GREAT BRITAIN: Muttering About Churchill

At first it was a rustle of clubroom rumor, then a whisper in the galleries of the House of Commons. By last week it was a babble of discontent among the younger Tories: “Something should be done about Churchill.”

A traditional Tory reluctance to advertise grievances, mingled with the Tories’ wholesome respect and fear of the Old Man, had kept the murmuring away from Churchill himself. Those who murmured most agreed that among the Tories probably only the 58-year-old Marquess of Salisbury* has the courage and authority to tell the Grand Old Man that perhaps he should step down—or at least surrender some authority. And Salisbury, who is Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, has shown no signs that he wants to tell Churchill any such thing.

Blame. Last week what others only muttered, the influential London Economist broadcast. In a carefully pondered front page article, headlined “MR. CHURCHILL,” the Conservative weekly observed : “Criticism of Mr. Churchill among his own supporters has grown, particularly during the past two months, to such proportions that it is no longer concealed. Some of the criticism is unimportant; it reflects the disappointment of partisan hopes that were never real. But much of it goes wider . . . Indecisiveness in government is the failing for which, above all others, a Prime Minister can never escape blame . . . There is every sign that Mr. Churchill’s own interventions have sometimes been the direct reason why government policy has not been settled on early and clear lines.”

There was ample evidence of disappointed hopes and government indecisiveness. The summons to greatness, which men thought Churchill’s election promised, has not been heard. Britain’s foreign policy is still a tired response, not a challenge. Despite the stimulus of Chancellor of the Exchequer Rab Butler’s competent budget, government stocks have since dropped nearly 5%. Though the fall in Britain’s gold reserves has been arrested, the pound is still unsteady.

The Tories, who inherited worse problems than they expected after six years of Socialism, have moved uncertainly to denationalize road transport, and not at all to denationalize steel. Muddle is still a favorite British headline word, as crisis is in the French press. Yet “improvement,” warned the Economist, “will not be secured by making [Mr. Churchill] the scapegoat for everything . . . When he looks at those around him—and opposite him [on the Labor benches]—he needs no immodesty to conclude that at 77 he still has more to contribute to British government than almost any other man.”

“The straightforward solution,” suggested the Economist, “is that Mr. Eden should give up the Foreign Office and become the Prime Minister’s deputy in fact as well as in name … A real devolution of authority from Mr. Churchill to him is required.”

Echo. The Economist’s proposal was quickly echoed in louder fashion by London’s less responsible Sunday papers. The 5,000,000-circulation, pro-Labor Sunday Pictorial ran a huffing piece by one Ralph Wilberforce: “The Sunday Pictorial was the first British newspaper to advocate that Winston Churchill should become wartime Prime Minister. But. . I bluntly state the time has come for the Old Man to retire from active politics.” Eden himself, who treats the Prime Minister with the scrupulous deference reserved by Eton prefects for their gowned headmaster, discreetly lay low. But it was an open secret that many of his political friends are anxious to jettison Churchill as soon as they decently can. If Churchill stays in office for several years, Edenites fear, the rising star of Chancellor of the Exchequer Rab Butler, 49, may outshine Eden’s.

The Grand Old Man, who has seen gratitude turn to grumbling before, said nothing. Friends say that his dearest wish now is to preside as Prime Minister at Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation next June, before stepping down.

* Whose grandfather, as Conservative Prime Minister (1886-92), sided with the critics of Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, leading Churchill to resign his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer.