Spunky British motorists last week struck back at spectacular young Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha, sponsor of the hated "Belisha Beacon."
The beacons are pale orange globes fixed atop seven-foot poles at intersections too minor to rate a stop-&-go light. They glow continuously, drive motorists wild by giving pedestrians continuous right of way. To get past a Belisha Beacon one must drive at a crawl permitting instant stops should a pedestrian wish to cross. No other subject in years has so roused Punch, which now prints an average of two Hore-Belishing cartoons a week. Asks an irate female motorist in a recent cartoon across which smug pedestrians stroll (see cut): "Don't you loathe these beastly Belisha faces?"
Suddenly in the dead of night last week motorists in open sport cars began dashing about London on a Belisha Beacon hunt. Passengers with air guns pinged at the big orange globes which burst in showers of tinkling glass. When Scotland Yard counted up next morning 26 Belisha Beacons were out and no motorist had been caught.
Some 20 years ago socialites of the Royal Automobile Club fought a successful nation-wide battle to eliminate speed traps as "unfair and un-British." Discreetly from sources close to R.A.C. last week came threats: "It may become necessary to organize trigger squads of from 30 to 40 cars of air gunners and shoot up all the beacons in London." From his Ministry of Transport publicity-courting Major Hore-Belisha retorted, "We are rushing the construction of new beacons and will have installed 20,000 by Christmas."
Three years ago the National Government contained two white-haired boys in important Under-Secretaryships. One was Captain Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office. The other was Major Hore-Belisha in the Board of Trade. Both are very dapper, very efficient young men, with imposing records at Oxford and in the Army. When Major Hore-Belisha was promoted to Minister of Transport most of his friends were afraid that he was being laid upon a very stuffy shelf. They need not have worried. Leslie Hore-Belisha, freed of the self-abasement expected of an Under-Secretary, has proved to be the sort of politician who could make screaming daily headlines running a wet wash laundry.