Foreign News: Clem & the Communists

Loaded down with strong opinions after his fleeting (18-day) guided tour of Communist China, ex-Prime Minister Clement Attlee came back home last week and promptly let the strongest of them fall on the public ear. “The sooner we get rid of Chiang Kai-shek and his troops, the better it will be,” said the 71-year-old Labor Party chieftain, who hopes soon again to govern Britain.

Attlee neglected to add just how he would get rid of Chiang’s 500,000 troops —unless Red China’s armies do the job for him. “He could hardly have said more,” wrote the Daily Telegraph, “without actually inviting the Communists to attack [Formosa].” Snapped the London Daily Sketch: “Attlee has dropped a brick that might do as much damage as the hydrogen bomb.”

Other British papers chimed in with criticism of Clem Attlee’s comments on China (TIME, Aug. 23 et seq.). But the criticism, said Attlee, “does not surprise or bother me.”

Attlee was more concerned with the annual Labor Party Congress opening this week at Scarborough. There, Attlee and his moderates would be engaged in a fight with the left-wing rebels of Aneurin Bevan over German rearmament.

Bevan, who had got home from Red China first, demanded that the National Executive Committee reverse party policy and come out against arms or NATO membership for Germany. Attlee’s men replied with one of those ingenious compromises that make peaceful coexistence possible between the two wings of the Labor Party: a policy favoring arms and sovereignty for the Germans but also offering to “consider” some more Big Three talks with the Russians. Since the Attleeites had the votes, Bevan was rebuffed.

But the fight for Labor’s policy on Germany was only just beginning. At Scarborough this week, Clement Attlee was likely to need all the party popularity he gained by being soft toward Communists in Asia, to persuade the Labor Party to be tough toward Communists in Europe.