GREAT BRITAIN: Clash of Steel

Winston Churchill had a question to ask the Prime Minister: Would the government promise that no steps would be taken to nationalize steel while the present crisis lasted—at least until there had been a further appeal to the country? Supply Minister George R. Strauss rose to give the cabinet’s answer: the government’s Iron & Steel Corp. would be set up on Oct. 2.

For a few minutes the House of Commons was in an uproar.

Churchill said: “The very grave statement to which we have just listened . . . will make it necessary for us to place a motion on the order paper tonight regretting that at this most critical period in our national safety and affairs abroad we should be, by this act of the government, plunged into the fiercest party controversy at home.”

Knocking the Other Half. Opening the full-dress debate on his motion last week, Churchill maintained that the government had no mandate to nationalize steel. Although the bill had been passed by the House of Commons a year ago, it had become a chief issue in the February election. The Labor Party had won a majority of only seven seats, but it had failed by more than a million votes to obtain a popular majority. Said Churchill: “Half of the nation ought not … to claim the right on so slender a margin to knock the other half about and ride roughshod over it.”

Churchill’s argument against steel nationalization now: 1) the record of the industry was magnificent; production had more than trebled in 20 years; 2) for 50 years steel labor disputes had been settled without a major work stoppage; 3) many workers and trades unionists were against nationalization. Concluded Churchill: “To disturb and damage the steel industry . . . is to disturb and damage the whole [“rearmament] effort.” He accused Prime Minister Attlee of acting at the dictates of a “fanatical intelligentsia obsessed by economic fallacies.”

Canny Herbert Morrison, no fanatic intellectual, carried the brunt of the government’s defense. His argument: 1) the government was merely implementing an act already passed; 2) Churchill himself had once been a member of a government which had put through controversial legislation without a popular majority; 3) the satisfactory state of the steel industry was due to an already high degree of government control, particularly price fixing; 4) nationalization was the best means to prevent steel mill owners from slowing down production in an emergency.

Then Morrison got down to politics: by attempting to exercise the power of veto over the government, Churchill was aiming to force a coalition on the Labor Party. Up jumped Tory Oliver Lyttleton: “We do not want it.” Retorted Morrison: “Do not . . . make any mistake. Half the jokers . . . from that Front Bench want a coalition.”

Good for Shingles. Conservative Party whips, foreseeing a close vote, had pulled M.P. Sir George Harvie-Watt off a New Zealand-bound liner, were flying him back from Gibraltar. Outside the House of Commons, hundreds watched the arrival of the invalids. Labor’s Sir Stafford Cripps and Hugh Dalton were brought back from rest cures, R. W. G. Mackay from a hospital. Thomas Hubbard, awaiting an operation, turned up, pale and haggard, with two attending doctors. J. P. W. Mallalieu, who had been suffering from shingles, afterwards wrote: “Medical science is wonderful. First it was deep X rays. Then it was penicillin. Now it’s divisions in the House of Commons.” The sound of the division bells, he said, had done wonders for his shingles.

For other Socialists the result was tonic: when the division bells had stopped ringing the count was 300 for, 306 against Churchill’s motion.

Thus the nation which, more than any other, had pioneered the great age of steel and the great age of free enterprise had finally socialized its basic industry. But the chapter was not quite ended. Said Conservative Party Leader Churchill: “We shall, if we should obtain the responsibility and the power, in any future which is possible to foresee, repeal the existing Iron & Steel Act.” Meanwhile, the government had appointed a board headed by Millionaire Socialist S.J.L. Hardie, a scrap-metal tycoon, to run Britain’s nationalized steel industry.