GREAT BRITAIN: The Hen-Lion

Two weeks ago Aneurin Bevan did his best to persuade a rabidly divided Labor Party conference at Morecambe that the U.S. was deliberately goading Britain into war and bankruptcy (TIME, Oct. 13). Last week, at the Yorkshire beach resort Scarborough, Winston Churchill assured a conference of 5,000 Conservatives that “the foundation of [British] foreign policy is a true and honorable comradeship with the United States.”

At the Tories’ convention (their first since 1937 as the government in power), there was no unruly wrangling and almost no disagreement. Party Boss Lord Woolton had provided a new slogan, “Winning Through,” and a new symbol, a white lion rampant. But a party brochure picked the hen as its symbolic heroine and proclaimed, with a snort at Labor’s noisy ranks: “The cock crows, but the hen delivers the goods.” Which is the proper symbol for the Tories, asked the Manchester Guardian, lion rampant or hen couchant?

Out of the Red. Neither hen nor lion had much to crow about. A year of Conservative government had seen no sensational improvements. Britain was still plagued by shortages. Its defense program was drastically cut and far behind its goals. Chancellor of the Exchequer R. A. (“Rab”) Butler reported that Britain was now out of the red at last, thanks to a favorable trade balance of £24 million ($67 million) for the first half of 1952, but his shining news was tarnished by an unexpectedly large internal budget deficit of £293 million. Nevertheless it was Butler’s honestly stated mixture of good & bad news that got the biggest ovation at the conference. “Next year will be tougher than this year, for the party as well as for the country,” he said. “I do not think this is a good year for lush promises.”

Housing Minister Harold Macmillan earned a cheer for the Tories’ biggest tangible achievement of their first year in power: their promise of 300,000 new houses a year, which the Socialists had derided, now looked possible. Anthony Eden, freshly back from his chat with Yugoslavia’s Tito, with his new bride at his side, was cozily reassuring about the global future. “We have gone ahead at a pretty good jog-trot,” he said. It remained for the top Tory himself to crow the loudest.

Another Lie. In high good humor because his colt Prince Arthur had just paid 20 to 1 at Lingfield Park, Winston Churchill arrived in Scarborough on the next to last day of the conference. A huge crowd was waiting to meet him at the station. Churchill left his wife in the car sent to meet him, and on foot slogged along happily in the crowd’s midst for half a mile. “What was it they promised if a Conservative government was elected?” he asked his fellow Tories. “War. Churchill the warmonger would plunge us into war. Well, it has not happened yet. That Socialist slander, which may have cost us 50 seats, is as dead as a doornail. Our opponents have got to think of another lie.”

The triumphant Churchillian cock-a-doodling reflected a soberer opinion on the part of many Tory mentors that Churchill’s stock did in fact stand far higher in the country than it had a year ago, when many Britons felt he might take unnecessary foreign risks. The assembled Tories found that he could still roar defiance at his enemies. “Let us go forward,” he told the conference, brandishing a party symbol aloft, “with our sturdy, our unconquerable lions.” Hen-like, the Tories thought they could still deliver the goods.