The British Election: The Campaign Hots Up

With the General Election less than two weeks away, Labor, behind in the public opinion polls, was fighting hard, and with any weapon that came to hand. In the shadow of 900-year-old Norwich Cathedral, Labor M.P. John Paton thumped out a message to his constituents: “Tory policy means war.” In suburban London, another Socialist denounced the Tory candidate: “Nothing but a bloody warmonger.” Labor placards in grimy, bomb-battered Liverpool proclaimed: “A third Labor government or a third World War!”

The “war party” label was a good (though unfair) line for Labor—and the Tories knew it. The Tories, who had been hammering away at Labor’s timid foreign policy, quickly switched to “bread and butter politics.” They attacked high prices, small rations of butter and meat and Labor’s failure to build enough houses to replace those destroyed in World War II. New Tory posters appeared showing an infant grumbling, “The way things are, I shall be grown up before I get my house.”

The campaign was hotting up. Party headquarters supplied “scientific questions” for hecklers to ask at opposition meetings. Sample Tory heckle: “Mr. Bevan, do you and Attlee agree on policy?” Sample Labor heckle: “Isn’t it true that prices in Britain have risen less than in any other major nation?”

Laborites were counting heavily on Clement Attlee to pull a Truman. They do have some things in common. People are apt to write Attlee off too easily; lacking greatness, he impresses by his plainness. And he is a fighter. Last week he set off on an eight-day, 1,000-mile, 53-speech Trumanesque “whistlestop” tour of Britain, talking up a “fair deal to all the people.” His flat, colorless words conjured up, in the minds of thousands of north country folk, deep-seated memories of “dark Satanic mills,” unemployment and poverty—the evils which millions of British Socialists instinctively associate with Toryism.

Clem Attlee’s tour served Labor well by reviving the class hatreds born in “the bad old days.” One of Labor’s political weaknesses is that a new generation is growing up with little experience of such “capitalist exploitation.” At Labor meetings, sometimes as many as two-thirds are people in their 50s. Grumbled one old diehard: “The youngsters will ruin us. They’re too young to remember Tory misrule.”

Sometimes Labor’s haymakers swung wide. In the village of Caister outside Yarmouth, an elderly lady rose and quietly asked Labor M.P. Ernest Kinghorn: “Why can’t the government take off the purchase tax, at least on essentials? I find it so hard to make our money cover all the necessities.” Others in the audience applauded. Kinghorn jumped up and shouted: “I want all of you who applauded to raise your hands.” Sheepishly a few listeners raised hands. Then Kinghorn demanded: “Now how many of you have false teeth provided by the government?” There was a moment’s shocked silence, then embarrassed titters. He won no votes that way.

As the parties’ faithful doorbell ringers trudged into the last few days of electioneering, public opinion polls showed the Tories still ahead, but the gap was narrowing fast. Conservatives who last month hopefully predicted a 100-seat majority in the new House of Commons now talked grimly of squeaking into power with a slimmer, 20-to-50 majority.