• U.S.

GREAT BRITAIN: Here They Come!

4 minute read
TIME

Drab, Socialist and hard-pressed Britain badly needed a flash of color, a majestic reminder of past glory. Last week it got one. The pageantry lasted for only a few hours; the worries, the austerity would remain.

Princess at the Window. For the first time since 1938, Parliament was opened with full-dress ceremonial. Red robes trimmed with white fur, cutaways, top hats and striped trousers were taken out of mothballs or rented at high prices. The Household Cavalry who would escort the royal coach got ready to don their plumed helmets and breastplates, white breeches, high black boots, red and blue tunics. The Imperial State Crown was taken from the

Tower to be cleaned and polished by goldsmiths.

When the great day came Princess Elizabeth, expecting her child in mid-November, stayed behind at Buckingham Palace. She was looking out of a window when the Irish State Coach (built for Queen Victoria’s visit to Dublin) left the palace gate. Londoners packed along the procession route stopped blowing their noses and forgot the biting October wind. A rustling murmur went up: “Here they come!”

Whitefish & Milk. Alighting at the Palace of Westminster, the King went into his robing room in the House of Lords, put on his crown and his ermine-trimmed, purple velvet robes; the Queen hooked the broad blue ribbon of the Garter over her white crinoline dress. Entering the chamber, they were preceded by heralds and court functionaries whose stiff tabards made them look like kings and jacks in a pack of cards. In all this splendor, stubby Herbert Morrison, in his black cutaway, stood out like the ace of spades. But Commoner Morrison, present in his capacity as Lord President of the Council, had had more to say about the King’s speech than the King himself.

The King read slowly for twelve minutes. He proposed legislation “to protect the coast from erosion by the sea … to encourage the development of the whitefish industry and to provide for safer milk … to improve water supplies to Scotland . . .” And finally he came to the explosive paragraph: “A measure will be laid before you to bring under public ownership those companies extensively engaged in the production of iron ore, or of pig iron or steel or in the shaping of steel by a rolling process.”

Rawest Deal? The Labor government’s bill, made public three days later, called for the nationalization of 107 companies, accounting for over 90% of the whole industry and 300,000 workers. Private owners would be compensated at the market value of their holdings. The Tories immediately roared with pain, claiming that steel share prices had already been depressed by fear of nationalization itself. “This,” cried the Standard, “is the rawest deal ever handed out.”

The Tories’ best argument is that it would be dangerous to monkey with steel in a time of world crisis. In private hands, the industry is flourishing, producing more ,than ever before. Many right-wingers within the Labor party are extremely dubious about nationalization. Recently one Laborite M.P., Ivor Thomas, 42, M.P. for Keighley, resigned from the party rather than support the government’s program. Speaking from the opposition benches last week, Mr. Thomas said: “The most obvious result of the government’s activities in the past three years has been an immense concentration of power in the hands of the state and corresponding weakening of the power of the individual to stand for himself . . . The French Revolution did at least give the world the ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The slogans of the Labor revolution appear to be Utility, Priority, Austerity.”

Goaded beyond endurance, the Labor M.P. for Rochdale, Dr. Hyacinth Bernard Wenceslaus Morgan, burst out: “You are a dirty dog!”

Winston Churchill, back from a long vacation, lumbered to his feet with impish gravity: “May I ask, Mr. Speaker, if it is in order for an honorable member to call another a ‘dirty dog’? I should like to be authoritatively advised.”

Mr. Speaker ruled “dirty dog” out of order.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com