could distinguish "eyewash" from cruder reality. Not all Britons were convinced of Clem's ability to make the distinction. A Liberal Party spokesman warned Attlee & Co. that they were treading "on very hot bricks." London's Economist scolded the former Prime Minister sharply for "serving the purposes of a [hostile | propaganda machine" (see box), and Attlee's own onetime Minister of State, Hector McNeil, denounced the junket as both "highly irresponsible and ill-timed."
Such waspish suspicions were thrust aside in the sudden Gemiitlichkeit of Moscow's reception. On the first night in town, the visitors were shipped out to a spacious dacha once occupied by Maxim Gorky, to be wined and dined by the Kremlin's biggest wigs. Clad in gleaming white, Premier Malenkov himself strode to the garden to pick a bouquet of purple phlox and red gladioli for Dr. Edith. Some time later he soothed her feminist ardor with the assurance that women in the field of education were "too often overmodest." So many happy vodka toasts were drunk that night that even teetotaling Harry Earnshaw lost count over endless glasses of lemonade.