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Title: These are the British


Author: Drew Middleton



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THESE
are the British


[Illustration]


THESE
are the British

by

DREW MIDDLETON






New York: Alfred · A · Knopf: Mcmlvii


[Illustration]


[Illustration]
L.C. catalog card number: 57-11164
© Drew Middleton, 1957


[Illustration: THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF,
INC.]


Copyright 1957 by Drew Middleton. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages
in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in
the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada by
McClelland & Stewart Limited.


FIRST EDITION




  _This book is dedicated
  to the memory
  of_
  ALEX CLIFFORD,
  EVELYN MONTAGUE,
  _and_
  PHILIP JORDAN




_FOREWORD_


It was in 1940 that the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom noted
that Britain and the United States would have to be "somewhat mixed up
together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage."
This situation has persisted until the present. Yet, despite the
closeness of co-operation in the intervening years, there is among
Americans a surprising lack of knowledge about modern Britain.

This book is an effort to provide a picture of that country--"warts and
all." Such a book must perforce be uneven. There are areas of British
life--the attitude toward religion is one--that have not been touched.
I have tried to emphasize those aspects which are least well known in
the United States and to omit as far as possible consideration of those
which are superficial. Ascot, I agree, is spectacular. But as far as
modern Britain is concerned it doesn't matter a damn. I hope, however,
that the reader will find here some idea of what has been going on in
Britain since 1945 and what is going on there today. This is a modern,
mobile society, important to us as we are important to it. If we look
at this society realistically, we will discern physical and moral
strength that the fictions of Hollywood can never convey.

For one whose roots are deep in his own country, the British are a
difficult people to understand. But they are worth understanding.
They are worth knowing. Long ago, at a somewhat more difficult period
of Anglo-American relations, Benjamin Franklin warned his colleagues
that if they did not all hang together, they would assuredly hang
separately. Good advice for Americans and Britons today.

  DREW MIDDLETON

  _Bessboro Farm
  Westport, Essex County
  New York
  March 12, 1957_




_CONTENTS_


  I. _Britain Today_                                       3

  II. _The Monarchy_                                      13

  III. _How the British Govern Themselves_                34

  IV. _The Conservatives_: A PARTY AND A WAY OF LIFE      50

  V. _The Labor Party_: POLITICAL MACHINE OR
  MORAL CRUSADE?                                          70

  VI. _A Quiet Revolution by a Quiet People_              90

  VII. _A Society in Motion_: NEW CLASSES AND NEW
  HORIZONS                                               112

  VIII. _The British and the World_                      135

  IX. _The Atlantic Alliance_: STRENGTHS AND
  STRESSES                                               159

  X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_              187

  XI. _The British Character and Some Influences_        217

  XII. _Britain and the Future_                          260

  INDEX      _follows page_                              290




  THESE

  _are the British_




[Illustration]




I. _Britain Today_

  _They called thee Merry England in old time._

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

 _It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate
 on their condition._

  CHARLES LAMB


To begin: the British defy definition. Although they are spoken of as
"the British," they are not one people but four. And of these four,
three--the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish--are fiercely jealous of
their national identity. The English are less concerned. They have been
a nation a very long time, and only on occasions like St. George's
Day do they remind themselves, a bit shamefacedly, that the English
are the central force of the British people. Of course, if there are
Scots, Welsh, or Irish in the company, the English keep this comforting
thought to themselves.

The variety of the British does not end with nationalities. There are
Yorkshiremen and men from Somerset, Cornishmen and people of Durham
who differ as much as Texans and Vermonters did in the days before the
doubtful blessings of standardization overtook our society.

Here we encounter the first of many paradoxes we shall meet in this
book. Homogeneity in political thought--basic political thought that
is not party allegiance--seems far greater in Britain than in France
or the United States. Yet, until the present, the resistance to
standardization has been much more stubborn. Institutions and customs
survive without undue prodding by Societies for the Preservation of
This and That, although there are plenty of the latter nesting in
British society.

Early in 1954 I was in Inverasdale, roughly five hundred miles
north-west of London on the western coast of Scotland. Inverasdale is a
small village buffeted by the fierce winds that beat in from the North
Atlantic, and its people are independent and God-fearing. John Rollo, a
Scots industrialist, had started a small factory in Inverasdale to hold
the people in the Highlands, where the population has fallen steadily
for a century.

Inside the factory John pointed to one of the workers. "That's the
bard," he said. "Won a prize at the annual competition this year."

The bard, clad in rubber boots, old trousers, and a fisherman's jersey,
had little of the "Scots Wha Ha'e" about him. But he was the real
thing. He had journeyed to the competition on foot and there recited
in Gaelic his own composition, a description of his life in Germany
as a soldier in the British Army of the Rhine. "I sung of those queer
foreign sights and people," he said.

I asked him if he had liked the Germans.

"I did not," he said. He was not a particularly loquacious bard. But
he was intensely and unostentatiously devoted to customs and a culture
well established before there were white men in America.

The bard was proud of his association with an old and famous race. But,
then, all over the British Isles there are groups rejoicing in the
same fierce local pride. In Devon you will be told that it was "Devon
men" who slashed the Armada to ruins in the Channel. That battle was
fought nearly four hundred years ago. In a future century the visitor
to London will be told, quite correctly, that it was the near-sighted,
snaggle-toothed, weak-chested youngsters from the back streets who
held the Germans at Calais until preparation could be made for the
evacuation at Dunkirk.

The British often act and talk like an old people because they _are_
an old people. Nearly nine hundred years have passed since the Norman
invasion, the last great influx of foreign blood. Before that, wide,
deep rivers and the absence of natural fortifications near the coast
had invited invasion. Celts, Romans, Saxons, and Danes had mingled
their blood with that of the ancient Britons. But major invasions ended
with 1066.

Consequently, the British are unused to foreigners in large numbers.
They make a tremendous fuss over the forty thousand or so Jamaicans
and other West Indian Negroes who have settled in the country since
1952. The two hundred thousand Poles and other East European refugees,
many of whom fought valiantly beside the British in World War II, are
more acceptable. This is true, also, of the Hungarians driven from
their homeland by the savage Russian repression of the insurrection of
1956. But you will hear grumbling about "foreigners" in areas where
refugees have settled. In rural areas you will also hear someone from
a neighboring county, long settled in the village, referred to as a
"foreigner."

The Republic of Ireland is the main source of immigrants at present.
No one knows the exact figures, for there is no official check, but it
is estimated in Dublin that perhaps fifty thousand young Irishmen and
Irishwomen have entered Britain in each recent year.

This migration has raised some new economic, social, and religious
problems and revived some old ones. It is also beginning to affect,
although as yet very slightly, political balances in the western
Midlands, for this area is short of labor and its industries gobble up
willing young men from across the Irish Sea.

These industrial recruits from a rural background become part of an
advanced industrial proletariat. By nature and by upbringing they are
foreign to the industrial society that uses them. Their political
outlook is far different from that of the loyal trade-unionists beside
whom they work. They are much less liable to be impressed by appeals
for union solidarity and Labor Party support. They accept the benefits
of the Welfare State, but they are not of it. The economic Marxism of
the orators in the constituency labor parties is beyond them; besides,
have they not been warned that Marx is of the devil? The incorporation
of this group into the Socialist proletariat poses a question for Labor
politicians of the future.

Despite the lack of large-scale migration into Britain during nine
centuries, national strains remain virulent. Noisy and stubborn
Welsh and Scots nationalist movements give young men and women in
Cardiff and Edinburgh something to babble about. London boasts many
local associations formed of exiles from the north or west. Even the
provincial English manage to make themselves heard in the capital.
Few winter nights pass without the Loyal Sons of Loamshire meeting to
praise the glories of their home county and drink confusion to the
"foreigners," their neighbors.

If the urbanization of the country has not broken these barriers
between Scot and Londoner or between Lancashire and Kent, it has
changed the face of England out of recognition. And for the worse.

The empty crofters' cottages around Inverasdale and elsewhere in
the Highlands are exceptions, for Britain is crowded. The area of
the United Kingdom is 93,053 square miles--slightly less than that
of Oregon. But the population is just under 51,000,000, including
44,370,000 in England and Wales, 5,128,000 in Scotland, and 1,389,000
in Northern Ireland.

Since the end of the last century the population has been predominantly
urban and suburban. By 1900 about three quarters of the British people
were living within the boundaries of urban administrative areas, and
the large "conurbation" was already the dominant type of British
community. This ugly but useful noun describes those areas of urban
development where a number of separate towns, linked by a common
industrial or commercial interest, have grown into one another.

For over a third of a century about forty per cent of the population
has lived in seven great conurbations. Greater London, with
a population of 8,348,000, is the largest of these. The other
conurbations and their centers are: southeast Lancashire: Manchester;
west Midlands: Birmingham; west Yorkshire: Leeds and Bradford;
Merseyside: Liverpool; Tyneside: Newcastle upon Tyne; and Clydeside:
Glasgow. Of these the west Midland area is growing most rapidly.
Southeast Lancashire has lost population--a reflection of the waning of
the textile industry.

The growth of the conurbations, particularly London, has been
accompanied by the growth of the suburbs. Of course, many of the older
suburbs are now part of the conurbations. But the immediate pre-war and
post-war building developments have established urban outposts in the
serene green countryside.

Today more than a million people travel into the city of London and six
central metropolitan boroughs to work each morning and return to their
homes each night. Another 240,000 come in from the surrounding areas to
work in other parts of greater London.

The advance of suburbia and conurbia has imposed upon vast sections
of the United Kingdom a dreadful sameness. The traveler finds himself
driving for hours through an endless urban landscape. First he
encounters miles of suburban streets: television aerials, two-story
houses whose differences are discernible only to their inhabitants,
clusters of stores. Then a town center with its buses and bus center,
the grimy railroad station, a cluster of civic buildings, a traffic
jam, one or two seventeenth-century relics incongruous amid the jumble
of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Then more suburbs, other town
centers, other traffic jams. Individuality is lost in the desert of
asphalt and the jungles of lamp posts, flashing signs, and rumbling
buses.

On a wet winter day a journey through some of the poorer sections of
the western Midlands conurbation is a shocking experience. As your
car moves down street after street of drab brick houses, past dull,
smelly pubs and duller shopwindows, occasionally coming upon hideous,
lonely churches, you are oppressed. The air is heavy with smoke and the
warring smells of industry. Poverty itself is depressing, but here
it is not poverty of the pocket but poverty of the soul which shocks.
Remorseless conformity and unrestrained commercialism have imposed this
on the lively land of Shakespeare. Can great virtues or great vices
spring from this smug, stifling environment?

Yet bright spirits are bred. One remembers people met over the years:
a sergeant from the Clyde quoting Blake one morning long ago at Arras;
Welsh miners singing in the evenings. Out of this can come new Miltons,
Newtons, and Blakes. A Nelson of the skies may be studying now at that
crumbling school on the corner.

In September 1945 I was riding in from London airport in a bus crowded
with Quentin Reynolds (whose presence would crowd an empty Yankee
Stadium) and returning soldiers and airmen of the British Army and
the Royal Air Force. As we passed through the forlorn streets of
Hammersmith, Quentin, brooding on the recent election, said: "These are
the people who gave it to Mr. Churchill."

A sergeant pilot behind us leaned forward. "That's all right, cock," he
said, "they gave it to Mr. Hitler too."

To put Britain into a twentieth-century perspective, we must go beyond
the Britain many Americans know best: the Merrie England created by
literature, the stage, and the movies. This picturesque rural England
has not been a true picture of the country for over a century. But
the guidebooks and the British Travel Association still send tourists
to its shrines, novelists still write charmingly dated pictures of
its life, and on both sides of the Atlantic the movies and the stage
continue to present attractive but false pictures of "Olde Worlde"
England.

The British of today know it is dead. They retain an unabashed yearning
for its tranquillity, but the young cynics are hacking at this false
front. One morning recently I was cheered to note the advent of a new
coffee bar, the "Hey, Calypso," in the self-consciously Elizabethan
streets of Stratford-on-Avon. I am sure this would have delighted the
Bard, himself never above borrowing a bit of foreign color. And the
garish sign corrected the phony ostentation of "Elizabethan" Stratford.

Merrie England has its attractions--if you can find them. There is
nothing more salutary to the soul than an old, unspoiled village in the
cool of a summer evening. But the number of such villages decreases
yearly. The hunt, the landed aristocracy, the slumbering farms are
changing, if not passing entirely from the scene.

But--and this is very important--the values of this England endure to a
reassuring degree. Indeed, it might be argued that they have revived in
the last ten years and that virtues thought dated in two post-war Brave
New Worlds have been triumphantly reasserted. However, physically,
Merrie England, the country Wordsworth tramped and Constable painted,
is dead. The schoolteacher from Gibbsville or Gopher Prairie will find
the remains nicely laid out.

Despite the blight of suburbia, the countryside retains a compelling
charm for the visitor from the United States. There is that hour in a
winter evening when a blue light gathers in the shadows of the wood,
when the smoke rises straight from cottage chimneys, when you hear the
sound of distant church bells. I remember walking once in 1944 with Al
Paris, a young captain of the United States Air Force, through just
such a scene. "It's funny," he said, "I walk this way two, three times
a week, and I feel like I'm coming home. It's different from anything
at home. Yet I feel I know it."

But the important Englands or, rather, Britains are very different.
There is the dynamic, bustling industrial Britain of the Midlands, the
Northeast, and the Lowlands of Scotland. There is the great commercial
Britain of London, Bristol, Glasgow, Southampton, Liverpool--the
Britain of traders, middlemen, agents, and bankers, the Britain whose
effect on the political development of the country and world has been
tremendous.

Out of these Britains have come the machines and the men who have kept
the country in business and twice helped to smash the military power
of Germany. The steel plants of South Wales, the engineering factories
of Birmingham, the banks of London, the shipyards of the Clyde--these
are the real modern Britain. They are not so attractive as the old
villages sleeping in the afternoon sun. But from the standpoint of
Britain, and from that of the United States as well, they are much more
satisfying and reassuring than Merrie England.

For this is the Great Britain that is not satisfied with the past or
the present, that dreams great and necessary dreams of the industrial
uses of atomic energy, that strives to expand the three great groups of
industry: metals and metal-using, textiles, and chemicals. It is the
combination of this Britain and the character of the old England that
provides a basis for faith.

Is Britain's long and glorious story nearly done? Will the political,
technological, and social changes of the first half of the twentieth
century--changes in which Britain often pioneered--combine to eliminate
Britain as a world power? Is the country's future to be a gradual and
comfortable decline into the position of a satellite in an Atlantic
system dominated by the United States and Canada? Or will Britain
withdraw slowly, under force of circumstance, into the unambitious
neutrality of Sweden?

These are questions that Britons who care about their country must ask
themselves. But because of the confidence that is still so strong in
British character, such questions are seldom debated openly. In the
spring of 1956, when the leaders of the government and of industry
were only too gloomily aware of the magnitude of the problems facing
the country in the Middle East, in competitive exporting, in gold
and dollar reserves, the British Broadcasting Corporation began a
television series, "We, the British," with an inquiry: "Are we in a
decline?" No one was greatly excited.

This seeming obliviousness to harsh facts, this innate confidence, is
one of the most arresting features of the national character. We will
encounter it often in this book as we seek answers to the questions
about Britain's future.

Consideration of Britain in the world today, and especially of her
relation to the United States and to the Soviet Union, must take into
account the historical fact that the country's present situation is not
altogether novel to Britons.

For Americans it is unusual, and hence disturbing, to live in the same
world with a hostile state--the Soviet Union--that is larger and more
populous than their own country. Enmity has burst upon us suddenly in
the past. We have been told by generations of immigrants that the whole
world loved and admired us. It has taken Americans some time to make
the psychological adjustment to the position of world power.

The British situation is different. The British have always been
inferior in strength of numbers to their great antagonists: the Spain
of Philip II, the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, the Germany of
Wilhelm II and Hitler, and, today, the Soviet Union. British power has
rested not upon numbers but upon combinations of economic stability,
political maneuvering, and the exercise of sea, land, and, latterly,
air power. The world abroad has always appeared harsh to the Briton.
Except for the second half of the last century--a small period in a
thousand years of national existence--the British have always seen on
the horizon the threat of a larger, more powerful neighbor. The balance
has been restored in many a crisis by the ability first of the English
and then of the British to attain in war a unity of purpose and energy
which in the end has brought victory.

Unity often has restored the balance between Britain and her enemies.
To many of us who were in Britain in 1940 the miracle of that memorable
year was not the evacuation of Dunkirk or victory in the Battle of
Britain or the defiance under bombing of the poor in London, Coventry,
and Birmingham, but the national unity of purpose which developed at
the moment when all the social upheavals of the thirties pointed to
division, faltering, and defeat.

Ability to achieve a national unity remains a factor in Britain's
world position. And it is the lack of this unity which makes Britain's
position so perilous today.

The country must make, and it must sell abroad. It must retain access
to the oil of the Middle East or it will have nothing to make or to
sell. It must be able to compete on even terms with the exports of
Germany and Japan. These are the ABC's of the British position.

The leaders of the present Conservative government recognize the
country's situation; so do the Labor Party and the Trades Union
Congress, although each has its own interpretation of the causes. But
there is still an unwillingness or an inability on the part of the
general public to grasp the realities of the situation.

Yet such a grasp is essential. The people of Britain must adjust
themselves to a condition of permanent economic pressure if they are
to meet the economic challenge of the times. Such an adjustment will
involve re-creation of the sort of national unity which produced the
miracles of 1940. Otherwise, John Bull, better paid, better housed, and
with more money (which has less value) than ever before, can follow the
road to inflation which led to disaster in Germany and France in the
thirties.

This return to unity is a factor in answering the question of where the
British go from here. But it is only one of many factors. Before we can
arrive at an adequate answer we must know more about the British, about
their institutions and who runs them today, about what the people have
been doing since 1945, and about how they face and fail to face the
problems of the second half of the century.

Repeatedly in the course of this inquiry we shall encounter a national
characteristic not easily measurable in commercial and industrial
values but deeply established and enormously important. This is the
ability of the British to adapt themselves to a changing world and
to rule themselves with a minimum of serious friction. Stability
and continuity are essential in politics if Britain is to meet and
answer the challenge of the times. The British enjoy these essentials
now. Their demonstrated ability to change with the times is the best
of omens for national success and survival as a great power in the
tumultuous years that lie ahead.

[Illustration]




II. _The Monarchy_

 _Kings are not born; they are made by universal hallucination._

  GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

 _A land where kings may be beloved and monarchy can teach republics
 how they may be free._

  VILDA SAUVAGE OWENS

[Illustration]


The monarchy is the crowning anachronism of British society. It
stands virtually unchallenged at the summit of that society. In this
most political of Western nations, one eternally bubbling with new
ideas on the ways and means by which men can govern themselves, the
thousand-year-old monarchy is admired, respected, or tolerated, but
is seldom attacked. A people who on occasion can be as ruthless and
cynical as any in the world preserve close to their hearts a mystic
symbol that asks and gets an almost childlike loyalty from millions.

This tie between Crown and people is the basis for the monarchy's
existence. Yet, like so many other things in Britain, the tie is almost
indefinable. Its strength is everywhere and nowhere. History is one
of its foundations, and the sense of history--a reassuring sense that
worse has happened and that the nation and the people have survived--is
very strong in Britain. Yet the present institution of monarchy has
little in common with the monarchy of 1856 and still less with that of
1756. And the extreme popularity of the royal family has developed only
in the last eighty years.

The reasons for the monarchy's popularity today are far different from
those of the past. It is regrettable but true that some of the most
popular monarchs earned their popularity as much by their vices as by
their virtues.

By our American standards the British monarchy is very old, although
it does not compare with the same institution in Iran, for instance,
where kings reigned seven centuries before Christ. Certainly the age of
monarchy, linking modern Britain with the forested, lusty, legendary
England of the Dark Ages, contributes to its popularity. Age in an
institution or a person counts in Britain.

Queen Elizabeth II is in direct descent from Egbert, King of Wessex and
all England, who ascended the throne in 827. The blood of all the royal
families of Europe flows in her veins. Among her ancestors are some of
the great names of history: Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Alfred
the Great, Rodrigo the Cid, the Emperor Barbarossa, and St. Louis,
King of France. This notable lineage is unknown to millions who adore
the Queen. The visible expressions of adoration and loyalty to the
royal family can be profoundly moving, but there is nothing to suggest
that the crowd's memory stretches back much further than George V, the
present Queen's grandfather.

Is "profoundly moving" too strong? I doubt it. London was a gray and
somber city in November 1947 when Princess Elizabeth married the Duke
of Edinburgh. A long war with Germany and two years of austerity had
left their mark. The crowds, the buildings were shabby and tired.
Yet the Crown evoked in these circumstances a sincere and unselfish
affection such as few politicians can arouse.

What did it? The pageantry of the Household Cavalry, restored to
their pre-war glory of cuirass, helmet, and plume, scarlet and blue
and white? The state coach with the smiling, excited, pretty girl
inside? The bands and the stirring familiar tunes? There is no single
convincing answer. Yet the affection was there: the sense of a living
and expanding connection between the people and the throne.

But some aspects of the connection can be embarrassing, to Britons as
well as to Americans. The doings of the royal family are recounted by
popular British newspapers and periodicals in nauseating prose. Special
articles on the education of Prince Charles or on Princess Margaret's
religious views (which are deep, sincere, and, to any decent person's
mind, her own business) are written in a mixture of archness, flowery
adulation, and sugary winsomeness.

The newspapers are full of straight reporting (the Queen, asked if she
would have a cup of tea, said: "Yes, thank you, it is rather cold") but
this does not suffice to meet the demand for "news" about the royal
family. Periodically the Sunday newspapers publish reminiscences of
life in the royal household. Former governesses, valets, and even the
man who did the shopping for the Palace write their "inside stories."
These are as uninformative as the special campaign biographies that
appear every four years in the United States, but the public loves
them. I have been told that a "royal" feature in a popular magazine
adds 25,000 or 30,000 in circulation for that issue. The _Sunday
Express_ is said to have picked up 300,000 circulation on the Duchess
of Windsor's memoirs. Like sex and crime, the royal family is always
news--and the news is not invariably favorable.

The interest in royal doings is all the more baffling because the
Queen is generally held to be powerless politically. This view is
accepted in Britain and also in the United States, save among those
surviving primitives of Chicagoland who regard all British monarchs as
reincarnations of George III ready to order the Lobsterbacks to Boston
at an insult's notice. The accepted picture is of a monarch who is a
symbol with little or no influence on politics.

Superficially the picture is accurate. But in the last century and in
this there have been occasions when the Crown exerted power beyond the
functions assigned it by the constitution. These functions include the
summoning, proroguing, and dissolution of Parliament, the dismissal
or appointment of a Prime Minister, the granting of pardons, and the
conferring of peerages and honors. To become the law of the land, a
bill passed by Parliament must receive the royal assent.

All very impressive. But in practice these functions are restricted by
the principle that the monarch is responsible to the government of the
day even though it is styled "Her Majesty's Government." To take one
example, if the Queen wants to make Lord Tomnoddy a duke and the Prime
Minister says no, Lord Tomnoddy does not become a duke. The monarch
retains the right of conferring certain honors, such as the Order of
the Garter, without ministerial advice. But when Chancellor Adenauer of
Germany receives the insignia of the Grand Cross of the Order of St.
Michael and St. George the inspiration comes not from Buckingham Palace
but from Downing Street.

The principle of responsibility to the government guides the conduct
of the monarch. In rare cases the sovereign can express disapproval
of a policy. In the present circumstances the idea of the young Queen
rejecting the advice of her Prime Minister is unthinkable. Without
being romantic, we can wonder if this will always be so.

George V twice exercised his discretionary powers in choosing from
among alternative candidates the man he regarded as best suited to be
Prime Minister. Of course, in each case the candidate chosen had to
have the support of his party in the House of Commons.

We need not go back that far. George VI, the father of the present
Queen, once made a decision that profoundly affected the history of the
world.

When in May 1940 a tired, unpopular Neville Chamberlain resigned
as Prime Minister there were two candidates for the post: Winston
Churchill and Lord Halifax. The King knew that a large section of the
Conservative Party distrusted Churchill and admired Halifax. Its views
were conveyed to him in plain language.

According to _The Gathering Storm_, the first volume of Sir Winston
Churchill's _The Second World War_, Lord Halifax told both Churchill
and Chamberlain that his position as a peer outside the House of
Commons would make it difficult for him to discharge the duties
of Prime Minister. Ultimately a National Government including
representatives of the Labor and Liberal parties was formed, but,
according to Churchill, the King made no stipulation "about the
Government being National in character."

Lord Halifax certainly doubted his ability to discharge his duties
as Prime Minister. But apparently the question of whether he could
form a National Government did not arise. In any event, the King,
fully cognizant of the views of a considerable section of the
Conservative Party on the relative merits of the two men and aware
that it would have been possible to form a Conservative government
under Halifax, sent for Churchill instead of Halifax and asked him to
form a government. History may record this as a signal example of the
remaining powers of the Crown.

Sir William Anson explained in _The Law and Custom in the Constitution_
that the real power of the sovereign "is not to be estimated by his
legal or his actual powers as the executive of the State.

"The King or Queen for the time being is not a mere piece of mechanism,
but a human being carefully trained under circumstances which afford
exceptional chances of learning the business of politics."

The monarch is not isolated from great affairs. The Queen sees from the
inside the workings of government, knows the individuals concerned,
and often has a surer sense of what the people will or will not
accept than some politicians. So, Sir William reasoned, the sovereign
in the course of a long reign may through experience become a person
whose political opinions, even if not enforceable, will carry weight.
Continuity in office, wide experience in contact with successive
governments, and, finally, the influence that the monarchy exercises
through an ancient and well-established tie with the people can confer
upon the sovereign an influence far greater than is generally realized.

Queen Elizabeth II has twice used the royal prerogative of choosing a
Prime Minister. On April 6, 1955, she chose Sir Anthony Eden to succeed
Sir Winston Churchill. On January 10, 1957, she chose Harold Macmillan
to succeed Sir Anthony. The second selection occasioned sharp political
outcry. The "shadow cabinet" or Parliamentary Committee of the Labor
Party, meeting in secrecy and dudgeon, reported that the Queen's choice
had raised serious questions of a constitutional nature. It argued that
the Conservative Party, by asking the sovereign to choose between Mr.
Macmillan and R.A. Butler, had involved the Queen in partisan politics.
The Tories, Labor said with a touch of self-righteousness, should
always have a leader and a deputy leader of the party ready to assume
the highest office when called.

(This raised the contingency, pleasing to Tories at least, of James
Griffiths, the present deputy leader, as Prime Minister instead of
Aneurin Bevan in the event of some serious accident to Hugh Gaitskell.)

The Socialists' argument that the Queen was forced to choose between
Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Butler reflected a certain ignorance of what
had been going on within the Conservative Party. It was apparent on
the night of Sir Anthony Eden's resignation that Mr. Butler did not
command the support of a majority of the Tory Members of the House of
Commons. It was also apparent, or should have been apparent, that the
Queen would be advised by the retiring Prime Minister, Sir Anthony
Eden, and the two foremost figures in the party, Sir Winston Churchill
and the Marquess of Salisbury. Anyone aware of the currents within the
Conservative leadership during the last three months of 1956 could
not possibly have thought that any one of these three would advise the
Queen to choose Mr. Butler.

There was a good deal less to the high-minded Socialist protest than
met the eye. The shadow cabinet made the tactical mistake of coupling
the protest with a demand for a general election. One need not be
cynical to emphasize the connection. But the spectacle of Mr. Bevan and
his colleagues protesting like courtiers over the Queen's involvement
in politics and quoting an editorial in _The Times_ as though it were
Holy Writ added to the gaiety of the nation.

The Queen may have opinions on national and international affairs which
differ from those of her ministers. To date there has been no reliable
report of such differences. But her grandfather, George V, was seldom
backward in expressing opinions contrary to those of his ministers.
He told them, for instance, that the conduct of the 1914-18 war must
be left to military "experts," which meant Haig and his staff, rather
than to politicians. He opposed the dissolution of Parliament in
1918. He refused outright to grant a convenient "political" peerage.
This opposition, it should be emphasized, was not directed at court
functionaries. On many occasions George V took issue with David Lloyd
George, a wartime Premier then at the height of his prestige and power,
and a brilliant and tenacious debater.

The present royal family invites comparisons with that of a century
ago. Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is, like Albert, the Prince Consort
of Victoria, an exceptional person. He is a man of industry and
intelligence. Like Albert, he understands both the broad outlines and
the nuances of a new industrial age into which Britain is moving. He
has a wider acquaintance with the world of science, so essential to
his country, than any other member of the royal family. The techniques
of industry and invention really interest him. He understands, perhaps
better than some of his wife's ministers, the importance to Britain of
such developments as the industrial use of nuclear energy. Finally, the
Duke of Edinburgh has one matchless qualification for his role. As a
young officer of the Royal Navy he became aware of the way the Queen's
subjects, as represented by the lower deck of the Navy, think and feel.
He has in fact what the admirers of the Duke of Windsor claimed for him
when he was Prince of Wales: an intimate knowledge of the people of
Britain.

These qualities are not universally admired. A trade-union leader
told me he did not want "well-intentioned young men like Philip
mucking about with industrial relations." At the other side of the
political spectrum, the _Sunday Express_, Lord Beaverbrook's newspaper,
tut-tutted at the Duke's interest in this field.

The reasoning behind both attitudes is obvious. Industrial relations
are politics. The union movement is the Fourth Estate of the realm, and
"royals" should leave them alone.

There is an obvious parallel. The Prince Consort when he died had
established himself at the center of national affairs. But for his
death, Lytton Strachey wrote, "such a man, grown gray in the service
of the nation, virtuous, intelligent, and with the unexampled
experience of a whole lifetime of government," would have achieved "an
extraordinary prestige."

Disraeli saw the situation in even more positive terms. "With Prince
Albert we have buried our sovereign. This German Prince has governed
England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none
of our kings have ever shown.... If he had outlived some of our 'old
stagers' he would have given us the blessings of absolute government."

The parallel may seem far-fetched. Of course present-day Britain is
not the Britain of 1856. It is hard to think of Sir Anthony Eden or
Hugh Gaitskell being moved politically, at the moment, by the views of
the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh as Lord Clarendon was, and as Lord
Palmerston was not, by Victoria and Albert. But, to borrow Napoleon
III's incisive phrase, in politics one should never say never.

Not long ago a diplomat who had returned from a key post abroad
encountered the Queen at what should have been a perfunctory ceremony.
He expected a few minutes' conversation. What he got was forty minutes
of acute questioning about the situation in the country he had just
left. The Queen impressed him with the width of her knowledge, her
accurate memory, and the sharpness of her questions. He, a tough,
skeptical intellectual, departed with heightened respect for his
sovereign's intelligence.

What will be the Queen's influence a quarter of a century hence? By
then some politician, now unknown, will be Prime Minister. How much
will the wisdom and experience of the Queen, gained as the repository
of the secrets of successive governments, affect the government of the
day? Monarchy, we Americans are taught, is an archaic symbol and an
obsolete form of government. History has moved away from constitutional
monarchies and, of course, from one-man rule. But has it? Will the
movement continue?

By 1980 the British monarchy may be a memory. But let us suppose
that by that year the royal house is represented by an infinitely
experienced Queen and a consort who knows the country's problems as
well as most of her ministers. Prince Philip is a nephew of Earl
Mountbatten, one of the most striking Englishmen of today. What will
this infusion of determination, energy, and intelligence do for the
fortunes of the monarchy?

The British are cautious in discussing any indications of the influence
of the Crown on the day-to-day conduct of government. But occasional
comments and indiscretions indicate that this influence is a factor in
decisions. For instance, early in 1956 I was talking to an important
civil servant about a government decision that was to be announced
in the next few days. The government was busy making certain, he
said, that "the Palace" wouldn't "make a row about it." I said I was
surprised that he should ascribe so much weight to the Palace's view on
a matter that involved the cabinet and the House of Commons. His answer
was that in a country such as Britain under a Conservative government,
influence is not exerted solely through the House or government
departments. "What people say to each other counts," he said. "And when
the Queen says it, it counts a great deal. Of course, she couldn't
change a decision. Nor would she ever attempt to. But it can be
awkward, you know."

To guess at the future power of the monarchy we must examine it as it
is today. What lies behind its popularity and how is that popularity
maintained? What keeps strong this tie between a largely working-class
population, highly progressive politically, and an aristocratic
institution that has outlived its power if not its influence?

To understand, we must watch monarchy operate within the limitations
imposed upon it by the constitution. The principal functions are the
public performances of the duties of the Crown--what the British press
calls "royal occasions." They range from a state opening of Parliament
to a visit to an orphanage.

These take place in an atmosphere fusing formality and enthusiasm.
Protocol calls for dignity, friendliness, and a certain aloofness
on the part of the Queen. Those who make the arrangements for royal
occasions are mindful of Walter Bagehot's warning against allowing
too much light to fall on the institution of monarchy. But from the
standpoint of popular reaction, the Queen's appearances are most
successful when she stops to say a few words to someone in the crowd.
Written reports of such encounters usually endow the Queen with a
celestial condescension. The fact is that the Queen, though shy, is
friendly, and her awed subjects are likely to report that "she talked
about the baby just like she was from down the street."

Of course, the Queen is not like someone just down the street. But the
essence of a successful display of the monarchy is a combination of
this friendliness with the serene dignity displayed on great occasions
of state. The men and women in the crowd want to believe that the Queen
is, or can be, like them. As long as they do, the monarchy, no matter
how rich its members and how expensive its trappings, is relatively
safe.

To the people in the streets the Queen is paramount. The Duke of
Edinburgh is popular. So are the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
But it is the Queen who combines all those elements of tradition,
affection, and mysticism which contribute to the Crown's unique place
in public life.

The crowd does not care much about other royalties. To the man in
the street there is little difference between, say, Prince Rainier
of Monaco and Aristotle Onassis. The British nurse at their hearts a
snobbish isolationism toward foreign crowns. Only their own Queen and
royal family really matter.

One reason is that Britain's Queen and the monarchial institution
she heads are kept before the people to a far greater degree than is
customary in the monarchies of Holland or Sweden. Official political
and social appearances in London are augmented by visits to various
parts of the country. The Queen and the Duke are the chief attractions,
but other members of the family perform similar duties.

Careful planning and split-second timing are the key to successful
royal visits. So familiar is the pattern that a skeptic might think
the effect negligible. When the Queen comes to Loamshire, however, she
is _there_ in Loamshire. Everything she does is familiar, but now she
is there directly before the crowd's very eyes, rendering a personal
service.

The Queen and the Duke arrive in Loamshire for a three-day visit.
Their car is a huge, glittering Rolls-Royce flying the royal standard.
Thousands of people, most of them women and children, are on the
sidewalks and in the windows of the buildings around the town hall of
the county town of Loamshire. As the Queen gets out of the car there is
a wave of cheering, strong and unaffected. (It is well to balance this
enthusiasm against the inattention paid "God Save the Queen" when it is
played at the end of the program in a provincial movie theater.)

The Mayor, sweating freely in his excitement, welcomes the Queen and
delivers an appropriate address. In a country divided almost evenly
between the Conservative and Labor parties, a large number of mayors
are Socialists. But, with rare exceptions, the Socialists and their
wives are as eager as the Tories to welcome royalty.

The Queen and the Duke are introduced to the dignitaries of Loamshire,
with the Lord Lieutenant of the county in attendance. The Queen
inspects a guard of honor which may be drawn from the Royal Loamshire
Light Infantry or from the local Girl Guides. There is lunch, usually a
pretty bad lunch. Then the royal party is off to lay the cornerstone of
a new hospital or press a button to start a new power plant or unveil
a war memorial. At any such occasion the Queen reads a short speech of
blameless sentiments.

Then on to the next town, to more cheering in the streets and waving of
flags, more loyal declarations and another mayor and council. This may
go on for two or three days. Every step the Queen takes, every action
is noted by newsreel and television cameras. Every word she utters is
taken down. Every person with whom she talks is interviewed afterward.

Back in London there are more ceremonies. There are also ambassadors
to be received, state papers to be read, decorations to be awarded,
distinguished visitors to be met.

It is often said that the Queen is just like anyone else of her age,
an idea much favored by the spun-sugar biographies in the popular
press. Of course it is nonsense. The Queen cannot, because of her
birth, upbringing, and station, be like anyone else. Certainly she has
a private life not unlike that of other wealthy young women, but her
private life is severely restricted.

She and the Duke may like to eat their supper off trays and watch a
popular comedian on television, but they seldom get an opportunity
to do so. The Queen must be wary of what plays she sees and what
amusements she patronizes. As head of the Church she is an inviting
target for sorrowful criticism by the bluenoses. The Queen's love
of horse racing and the Duke's love of polo are often attacked by
puritanical elements. The League Against Cruel Sports periodically
reproves her for attending "the sporting butchery" of fox-hunting.

What sort of woman is she? Forget the cloying descriptions of courtiers
and the indiscretions of "Crawfie" and her friends, and the portrait is
rather an appealing one. Elizabeth II in person is much prettier than
her photographs. Her coloring is excellent. Her mouth, a little too
wide, can break into a beguiling smile. She is slowly overcoming her
nervousness in public, but still becomes very angry when the newsreel
and television cameras focus on her for minutes at a time. Her voice,
high and girlish on her accession, is taking on a deeper, more musical
tone. Years of state duties, of meeting all kinds and classes of
people, have diminished her shyness. She was almost tongue-tied when
she came to Washington as Princess Elizabeth, but her host on that
occasion, President Harry S. Truman, was surprised by the poised and
friendly Queen he met in London in 1956.

All her adult life the Queen has been accustomed to the company of the
great. Aided by a phenomenal memory and real interest, her acquaintance
with world politics is profound. She is intelligent but not an
intellectual. She does a great deal of official reading--so much, in
fact, that she reads little for pleasure.

The Queen's pleasures and those of her immediate family are so typical
of the middle class that intellectuals are often offended. They would
prefer more attendance at cultural events such as the Edinburgh
Festival and less at race meetings. But the deep thinkers, worried
because the cultural tone of Buckingham Palace is pitched to the level
of Danny Kaye rather than T.S. Eliot, overlook the fact that attachment
to such frivolity strengthens the popularity of the royal house.
There is no evidence that the British admire or desire intellectual
attainments in a monarch. Nor does history indicate that such lusty
figures as Charles II and George IV were less popular than the pious
Victoria or the benign George V. Thus, when the Queen spends a week at
Ascot to watch the racing, as millions of her subjects would dearly
love to do, or attends a London revue, her subjects, aware of the
burden of her office, wish her a good time. And the descriptions of
such outings, with their invariable reports on what the Queen wore,
what she ate and drank, and what she was heard to say, are read avidly
by a large percentage of her people.

The people are flattered when the Queen appears at a polo game in
sensible shoes and a print dress, accompanied by her children and her
dogs. They are equally flattered when they see her in tiara and evening
dress, regal and coldly handsome. When the newspapers printed pictures
of the Queen and her royal hosts at a state ball during her visit to
Sweden, the popular reaction was: "Doesn't she look lovely, a real
credit to the country."

Racing is the Queen's favorite sport. When she was returning from
her world tour in 1953-4, one of the first messages the royal yacht
_Britannia_ transmitted as it neared British shores was an inquiry on
the result of a race held the day before.

For Elizabeth, racing is more than a sport; it is an enthusiasm. She
knows blood lines and past performances, and her acute judgment of form
sometimes conflicts with her personal attachment for one of the royal
stable's entries. She likes to watch show jumping and polo, although
at polo games she is continually worried about the Duke of Edinburgh,
an enthusiastic player. But horse racing: the magic moment when the
barrier goes up, the bright silks on the back stretch, the lovely sight
of the field rounding the last turn into the stretch--that's her sport.
As it is also the sport of millions of her subjects, the sneers of the
puritans have little effect.

She is a young woman of determination, having inherited some of her
grandfather's temper and his forthright outlook on events. In moments
of family crisis she is likely to take what the British call "a strong
line." During the row over the romance of Princess Margaret and Peter
Townsend, it was reported that the first communication from Buckingham
Palace on the situation had been written by the Queen. I find this
credible. The announcement certainly had all the faults of a communiqué
drafted in anger.

Finally, Elizabeth is religious, very conscious of the importance
of her role in British society, and, as she grows older, somewhat
censorious of the gay young things enjoying a freedom she never knew.

The monarchy is costly. The Queen is a very wealthy woman in her own
right, but, in addition, she receives £60,000 (about $168,000) a year
from the Civil List. This is granted to the sovereign by Parliament
on the recommendation of a Select Committee. The Civil List not only
"pays" the Queen but pays her expenses, which are high. For instance,
the salaries of the royal household, secretaries, equerries, servants,
and the like, total £185,000 or $418,000 a year, and the running
expenses come to £121,800 or $341,040.

Payments charged to the Consolidated Fund maintain the other members of
the family. The Duke of Edinburgh's annuity is £40,000 or $112,000 a
year, and the Queen Mother's is £70,000 or $196,000.

These payments are only one of many sources of income. The House of
Windsor is very rich, although its fortune is modest compared with the
holdings of the House of Ford or the House of Rockefeller.

Queen Victoria died leaving the monarchy more firmly established than
ever before and her family richer by millions of pounds. During her
long reign the remarkable daughter of an unambitious Duke of Kent and
an improvident German princess amassed a fortune of about £5,000,000
or, at the exchange rates of the day, about $25,000,000. The financial
dealings of the royal house are secret. But both Albert, Victoria's
Prince Consort, and his son Edward VII benefited from the advice of
financiers. Reputedly the family owns large blocks of American railroad
stock. The financial structure is complex, however. It is hard to say
just how much Elizabeth owns as Queen and how much as an individual.

As one of the greatest landowners, the Queen derives an income of about
£94,600 or $265,000 a year from the Duchy of Lancaster. The royal
family also receives the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, which
amount to about £90,000 or approximately $250,000 a year. This duchy,
comprising about 133,000 acres spread throughout the west of England,
includes farms, hotels, tin mines, even pubs. Seven palaces and
eight royal houses also are the property of Elizabeth as Queen. One,
Sandringham in Norfolk, an estate of 17,000 acres including fifteen
well-kept farms, is a family holding. The Balmoral estate in Scotland
comprises 80,000 acres. The family holds more than seventy-five choice
bits of London real estate. Both fortune and property are carefully
managed. Nothing is wasted. The game birds that fall to the guns of
shooting parties at Sandringham and Balmoral are sold on the commercial
market after the household's requirements have been met.

The Crown is not only a prosperous and wealthy establishment. It is
also the center of a unique complex of commercial interests. The
manufacture of souvenirs connected with the royal family is big
business. These souvenirs range from hideous, cheap glass ash trays and
"silver" spoons stamped with a picture of Buckingham Palace or of the
Queen and the Duke to "coronation" wineglasses and dinner services sold
to wealthy tourists. A whole section of British publishing is devoted
to postcards, picture books, and other records of royal lives and royal
occasions.

The Queen's world tour in 1953-4 produced a bumper crop of pictorial
and prose reports to fit every purse and the prevailing taste for
flowery adulation. These books were bought and read, or at least looked
at, after the British public already had been exposed to newspaper
accounts, magazine reports, radio bulletins, and television newsreels.
Once at a dinner party the wife of a famous writer remarked: "I'm
sick of this damned tour." The other guests broke into a flurry of
conversation that had nothing to do with the royal voyage. Yet I
learned that three of them felt "exactly as dear Betty does, but, my
dear, you don't say it."

Some thoughtful students of the institution believe that the
newspapers, magazines, radio, and television have forgotten Bagehot's
injunction about letting too much light fall on the monarchy. But I
have seen no diminution of popular interest. The highbrows may be
bored, but the lowbrows and middlebrows love it.

The extensive coverage given the royal family has propaganda uses. In
the years since the war there has been a quiet but intensive effort
to reinforce the position of the monarch as the titular head of the
Commonwealth. The rulers of Britain, Labor or Conservative, recognizing
how slender are the ties that bind the Commonwealth, have worked
steadily to strengthen the chief spiritual tie, the Crown, as political
and economic ties have become attenuated.

The Queen is the Queen of Canada and Australia as well as of the United
Kingdom. Canada, in fact, is a monarchy. Royal tours of Commonwealth
countries emphasize the common tie of monarchy and are also intended
to reawaken interest in Britain and, as these are a commercial people,
British manufactures.

The reports that have reached London show that, from the standpoint of
strengthening identity with the Commonwealth, the visit to Australia
and New Zealand during the world tour was an outstanding success. To
the exuberant, vigorous Australians, for instance, the Queen symbolized
their relationship with the island many of them still call home.
Criticism of the "pommies," the slang term for the British, was drowned
in the swell of cheers for the Queen of Australia.

Nor should the effect of such tours on the younger members of the
Commonwealth be underestimated. The visit to Nigeria in 1956 flattered
its people and gave new meaning to the honors and titles that
successive governments have bestowed on worthy--which in this context
means loyal--natives of the country. Those in government who value the
Commonwealth and Empire see such visits as a method of impressing new
members of the Commonwealth with the permanence of a symbol that binds
all members. Perhaps only South Africa, in its present government's
mood of Boer republicanism, is proof against the loan of the Crown.

Curiously, this extension of the monarchy is not generally appreciated
in Britain. There the supporters of the Crown are gratified, of course,
when the newspapers report an ovation for the Queen in Wellington. But
they are slow to accept the idea of the Queen as Queen of New Zealand.

The process of identifying the Queen with various parts of the
Commonwealth may go further than visits to its members. Some officials
suggest that the Queen should live a part of each year in one or
another of the Commonwealth countries. From the constitutional
standpoint this is a revolutionary suggestion. And Britain prefers
evolution to revolution. But it is an indication of the progressive
viewpoint that some supporters of the Crown have adopted toward its
political uses in the modern world.

No institution in Britain escapes attack, and so the institution of
monarchy is attacked. But such criticism is rarely coherent, popular,
or direct. On the whole, there is less criticism than there was a
century ago. Republicanism died as a political force in the 1870's. The
Chartists in their peak period, roughly between 1838 and 1849, included
in their demands the establishment of a republic. When Victoria
withdrew into her grief after the death of the Prince Consort, a
republican movement of some importance developed. New impetus was given
by the establishment of the Third Republic in France in 1871. Charles
Bradlaugh and George Odger, men of some importance, spoke eloquently in
support of a republic. But the last "Republican Conference" was held in
1873, and Sir Charles Dilke later ascribed his youthful republicanism
to "political infancy."

The Labor Party, despite its strong infusion of Marxism, treats the
issue as a dead letter. Not since the party conference of 1923 has
there been a serious debate on the monarchy. At that conference a
motion that republicanism should be the policy of the party was
rejected by 3,694,000 votes to 386,000.

Criticism of the monarchy in contemporary Britain is most telling when
it hits the cost of the institution. The great wealth of the royal
family and the heavy expenses of the monarchial institution invite
criticism in a period when Britain seems to live perennially on the rim
of economic disaster.

Early in 1956 it was suggested that the Queen's Flight, her personal
transport planes, be re-equipped with one, possibly more, of the
big new Britannias, the nation's newest air liner. At the same time
a new dining-car was ordered for royal travel, and it became known
that the royal waiting-room at London airport was to be renovated at
considerable expense. These matters received extraordinarily detailed
coverage in the newspapers owned by Lord Beaverbrook. Letters
criticizing the added expenses found their way into the letter columns
of the _Daily Express_, the _Evening Standard_, and the _Sunday
Express_. Columnists inquired the reason for such expenditures when
the nation was being asked to tighten its belt, spend less, and defeat
inflation.

Constant readers of these newspapers, which are among the most
sprightly and technically expert in Britain, have long noted their
oblique criticism of Duke of Edinburgh. Usually this deals with the
Duke's "interference" in the field of industrial relations. It is
believed to spring from Lord Beaverbrook's long-standing animus for
the Duke's uncle, Earl Mountbatten. The criticism of the proposed
expenditures for the Britannias, the dining-car, and the waiting-room
gave the newspapers a chance to hint that the young man was getting a
bit above himself.

The _Sunday Express_ gave the widest possible publicity to its
serialization of the autobiography of the Duchess of Windsor, an opus
that, although interesting, cannot be considered an enthusiastic
recommendation for the institution of monarchy.

The inevitable conclusion is that William Maxwell Aitken, first Baron
Beaverbrook, New Brunswick, and Cherkley, nurses crypto-republican
sentiments at heart. He has confessed to being a propagandist in his
newspapers, and he is so unpredictable that he might sometime direct
all his energies against the institution. I mentioned this to a cabinet
minister, who replied that the monarchy would welcome it. "Nothing
helps a politician more than the enmity of the Beaver," he commented.

Although republicanism is no longer an issue in the Labor Party, the
party itself contains a strong element that is hostile to the monarchy.
Yet neither the _Daily Mirror_ nor the _Daily Herald_, the journalistic
pillars of the left, snipe quite so often or so accurately as the
Beaverbrook press.

The _New Statesman and Nation_ does. Its indirect attacks on royalty
are based on establishing a link between royalty and the wealthy,
showy, and, of course, non-socialist world of London's fashionable
West End. The _New Statesman_'s complaint, delivered in the tones of
a touring schoolmarm who has been pinched by a lascivious Latin, is
that the Queen should use her influence to halt ostentatious spending
on debutante parties and the revels of the young. Its anonymous
editorial-writer was severe with young people who drink too much
(although abstinence has never been particularly popular on the left)
and generally whoop it up. The editorial ended with a hint that the
Queen would have to exercise some restraint when a Labor government
came to power.

Despite such criticisms and warnings, the monarchy pursues its course
virtually unchallenged. One reason for the lack of a serious political
challenge may be that the monarchy is not now identified with a rich,
powerful, and coherent aristocracy, as it was a century ago, but with
the ordinary citizen. Then, too, there are many who look to the royal
family as an example.

Long ago a compositor in a London newspaper, a good union man and a
Socialist, explained this attitude. "I'd rather have my two daughters
reading about the Queen and all that stuff than reading those magazines
about the flicks. Who'd you want your daughter to follow, Lana Turner
or the Queen?"

So we return again to the indefinable and powerful tie that binds
people and Crown.

Perhaps it is a sense of historical identity experienced as the Queen
rides past, carrying with her the atmosphere of other Englands. Here
before the eyes of her people is a reassurance of survival, an example
of continuity. This is one of those periods in history when the British
need reassuring.

Perhaps as the monotony of life in a nation that is becoming one huge
industrial suburb spreads over Britain, the ceremony and glitter of
the Crown mean more than ever before. The great noblemen are prosaic
characters in business suits showing the crowds through empty palaces
and castles. But the Queen, amid the uniforms and palaces and castles,
remains the Queen.

Perhaps as the storms buffet England in this second half of the
century, the position of the Queen as a personification of goodness
and justice becomes more important. Here is an enduring symbol, a
token of the past and a promise for the future. As the world and its
problems become more complex, the single, simple attraction of the
representative of an institution that has survived so many complexities
and problems will grow upon the confused and unhappy.

The Crown stands as it has for a thousand years. Its power is less and
its influence is greater than many know. It is an integral part of a
flexible and progressive society.




[Illustration]




III. _How the British Govern Themselves_

 _Parliament can do anything but turn a boy into a girl._

  ENGLISH PROVERB

 _Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the
 ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and
 convenience to itself._

  WOODROW WILSON

[Illustration]


The British are pre-eminently a political people, as Americans are,
and as Germans, Russians, and Italians are not. They regard politics
and government as serious, honorable, and, above all, interesting
occupations. To many Britons the techniques of government and politics
in Nigeria or Louisiana or Iceland are as fascinating as the newest jet
fighter is to an aviation enthusiast. They have been at it a long time,
and yet politics and government remain eternally fascinating.

The comparative stability and prestige of government and politics
result in part from tradition and experience. The British govern
themselves by a system evolved over a thousand years from the times of
the Saxon kings, and they have given much of what is best and some of
what is worst in that system to nations and continents unknown when
first a Parliament sat in Westminster. Although it was dominated by
peers and bullied by the King, a Parliament met in Westminster when
France seethed under the absolute rule of His Most Christian Majesty.
Some of the greatest speeches made against the royal policy during the
American War of Independence were made in Parliament.

The course of history has strengthened the position of parliamentary
government. Parliament and Britain have survived and triumphed, but
where is the Europe of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, of Wilhelm II, of
Hitler? Even in times of great stress the business of government must
go on. I remember my astonishment in June of 1940 when I returned from
a stricken, hopeless France to learn from a Member of Parliament that a
committee was considering plans for uniting the West Indian islands in
a single Commonwealth unit after the war.

The idea that politics and government are essential to the well-being
of the nation fortifies tolerance in British public life. The political
and military disasters of 1940 were far more damaging and dangerous
to Britain than Pearl Harbor was to the United States. They invited
bitter recrimination. Yet Winston Churchill, himself bitterly attacked
in the locust years for predicting these very disasters, took Neville
Chamberlain into his cabinet and silenced recrimination with the
salient reminder that if the nation dwelt too much on the past it might
lose the future.

For a century the British have avoided the dangers of an important
extremist political party comparable to the Communists in France and
Italy or the Nazis in Germany. The Communist Party exists in Britain,
of course, but only barely. Sir Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts made
some impression just before and just after the last war, but their
direct political influence is negligible.

The British don't think extremism is good practical politics. They went
through their own period of extremism in the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and early eighteenth centuries when for a variety of reasons,
religious as well as political, they cut off one king's head, tried
a dictatorship, brought back a king, and finally found comparative
tranquillity in the development of a constitutional monarchy.

The memory of these troubled times is not dead. At the height of
McCarthyism in the United States a British diplomat explained: "We're
very fortunate; we went through the same sort of period under the
Tudors and the Stuarts when treason and slander and libel were the
common coin of politics."

With exceptions, the great political parties in the country have now
identified themselves with the national interest rather than with a
partisan one. Even the exceptions change. As the status of the working
class has changed for the better, the Labor Party has moved perceptibly
away from its early position as a one-class party. The heirs of Keir
Hardy--the Attlees, Morrisons, and Gaitskells--understand that Labor
must appeal now to the whole people.

The national interest is something the whole people has always
understood and accepted in the past. For the British are guided
politically not by an ideology but by interest. This interest is a free
world, free from the economic as well as the political standpoint. One
factor in the decision to withdraw from India was the conviction that,
in the end, withdrawal would serve British commercial interests. I do
not suggest that this was the only factor. There were others, including
the belief of the leaders of the Labor government that India could not
and should not be kept within the Empire by force.

Similarly, Britain is ready to give way on the independence of
other parts of the Empire when she thinks these areas are ready for
independence as democracies, and when she believes that their emergence
as independent democracies will benefit her own commercial interests.
This mixture of realism and idealism is difficult for outsiders to
grasp, especially when the British cling to a territory such as Cyprus
for reasons that are largely connected with their commercial interests
in that part of the world.

Yet although the British have acquired, and are now in the process
of losing, a world-wide empire, they never suffered from a desire to
remake the world as did the French of 1789, or the Russians of 1917, or
the Germans of 1939. As a commercial people their basic interest was,
and is, peace. The British will go to almost any lengths to prevent a
war, as they did in 1938 and 1939. Once at war, however, they fight
with cold ruthlessness.

The allegiance of the great political parties to the national interest
is one reason why British politics and politicians are flexible and
tolerant. Another is that politics are still touched by the shadowy
influence of the Crown. Here is a higher, if weaker, authority than
Prime Minister or cabinet. Does the presence of the sovereign at the
peak of government draw some of the exaggeration and extremism from
politics?

Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even Churchill in 1940, has
ever been bathed in the sycophancy that deluged President Eisenhower
in his first term. Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even
Chamberlain in 1938 and 1939, has been reviled so relentlessly by
critics as were Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Convictions are as
deeply held in London as in Washington. But anyone moving between the
two cities must be convinced that the political atmosphere in London is
calmer, less subject to emotional cloudbursts.

The center of British politics is Parliament--the House of Commons and,
to a lesser degree, the House of Lords.

Parliament represents all the countries of the United Kingdom. It
can legislate for the whole kingdom or for Great Britain itself or,
separately, for England and Wales. But, as this is Britain, the
country of contradictions, the Parliament at Westminster is not the
only parliament. Northern Ireland has its own. But it also sends MP's
to Westminster. The Tynewald sits in the Isle of Man, and the States
legislate for the Channel Islands.

Opposition to the power of the central government, which means
Parliament, comes from the nationalist movements of Scotland and Wales.
Supported by minorities fiercely antagonistic toward the Sassenach (as
they call the English), these movements provide emotional stimuli for
the very young and the very old. At best they are gallant protests
against the accretion of power to a central government, a process that
goes on in Britain as it does in the United States and elsewhere. At
worst, considering the extent of Britain's real problems, the national
movements are a nuisance.

But these are not rivals, and legally the Parliament in London can do
anything it desires. During the five-year life of a Parliament the
assembly can make or unmake any law, destroy the constitution, legalize
past illegalities and thus reverse court decisions. Parliament also has
the power to prolong its own life.

Is Parliament therefore supreme and absolute? Legally, yes. But
legislative authority is delegated increasingly to ministers, and
specific powers to local authorities and to public corporations. Such
delegated powers can be withdrawn at any time, although the pressure of
work on Parliament is so great that this is unlikely.

Finally, Britain has its own system of checks and balances. The
two-party system forbids arbitrary action, for the abuse of
parliamentary power by the party in power would invite repudiation by
the electors.

Of the two houses, the House of Commons is infinitely the more
powerful. In this popularly elected assembly there are 630 members. Of
these, 511 sit for English constituencies, 36 for Welsh, 71 for Scotch,
and 12 for Northern Irish. Each constituency elects one member. The
composition of the present House of Commons, elected in May 1955, is:
Conservatives and their supporters, 346; Labor, 277; Liberal, 6; and
the Speaker, who does not vote, 1.

What does Parliament do? It regulates the life of the community through
the laws it makes. It finances the needs of the people and appropriates
the funds necessary for the services of the State by legislative
action. It controls and criticizes the government.

One reason for the supremacy of the House of Commons is that bills
dealing with finance or representation are always introduced in that
house. Moreover, the Lords avoids the introduction of controversial
bills.

Almost all bills are presented by the government in power. They
reflect policy decisions taken in the cabinet at the instigation of
government departments that will be responsible for the administration
of the decisions when the bills become law. The principal exceptions
are Private Bills, which relate solely to some matter of individual,
corporate, or local interest, and Private Members' Bills, which are
introduced by individual MP's.

The manner in which Parliament--generally the House of
Commons--controls the government in power emphasizes the difference
between the British system and our own. The ultimate control is the
power of the House of Commons to pass a resolution of "no confidence"
in the government or to reject a proposal which the government
considers so vital to its policy that it has made the proposal's
passage a "matter of confidence." If such a proposal is rejected, the
government is obliged to resign.

In addition, there is that very British institution, Question Time.
Between 2:30 and 3:30 each afternoon from Monday through Thursday,
MP's may question any minister on the work of his department and the
Prime Minister on general national policy. The questions range from the
trivial to the significant. A query about the heating in a remote Army
barracks may be followed by one about progress on the hydrogen bomb.
The growth of Question Time as an institution has put a special premium
on those ministers or junior ministers best able to parry and riposte.
For the opposition can press the minister, and if his original reply
is unsatisfactory, the questioner will follow with a supplementary
question designed to reveal the minister as incapable and ignorant.

The majority of questions are put by the opposition in the hope
of focusing public attention on the government's weaknesses. But
government Members also put questions dealing with affairs in their
constituencies. A number of them also can be counted upon to offer
ministers congratulatory queries along the lines "Is the Right
Honorable Gentleman aware that his reply will be welcomed by all
those
...?"

Questions and answers are couched in the glistening phrases of polite
debate, but occasionally tempers rise and the Speaker intervenes.
Because of the variety of subject matter and the importance of some of
the questions, Question Time is an exciting period. It was never more
so than in the last administration of Sir Winston Churchill.

That Prime Minister, armed with the political experience of fifty
years, was a joy to watch in action. One of his last memorable sallies
was at the expense of Woodrow Wyatt, an earnest young Labor MP.

What plans had the government, Wyatt asked, for evacuating itself from
London in the event of atomic attack?

Sir Winston regarded him owlishly. "Surely the Honorable Member does
not wish me to take the bread out of the mouths of the Soviet secret
service," he said.

Even without these moments, Question Time would be useful as a sort
of national catharsis and as an example of democracy in action. The
spectacle of the House of Commons, representing a Britain beset by a
multitude of problems, pausing to discuss the affairs of a crippled
veteran in a remote Welsh village is a moving one.

There is a slight similarity between Question Time and the Presidential
press conference as it has developed in Washington. Both give the
executive a chance to explain the workings of policy and government.
But in Britain the penalties for failure to answer are much greater
than in Washington. The President is answering reporters, and he is
under no compulsion to answer the questions put to him. The Prime
Minister, on the other hand, is confronted directly by his political
foes. If he fails to answer a question or offers an unsatisfactory
reply, he may provoke debate later on the matter at issue.

Certainly the President is often roughly handled, but most of the
press-conference questions seem to lack the bite and sting of those
posed in the House of Commons. Perhaps this is inevitable under present
circumstances. President Eisenhower has answered the questions of
representatives of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television
systems that are overwhelmingly Republican. A British Prime Minister
and his ministers, on the other hand, must battle all the way.

Finally, all the government departments are represented in the House
of Commons, and their representatives, as well as the Prime Minister,
can be subjected to prolonged and, at times, merciless questioning.
A comparison of Hansard's Parliamentary reports and the reports of
Presidential press conferences since 1952 will show, I think, that
there is greater pressure and a good deal more precise information in
Question Time than in a Presidential press conference.

But Question Time is only one means by which the House of Commons
can criticize and control the government. The opposition can move
the adjournment of the House on a matter that the Speaker considers
definite, urgent, and the responsibility of the government. Or it can
use one of the days formerly devoted to consideration of the Estimates
in Committee of Supply for a debate on some part of government policy.

The big debates on such issues as foreign affairs and economic policy
are the summit of parliamentary effort. Government and opposition put
forward their leading spokesmen on the issue under debate. But debates
also provide an opportunity for the back benchers of all parties.
The back benchers--Members who are not in the government or in the
opposition's shadow cabinet--rise to make their points on the issue,
and often remarkably good speeches, as well as bad ones, are delivered.

But parliamentary business is concerned with much more than questions
and debates. Bills must be passed. This procedure is involved and
lengthy, paying due attention to the rights of the House and the people
it represents.

The bill receives a formal First Reading on its introduction and is
then printed. After a period varying from one to several weeks,
depending on the bill's nature, it may be given a Second Reading as the
result of a debate on its general merits. Then the bill is referred to
one of the standing committees.

During the committee stage, Members can amend the bill if a majority of
the House agrees. When this stage is finished, the bill is reported to
the House and a further debate takes place during which the Committee's
amendments may be altered, additional amendments may be suggested
and incorporated, and, if necessary, the bill may be recommitted to
committee. Finally, the bill is submitted for a Third Reading, and if
passed, it is sent on from the Commons to the House of Lords. There it
enters upon the same course.

There, also, it may awaken the interest of Lord Cholmondeley, my
favorite peer. Lord Cholmondeley spoke in the House of Lords recently
for the first time in thirty-two years. What he had to say--about
rabbits and other small game--was brief and to the point. To many, Lord
Cholmondeley must symbolize the vague absurdities of the House of Lords.

Yet this peculiar institution has its defenders, and these are not all
peers. There is something to be said, it is contended, for an upper
chamber that debates on terms other than partisan politics the great
issues of the day. The House of Lords, like the Crown, has influence
but, as money bills must be introduced in the House of Commons, little
direct power. From the standpoint of active politics its limited power
is of a negative nature. It can, for instance, delay the passage of
legislation by rejecting a bill previously passed by the House of
Commons.

This occurred when the Lords rejected the bill to nationalize the steel
industry and the bill to abolish capital punishment. These delaying
actions demonstrated that, although the powers of the House of Lords
have been drastically curtailed, they can still have considerable
political importance. Inevitably, such action evokes dark mutterings
from the Labor Party about the ability of hereditary peers to flout the
will of the people. The Lords retort that the bill in question is not
the will of the people at all, but the will of some of the people's
representatives.

Theoretically, the House of Lords is a good deal larger than the House
of Commons, consisting of 878 peers. Only about one tenth of them,
however, take an active part in the work of the House of Lords. The
peers include princes of the royal blood, who by custom take no part in
proceedings; 26 spiritual peers, the archbishops and senior bishops of
the Church of England; all hereditary peers of England, Great Britain,
and the United Kingdom; 16 hereditary peers of Scotland elected from
their own number for each Parliament; 5 representative peers of Ireland
elected for life; and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary appointed to
perform the judicial duties of the House and holding their seats for
life.

Such are the bare bones of the parliamentary system of Britain. Like
many other British institutions, it conceals beneath a façade of
ceremonial and tradition an efficient, flexible machine. The debates,
the great speeches, and the days of pomp when the Queen rides amid the
Household Cavalry to open Parliament are in spectacular contrast to
the long grind of unremitting and, by modern standards, financially
unrewarding work by Members of both Lords and Commons.

When the visitor sits in the gallery high above the well of the Commons
and hears a minister patiently explaining some point connected with an
obscure aspect of British life, it is well to remember that this system
is one for which men fought and suffered, that this House is the cradle
of liberties and freedoms.

The members of the government--"Her Majesty's Government in the United
Kingdom," as it is formally titled in Britain--are all Members of the
House of Commons or the House of Lords. The government and the cabinet
are separate entities, for the government includes the following
ministerial offices: the Prime Minister, who is the recognized head of
the government but who has no department; the Departmental Ministers,
seven of whom are Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, the Home
Department, Scotland, Commonwealth Relations, Colonies, War, and Air;
the Ministries, of which there are twelve, each headed by a Minister;
and some of the older posts with special titles such as the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, who is responsible for the Treasury, and the First
Lord of the Admiralty.

The government also includes non-departmental ministers who hold
traditional offices, such as the Lord President of the Council, the
Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. With the
flexibility that is so conspicuous a part of the British system,
successive governments have found major responsibilities for these
posts.

The present Lord President of the Council, the Marquess of Salisbury,
is responsible to Parliament for two immensely important organizations:
the Atomic Energy Authority and the Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research. Yet Lord Salisbury, one of the most important
members of the present government, is not an elected representative of
the people but sits in the House of Lords as a peer.

The Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers are also members of the
government. The Lord Chancellor is in fact a Minister of the Crown
who is also head of the judiciary in England and Wales. The four Law
Officers of the Crown are the Attorney General and the Solicitor
General for England and Wales and the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor
General for Scotland.

Finally, there are Ministers of State--who are deputy ministers
in departments where there is a heavy load of work or where, as
in the case of the Foreign Office, the duties involve frequent
overseas travel--and junior Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, or
Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State.

The cabinet system, like so much else in British government, was not
the result of Olympian planning. It "just growed." The Tudors began
to appoint _ad hoc_ committees of the Privy Council. By the time of
Charles II the Privy Council numbered forty-seven. There then developed
an occasional arrangement in which a council of people in high office
was constituted to debate questions of domestic and foreign affairs.

Such committees or cabinets persisted until the reign of Queen Anne.
Usually, but not always, they met in the presence of the sovereign. In
1717, George I, the first Hanoverian King, ceased to attend cabinet
meetings. Until recently the accepted historical reason for this was
the King's ignorance of English--a circumstance that might, one would
think, enable him to bear long debates with fortitude. However, J.H.
Plumb in his recent life of Sir Robert Walpole has suggested that
the King's absence from the cabinet was due to a quarrel between the
monarch and the Prince of Wales.

At any rate, the cabinet system continued to flourish. Its members
consistently ignored the provision in the Act of Settlements (1725)
which forbade office-holders to sit in the Commons. The direct
influence of the sovereign was reduced, although his indirect
influence, as Lord North and "the King's Friends" demonstrated, was
great.

Nowadays the members of the cabinet are selected from the government by
the Prime Minister. Usually it has fewer than twenty members.

The cabinet determines the policy the government will submit to
Parliament, it controls the national executive in accordance with
policy approved by Parliament, and it co-ordinates and limits the
authority of the departments of the government. In its operations the
cabinet makes great use of the committee system, referring problems to
one of the standing committees or to a temporary committee composed of
the ministers chiefly concerned.

A British cabinet operates under the rule of collective responsibility
and of individual responsibility. That is, ministers share collective
responsibility for the policy and actions of the government and
individual responsibility to Parliament for the functioning of
their departments. A cabinet minister in Britain must appear before
the legislature, of which he is a member, and submit to a lengthy
questioning upon the work of his department. He must defend his
department in debate. No such procedure affects American cabinet
members, although they can, of course, be questioned by Congressional
committees.

The members of the cabinet in Britain are a good deal more than
advisers to the Prime Minister. Their relationship to ultimate policy
is closer and their responsibility greater. Hence it is unusual, almost
impossible, in Britain to find the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs saying one thing about foreign policy and the Prime Minister
another. Lord Melbourne said it did not matter what the members of his
government said as long as they all said the same thing. This principle
has been hallowed by time.

Although members of the cabinet often disagree furiously in private,
there is an absence of open bickering. Moreover, the authority of the
cabinet and the House of Commons is supreme. There have been no British
General MacArthurs. Field Marshal Lord Montgomery is a wise, cogent,
and talkative man. Occasionally he has offered the country his views on
non-military matters. Invariably he has been told to leave government
matters to the elected representatives of the people. When the cabinet
requires the advice of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff or
the First Sea Lord (not to be confused with the First Lord of the
Admiralty) on military matters, the cabinet asks for it.

The cabinet minister is bound to secrecy. If he resigns from the
cabinet because of a disputed issue, he must obtain through the Prime
Minister the permission of the sovereign before he can make any
statement involving a disclosure of cabinet discussions.

Nor may a cabinet minister repudiate either in Parliament or in his
constituency policies that have been approved by the cabinet or propose
policies that have not been agreed on with other ministers. He must
be prepared to vote with the government on all issues and to speak in
support or defense of its policy. Inability to agree or compromise
with the view of the majority in the cabinet usually results in the
minister's resignation from the government. A minister who remained in
the cabinet under such circumstances would be held responsible for the
policy he opposed.

Political conflict flourishes in Britain. Yet for many reasons
the government of the day and the opposition practice a basic
bipartisanship on basic issues. To a considerable degree this is
the result of the change in Britain's position over the last two
decades. There is an unspoken recognition by the leaders of the two
great parties that the present situation of the United Kingdom is too
precarious for prolonged and violent differences on essentials. There
are, of course, exceptions. Violent controversy does break out on
essentials between party and party and within a party.

Consider two essentials of British policy: the Anglo-American alliance
and the decision to make the hydrogen bomb.

The relations between the United States and Britain developed
their contemporary form in World War II. Since 1945 they have been
strengthened by the rise of an aggressive Soviet Union. There are other
contributing factors, some of which are not particularly attractive
to political or economic groups within each partner to the alliance.
Moreover, there has never been a time when there were not powerful
critics of various aspects of the alliance in both countries.

Aneurin Bevan and his friends on the radical left of the Labor Party
have often lambasted the United States and Britain's dependence on
her. Similar criticisms could be heard in private from Tories. When
the United States voted with the Soviet Union against Britain in the
United Nations after the British and French had invaded Suez, the
Conservatives were moved to put their protest into the form of a motion
in the House of Commons. This was accompanied by much sharp criticism,
which had a therapeutic effect in encouraging some realistic thinking
about the alliance.

A great deal of the anxiety about United States policy, of the jealousy
of United States power, of the anger at Mr. Dulles's self-righteous
sermons about colonialism was vented during this period. It did some
harm, certainly. But from the standpoint of the honest expression of
Conservative Party opinion and of American realism about the British
attitude, it also did some good.

The alliance is an essential. Even when indignant Conservatives--and a
number of Socialists, too--were thinking up pet names for Mr. Dulles,
the leaders of the party were doing their best to mollify their
followers. They were themselves anxious and angry, but they never
suggested defection from the alliance.

It may be suggested that the British had nowhere else to go. This may
be true, but even so it would be no bar to their departure. They are
happy when they are on their own, and many on this little island would
count the alliance well lost in exchange for a vigorous reassertion of
independence.

In 1940 the cockney, the inevitable cockney, used to remark, for the
edification of American correspondents: "Cor, we're alone. What of it,
guv?" Now, I have always regarded this not as a piece of patriotic
rhetoric but as a natural response to events by a brave people.
Shakespeare, of course, said it better.

  Come the three corners of the world in arms,
  And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
  If England to itself do rest but true.

The important word is "itself." If there comes a time of great outside
pressure when alliances and confederations are in danger, Americans
will be well advised to remember that word.

The decision to make the hydrogen bomb, a project involving the
expenditure of great sums that Britain could ill afford, again was a
bipartisan matter. The Conservative government proposed it. The Labor
opposition (with Mr. Bevan dissenting in a burst of Welsh oratory)
agreed. There have been recurrent criticisms of how the work was being
done, of the cost, of the necessity for testing the weapon, and of the
arrangements for the tests. But there has been very little criticism of
the bomb's manufacture from the leaders of the Labor Party--excepting
always Mr. Bevan.

Bipartisanship is assisted by consultation on issues of major national
importance between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
But the achievement of bipartisan policies owes much more to a general
understanding in both parties in the House of Commons of the country's
present position.

Socialist reform and experimentation in the years between 1945 and
1951 aroused Conservative fears as fierce as Labor Party hopes. The
enmity aroused in the largely Conservative middle class by the Labor
governments of those years certainly has not disappeared. But much
of it has been re-directed against the moderate policies of the
Conservative government, which has long claimed the allegiance of the
middle class.

The leaders of the two great parties--Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury,
and R.A. Butler for the Conservatives, and Hugh Gaitskell, Harold
Wilson, Jim Griffiths for Labor--are moderates. On the periphery of
each party stand the radicals advocating extreme measures at home and
abroad. Should Britain's economic and international troubles persist,
the moderate approach to their solution may not satisfy either the
Conservative or Socialist voters.

British politics in May of 1955 continued one of those rhythmic changes
of direction which feature political life in every democratic nation.
The Conservatives won a smashing victory in the general election and
became the first party in ninety years to be returned to office with an
increased majority.

The victory gave the Tory government a majority of 61 in the House of
Commons. But this majority is not an exact reflection of the way the
electorate voted. The Conservatives and their supporters got 13,311,938
votes and Labor won 12,405,146. The Liberals got 722,395 and the
Communists 33,144.

This almost even division of the British electorate between the two
major parties must be kept in mind when we examine the right and the
left in British politics. Not since 1945, when the Labor Party swept
into office, has there been a difference of a million votes between the
two in general elections.

Labor's sun was sinking in the election of 1950, which the party won
by a narrow margin. The Conservatives took over in 1951 and boosted
their majority in 1955. Has the pendulum's swing to the right ended?
The answer may lie in the policies and personalities of the two great
parties today.




[Illustration]




IV. _The Conservatives_

A PARTY AND A WAY OF LIFE

 _The Conservative party have always said that, on the whole, their
 policy meant that people had to fill up fewer forms than under the
 policies of other parties._

  SIR ALAN HERBERT

 _The man for whom the law exists--the man of forms, the Conservative,
 is a tame man._

  HENRY THOREAU

[Illustration]


Although they have little in common otherwise, the Great American
Public and the radical wing of the British Labor Party share a strange
mental image of the British Conservative. They see him as a red-faced
stout old gentleman given to saying "Gad, sir," waving the Union Jack,
and kicking passing Irishmen, Indians, and Egyptians. He is choleric
about labor unions, and he stands for "no damned nonsense" from
foreigners.

The picture was a false one even before World War II. No party could
have existed for a century, holding power for considerable periods,
without a basis of support in the British working class. Such support
would not be granted to the caricature of a Conservative described
above. Certainly the Conservative Party has now, and has had in the
past, its full share of reactionaries opposed to change. The inquiring
reporter will encounter more than a smattering of similar opposition to
change among the leaders of Britain's great unions.

Britain's altered position in the world and the smashing Labor victory
of 1945 combined to whittle away the authority of the reactionaries
in the Conservative Party in the years between 1945 and 1951 when it
was out of office. Since then other influences, including the rise
within the party of young politicians whose education and experience
have little in common with those of the recognized Tory leadership,
has further altered the character of the party. It has come a long way
since 1945.

A young Conservative minister recalls with horror the annual
Conservative conference of that year. The chairwoman, a billowy dowager
wielding a lorgnette, announced with simpering pride that she had a
surprise for the conference. It was, she said, "a real Conservative
trade-unionist." Had the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on the
platform and danced the can-can, the surprise could not have been
greater. When a Negro student went to the platform a decade later to
discuss colonial affairs, no one turned a hair.

In retrospect, the election of 1945 was one the Tories could not win.
Almost everything was against them: the pre-war Tory government's
appeasement of Germany, the military disasters of 1940, the distrust
of Churchill in time of peace, his own exaggerated campaign attacks on
Labor, the superb organization of the Labor Party machinery by Herbert
Morrison. Ten years later the Conservatives faced an election they
could not lose. Even when all other conditions are taken into account,
this was a singular example of the adaptability and mobility of the
Tories.

The Tories saw that the nation had changed, and they changed with it.
Both the political philosophy of the party and the organization of
the party were altered--the latter change being more drastic, more
complete, and more rapid than the former.

In the organizational change the reports of the Committee on Party
Organization in 1948 and 1949 were of paramount importance. The
committee was headed by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, later Viscount Kilmuir
and Lord Chancellor.

Before the party could win an election on its altered policy, a
reconstruction of its machinery was necessary. To reconstruct along
the lines advised by the experts, the Tories first brought in Lord
Woolton, who had been a successful Minister of Food during the war. It
was a sagacious appointment. As Chairman of the Party Organization,
Woolton created a young, enthusiastic body of workers whose propaganda
on behalf of the party began to impress the electorate--largely, I
suspect, because these workers were so unlike the popular idea of
Tories.

While Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, R.A. Butler
led the parliamentary fight against the Labor government, a group
of young Tories built the party case for the leaders. Techniques of
research and propaganda were developed. Promising young men and women
from all classes were encouraged.

These younger Conservative tacticians included many who are now
ministers. Iain MacLeod, who has been Minister of Health and Minister
of Labor, Reginald Maulding, who has been Minister of Supply and
Paymaster General, Selwyn Lloyd, the present Foreign Secretary, are
representative of the nucleus of talent which was built during those
years. They and a score of junior ministers are young, vigorous, and
ambitious. They know their own party, and, what is equally important,
they know the Labor Party and its leaders.

Talking with the leaders of both the major parties, one is struck
by the breadth of the Tories' knowledge of the Labor leaders'
personalities, views on national issues, and aspirations. "Know your
enemy" is an axiom as wise in politics as in war.

Yet I doubt that all the political intelligence and administrative
ability in the Tory ranks would have sufficed without Woolton.

Frederick William Marquis, the first Viscount Woolton, is not, as one
might suppose from his imposing name and title, the son of a hundred
earls. He is very much a self-made man who fought his way to success in
commerce and finance. He is a Jim Farley, rather than a Mark Hanna.

When Woolton took over the chairmanship of the Party Organization, the
party was defeated and discredited. He left it after the triumph of
May 1955 with Conservative fortunes at their post-war zenith. I have
mentioned Woolton's reorganization of the Central and Area offices,
but his influence on the party went beyond this. In the years when
the Socialists ruled in Whitehall, Woolton transferred to the beaten
Conservatives some of his own warmth and vigor. He is an urbane,
friendly man; the young Conservatives then emerging from the middle
class felt that they were directed not by an aristocratic genius but
by a fatherly, knowledgeable elder. Indeed, his nickname was "Uncle
Fred." The revived party began to talk like a democratic party and
even, occasionally, to act like one. Under Woolton the Central Office
in London changed from a remote, austere group controlling the party
into a Universal Aunt or Uncle, ready to help constituency parties
solve their problems. Yet the leader of the party and the chairman of
the Party Organization continued to direct and control.

Conservative Party policy, as it has evolved in the past decade, has
moved to the left. This is not solely because, as the Labor Party often
charges, it wanted to steal or adopt parts of the Socialist platform.
A great many of the young men in the Tory party in 1945 sympathized
with many of the Socialists' policies. "I'd have voted Labor myself if
I hadn't been a Tory candidate," one of them reflected a decade later.
What offended the Tories' self-esteem was that great, revolutionary
changes were being made in British life by the Labor government and
they, who had always assumed a special right to rule Britain, were not
making the changes.

A large part of Conservative political tactics in the late forties
consisted of negative criticism. The parlous state of the British
economy, the withdrawals from India and Burma, the decline of British
influence and power in the world offered great opportunities to a party
that traditionally combines business interests and experience with an
assumption of omniscience in the direction of international affairs. At
the same time, the work of the back-room boys in the Central Office on
the solution of Britain's economic difficulties, expressed in speeches
of party leaders, gave the impression that the Conservatives, whatever
their past faults, were moving to the left in their approach to the
economic problem.

The present leadership of the Conservative Party--Harold Macmillan,
Lord Salisbury, R.A. Butler, and a number of the younger ministers--is
well to the left of the economic position assumed by the party in the
1945 election. Indeed, the complaint of the party's middle-class rank
and file that the Conservatives are carrying out a pseudo-socialist
program rather than a truly Tory one is an important factor in
estimating the party's ability to retain power.

A word is needed here about "left" and "right" as applied to British
parties. Although the Conservative Party is frequently compared with
the Republican Party in the United States and has many similarities of
outlook, the Conservatives are, on the whole, well to the left of the
Republicans. Thinking in the Labor Party, moreover, is well to the left
of both Democratic and Republican parties in the United States.

After the Conservative victory in the election of 1955 it was generally
expected that the party would move toward the right. Critics will seize
upon British intervention in Egypt as evidence of such a movement. But
it can be asked whether a policy designed to bring down a dictator--in
this case President Nasser of Egypt--when it was evident that the
United Nations was unable or unwilling to do so can be classified
as a right-wing, reactionary policy. Similarly, the movement of the
British government under the leadership of Sir Anthony Eden and Harold
Macmillan toward entry into the European common market can scarcely
be considered an example of right-wing extremism. The attacks on this
policy by the newspapers controlled by Lord Beaverbrook, the most
imperialist of the press lords, testify to the anger aroused by the
progressive internationalism of the Conservatives.

No one can gainsay the existence of a strong nationalistic element
within the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and in the
country. This element rebelled against the Anglo-Egyptian treaty by
which Britain agreed to quit Egypt. It supported the decision to
intervene in Egypt. Parenthetically it should be noted that the moving
spirits in this decision were Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan,
men who, by conviction, belonged to the progressive wing of the party.
Finally, when the government agreed first to a cease-fire and then to a
withdrawal from Egypt, this group censured both the United Nations and
the United States for their part in bringing this about.

Given the character of the Conservative Party's support in the country,
the presence of such a group within the party in Parliament is natural.
But do not discount the adaptability of the party. When Harold
Macmillan formed his government in January 1957 he found it possible,
with the approval of the party, to include in it both Sir Edward Boyle,
who had resigned from the government over the Egyptian invasion, and
Julian Amery, who had rebelled against the government because it
listened to the United States and the United Nations and halted the
invasion.

The Conservatives' approach to Britain's economic and financial
problems is well to the left of the policies followed by their pre-war
predecessors. Britain's is a managed economy to an extent that would
shake the late Stanley Baldwin and the present Secretary of the
Treasury in Washington. Mr. Macmillan and his ministers are not secret
readers of _Pravda_. They are political realists who understand the
changes in power which have taken place in Britain, who understand that
the Council of the Trades Union Congress is as important today as the
Federation of British Industries.

The Labor Party, it often seems, suffers from an inability to
understand the changes that have taken place in their opponents. It
may be, as Socialists contend, that the changes are only a façade
hiding the greedy, imperious capitalists beneath. But to an outsider
it seems that the Labor Party pays too much attention to the surviving
extremists of the Tory party and not enough to the venturesome,
progressive younger men who will inherit the party. Surely the appeal
of the Conservative Party to the electorate is based more upon the
personalities and policies of these rising stars than upon the
reactionaries of the right wing.

The Conservative Party arouses and holds some strange allegiances. I
remember Michael Foot, the editor of the left-wing weekly _Tribune_,
saying that in his old constituency of Devonport there were solid
blocks of Conservative votes in the poorest areas. Foot could not
understand it. The rather contemptuous explanation offered by a
Conservative Party organizer was: "Why not? People who are poor aren't
necessarily foolish enough to buy this socialist clap-trap."

The Conservatives have been making inroads into the new middle class
created by the boom of 1953-5. This group emerging from the industrial
working class was formerly strongly pro-Labor. There are indications
that the more prosperous are changing their political attitudes as
their incomes and social standing improve.

The Conservatives concentrate on a national appeal. Labor by its
origins is a class party. In a country as homogeneous as Britain, the
Conservative boast that they stand for all the people rather than for
merely one class or one geographical area is effective. To this the
Tories add the claim that they are the party most suited by training
and experience to deal with the international problems faced by the
nation.

This assumption of the right to rule is not so offensive to Britons
as it might be to Americans. There is little historical basis for it.
If an aristocrat, Winston Churchill, led Britain to victory in World
War II, a small-town Welsh lawyer, David Lloyd George, was the leader
in World War I. Nevertheless, there is a tendency--perhaps a survival
of feudalism--among some Britons to believe that their affairs are
better handled by a party with upper-class education and accents. And
of course the Conservatives look the part. Mr. Macmillan, the Prime
Minister, is a far more impressive figure than Hugh Gaitskell, who
probably would be Prime Minister in a Labor government. The accents,
the clothes, the backgrounds of the Tory leaders give the impression
of men born to conduct government. Brilliant journalists have argued
that the class they represent is unrepresentative, and that the Suez
crisis proved its inability to understand the modern world. Surely the
present Conservative leaders and their predecessors have been guilty
of quite as many errors as the Socialists and Liberals of the past.
However, they give the impression of competence. As any politician
knows, even in the most enlightened of democracies such impressions are
as important as the most brilliant intellects or the wisest programs.

The Conservatives enjoy another important political advantage. Until
the present the leaders of the party generally have been drawn from
one class, the old upper middle class. They went to the same schools,
served in the same regiments. Families like the Cecils, the Churchills,
the Edens, the Macmillans intermarry. The closeness of the relationship
breeds coherence. Basically there is an instinctive co-operation when
a crisis arises. The manner in which the Tories closed ranks after Sir
Anthony Eden's resignation was an example.

The upper ranks of the civil service, of the Church of England, and of
the armed services are drawn largely from the same class. Usually this
facilitates the work of government when the Tories are in power. But
recently there has been a change. In their drive to broaden the base of
the party, the Conservatives have introduced to the House of Commons
a number of young politicians who do not share the Eton-Oxford-Guards
background of their leaders.

The environment and education of this group and their supporters in
the constituencies is much different. For Eton or Harrow, substitute
state schools or small, obscure public schools. Some did go to Oxford
and Cambridge, but they moved in less exalted circles than the Edens
or Cecils. They are usually businessmen who have made their way in the
world without the advantages of the traditional Tory background, and
they are highly critical of the tendency to reserve the party plums for
representatives of its more aristocratic wing.

They seem to be further to the right in politics than such
"aristocrats" as Macmillan, Butler, Eden, or Lord Salisbury. They
have risen the hard way, and they are more interested in promoting
the interests of the business groups for which they speak than in
the traditional Tory concept of speaking for the whole nation. This
national responsibility on the part of the "aristocrats" was in many
ways a liberal attitude. Macmillan and Butler, for instance, appear
much more responsive and tolerant on the subject of trade unions than
most members of the new group.

As the power of this group increases--and it will increase as the
Conservative Party continues to change--sharper disputes on policy,
especially economic policy, can be expected. This encourages some
Socialists, naturally sensitive on the point, to believe that their
opponents are headed for a period of fierce feuding within the party.
Their optimism may be misplaced.

The Tories are adept at meeting rebellion and absorbing rebels. The
indignant "red brick" rebel of today may be the junior minister of
tomorrow whose boy is headed for Eton. Despite the advent of these
newcomers, the party does not appear so vulnerable to schism as does
the Labor Party with its assortment of extreme-left-wing intellectuals,
honest hearts and willing hands from the unions, and conscientious and
intelligent mavericks from the middle class.

Finally, the power of what has been called the "Establishment" is
primarily a conservative power that wishes to conserve the governmental
and social structure of Britain against the majority of reformers.
On great national issues this usually places it upon the side of the
Conservative Party. If it can be defined, the Establishment represents
the upper levels of the Church of England, of Oxford and Cambridge,
_The Times_ of London, the chiefs of the civil service. The direct
power of this group may be less than has been described, but few would
deny its influence.

The common background has served the Conservatives well in the past.
Open political quarrels within the party are rare. (The conflict over
the Suez policy was an exception.) "The Tories settle their differences
in the Carlton Club," Earl Attlee once said. "We fight ours out in
public. We're a democratic party that thrives on contention." Perhaps,
but the contention nearly wrecked the Labor Party between 1953 and 1955
and had much to do with its defeat in 1955.

Much of the comparative tranquillity of the Conservative Party is
due to the power of the party leader. Nominally, he is elected by
the Conservative Members of the House of Commons and the House of
Lords, all prospective Tory candidates for Commons, and the executive
Committee of the National Union. But, as Robert T. McKenzie has pointed
out in his _British Political Parties_, the leader is often selected
by the preceding leader of the party when it is in power. Thus, Sir
Winston Churchill made it clear that Sir Anthony Eden was his heir as
leader, and Sir Anthony was duly elected.

A different situation arose when Sir Anthony resigned as Prime Minister
because of illness. In that instance the Prime Minister was selected
before he became leader of the party. It was widely believed outside
the inner circles of the party that there was a choice between Harold
Macmillan and R.A. Butler. Actually the leaders of the party, including
Sir Anthony, Sir Winston, and Lord Salisbury, and a substantial number
of ministers, junior ministers, and back-bench Members had made it
clear that their preference lay with Macmillan.

The structure of the British government and of the Conservative
Party give the leader a good deal more authority over his party than
is enjoyed by a President of the United States as the head of the
Republican or Democratic Party. In power or in opposition the leader
has the sole ultimate responsibility for the formulation of policy and
the election program of his party.

The annual party conference proposes, the leader disposes. Resolutions
passed at the conference do not bind him. The party secretariat (the
Central Office) is in many ways the personal machine of the leader. He
appoints its principal officers and controls its main organizations for
propaganda, finance, and research. Consequently, it is unlikely that a
Conservative politician would challenge the authority of the leader
as sharply and directly as Senator McCarthy challenged the authority
of President Eisenhower in the latter's first administration. The
conclusion is that, although Tory democracy is an attractive political
slogan, it has little connection with the almost autocratic authority
of the party leader.

In the field of political tactics moderation is the guiding principle
of the new Conservatism. This became evident in the election of 1955,
which the Tories fought soberly and efficiently. Pointing to Britain's
evident prosperity--the stormclouds were already piling on the horizon,
but campaign orators seldom see that far--the Conservatives asked the
people if this combination of good times at home and easier relations
abroad (the summit conference at Geneva was in the offing) was not
better for the nation than revolutionary policies and hysterical
oratory.

The party's appeal for votes seemed to reflect a surer grasp of popular
attitudes than the Labor Party's. In retrospect the Conservative
message was a consoling one. Everyone had work. Almost everyone had
more money than he had had three or four years before, although the
established middle class already was feeling the effect of rising
prices and continued heavy taxation on real income. The roads were
filling up with cars that should have been sold for export, running on
gasoline that was imported with an adverse effect on the balance of
trade.

During six years of Socialist control the Labor politicians had
informed the British that a return to Conservative rule would mean a
revival of the bad old days of unemployment, dole and hunger marches,
strikes and lockouts. Yet here were Sir Anthony Eden patting the unions
on the head and Harold Macmillan talking warmly of the chances of a
successful conference with the Russians at Geneva. It was all a little
confusing and, from the Conservative standpoint, very successful.

Traveling around Britain during the weeks prior to the 1955 election,
I was struck by the number of people of both parties prepared to
accept the Conservatives' contention that their party was, by some
mysterious dispensation, uniquely suited to the business of conducting
the nation's foreign policy. In some areas, notably in the North and
the Midlands, this seemed to spring from Eden's long and, on the whole,
successful record in international affairs. In others I encountered a
feeling that the withdrawals from India and Egypt and such blunders as
the loss of the Abadan oil refinery had lowered the prestige of the
country. Certainly the Tories were not guiltless. Nonetheless, there
was a persistent conviction that the Tories handled foreign affairs
best. Occasionally--this was at the nadir of Socialist fortunes--I met
Labor supporters who subscribed to this view.

The first public reaction to British intervention in Egypt in 1956 was
a triumph for organized public opinion as directed by the Labor Party.
From the resolutions that flooded into London from factory and local
unions, one would have concluded that the whole of the British working
class was violently opposed to governmental policy. Actually, a number
of public-opinion polls showed that the country was pretty evenly
divided. My own experience, traveling around Britain in January and
February of 1957, convinced me that, on the whole, the working-class
support for the Suez adventure was slightly stronger than that of the
professional classes. Of course, as in most situations of this kind,
the supporters did not bother to send telegrams of support.

The Labor Party in the House of Commons made a great offensive against
the Conservative position on Egypt. This played a part, but not the
dominant part, in the cabinet's decision to accept a cease-fire. The
paramount factor was the indication from Washington that unless Britain
agreed to a cease-fire, the administration would not help Britain with
oil supplies and would not act to support the pound sterling, whose
good health is the basis of Britain's position as an international
banker.

The Socialists' attack did result in the emergence of Aneurin Bevan as
the party's principal spokesman, and a most effective one, on foreign
affairs. This is an area where the Labor Party has been weak in recent
years. Death removed Ernest Bevin, a great Foreign Secretary, and
Hector McNeil, the brightest of the party's younger experts on foreign
affairs.

Moderation, a national rather than a class approach, the middle
way--all these sufficed for the Tories in 1955. Two years later
there are abundant signs that a sharper policy will be necessary to
meet international and internal situations vastly more difficult.
Drastic policies invite harsh argument in their formulation. Can the
Conservatives continue to settle their differences in the Carlton Club
or will these spill out onto the front pages of the newspapers?

The primary political problem the Conservative government faced before
Suez was whether it could continue its policies, especially where they
related to defense and taxation, and retain the support of a large
and influential group of Conservative voters. This group is offended
and rebellious because, although the Conservatives have now been in
office for over five years, it still finds its real income shrinking,
its social standards reduced, and its future uncertain. It regards the
moderate Conservatives' economic policy and attitude toward social
changes as akin to those of the Labor Party. By the middle of 1956 its
resentment was being reflected by the reduction of the Conservative
vote in the elections.

The group can be defined as the old middle class. During the last
century it has been one of the most important and often the most
dominant of classes in Britain. Its fight to maintain its position
against the challenge of the new middle class and the inexorable march
of social and economic changes is one of the most interesting and most
pathetic parts of Britain's modern revolution.

The leaders of the old middle class represented a combination of
influence and wealth in the professions, medicine, the church, the
law, education, and the armed forces. The members of these professions
and their immediate lieutenants administered the great institutions
that had established Britain in the Victorian twilight as the world's
greatest power. They were responsible for the great public schools, the
Church of England, the Royal Navy, the banks, the largest industries,
the shipping lines, the universities.

They were not the aristocracy. The decline of the aristocracy, with
its ancient titles, its huge estates, and its huge debts, began over
a century ago. The old middle class began life as the aristocracy's
executors and ended as its heirs.

The pattern of life in the old middle class was shaken by World War
I, but it existed relatively unchanged in 1939. The class was the
butt of the bright young playwrights of the twenties and has received
the acid attentions of Mr. Somerset Maugham. It supported Munich and
Chamberlain, and it sent its sons away to die in 1939.

As a group, the class was well educated. The majority of the men had
been to a public school and a university. Both men and women bought and
read books and responsible newspapers. They traveled abroad, they knew
something about the world. Some had inherited wealth. Others invested
their savings.

Beneath this upper stratum of the old middle class was a lower middle
class that sought to rise into it. This was made up of shopkeepers,
small manufacturers, the more prosperous farmers, the black-coat
workers in business, and the industrial technicians.

The future welfare of these two groups is the political problem that
the Conservative Party must face. Since the decline of the Liberal
Party, the Tories have counted upon the support of this class. There
were many defections in the election of 1945, but it is probable that
a more important reason for the Tory defeat that year was the party's
failure to win the support of a new middle class that was then arising
as a factor in British politics.

The chief reason why the old middle class is defecting from the Tory
standard is that it believes that the Conservative governments since
1945 have not done enough to halt the drain on its incomes. Prices
have risen sharply in the years since Chamberlain went to Munich. One
estimate is that the 1938 income of £1,000 a year for a married man
with two children would have to be raised to £4,000 to provide the same
net income today. But in this class the number of men whose incomes
have quadrupled or even doubled since 1938 is small.

What do the figures mean in terms of a family's life? They mean that
to send the children to a public school, which the majority of this
class regards as indispensable from a social and even occasionally
from an educational standpoint, the father and mother must do without
new clothes, books, the occasional visit to the theater. Instead of
two regular servants, the family must "make do" with a daily cleaning
woman. The family vacations in some quiet French or Italian seaside
resort must be abandoned. The father and mother are unable to save and
are increasingly worried about their future. They see a future decline
in the family's social standards and economic health.

All this is aggravated in their minds by the appearance of a new middle
class arising from a different background and doing new and different
jobs. Its income, its expense accounts, its occasional lack of taste
stir the envy and anger of the old middle class.

What the old middle class asks from the government--and, through the
government, from the big trade unions and the big industrialists--is an
end to the rise in the cost of living which it, subsisting chiefly on
incomes that have not risen sharply, cannot meet. Directly it asks the
government for an end to punishing taxation and to "coddling" of both
the unions and the manufacturers.

The dilemma of the Conservative Party and its government is a serious
one. To lose the support of the old middle class will be dangerous,
even disastrous. For although the Tories have attracted thousands
of former Socialist votes in the last two elections, these do not
represent the solid electoral support that the old middle class has
offered.

Perhaps in time the government may be able to reduce taxation.
Before this can be done, it must halt inflation, expand constructive
investment in industry, and increase the gold and dollar reserves. Each
of these depends to a great degree on economic factors with world-wide
ramifications. The old middle class understands this and is justifiably
suspicious of "pie in the sky" promises.

Such suspicion is increased by the understanding of the other serious
long-term problems that British society faces. We need mention only
one in this context: how is Britain to maintain its present standards
of life and the present levels of government expenditure when it is
faced with the coming change in the age distribution of the population?

The steady fall in death rates and the low birth rates of the years
between the two world wars are beginning to increase the proportion
of elderly people, and thus to reduce the proportion of the working
population to the total population. The size of the age groups reaching
retirement age increases yearly. It is predicted, on the basis of
present population trends, that over the next fifteen years the
population of the working-age group will remain about the same but that
the number of old people, persons over sixty-five, will rise over the
next thirty years by about three million. At the same time the number
of children of school age is expected to increase.

Britain thus is faced with a steady increase in the number of the aged
who need pensions and medical care and the young who need medical care
and education. This charge will be added to the burdens already borne
by the working-age group.

The country needs more hospitals and more schools. It needs new
highways. It has to continue slum-clearance and the building of homes.
Yet Britain has been spending $7,000,000,000 a year on social services
and $4,200,000,000 on defense. Under existing circumstances, and in
view of present Conservative policies, can the old middle class look
forward to an important reduction in taxation under any government?

Reduction of taxation was one of the goals sought by Conservative
government when it planned a revision of Britain's defense program.
This revision, first planned by the ministry of Sir Anthony Eden and
given new impetus by the Macmillan government, has other objectives,
including the diversion of young men, capital, and productive capacity
from defense to industrial production for export. But an easing of
the defense burden would create conditions for tax relief in the
Conservative circles that need it most.

The reduction of defense expenditures places any Conservative
government in a dilemma. The party expects the government to maintain
Britain's position as a nuclear power--that is, as a major power.
The political repercussions of the Suez crisis showed the depth of
nationalism within the party, and, indeed, within the country. Yet
it seems plainly impossible for the Tories to reduce taxation of the
middle class drastically without cutting the defense expenditure that
has maintained Britain, somewhat precariously, in the front rank of
world powers.

Of course, tax relief will not fully answer the difficulties of the old
middle class. Its incomes, ranging from the pensions of ex-officers
to the profits of small businessmen, have lagged behind prices.
Stabilization of prices is essential if this class is to maintain its
standards.

The rebellion of the old middle class against Tory policy and
leadership, if carried to the limit, might result in the creation of an
extreme right-wing party. Such a party would be brought into being more
easily if the sort of inflation which helped wreck the German democracy
after World War I were to appear in Britain. Would the political good
sense of the British enable them to reject the vendors of extreme
political panaceas who would appear at such a juncture?

The old middle class contains today, as it has since 1945, persons
and organizations fanatically opposed to the unions and to labor in
general. Extremist organizations, some of them modeled on the Poujadist
movement in France, have appeared. In many cases the opposition to
labor policies and personalities has been expanded in these groups to
include the "traitors" at the head of the present Tory government, who
are considered betrayers of their party and their class.

There is a reasonable expectation that Britain will continue to
encounter economic problems whose solution will involve economic
sacrifices by all classes in the future. The old middle class feels
that it has sacrificed more than any other group. There is thus a
potential of serious trouble within the Conservative party. The most
probable development, it seems to me, is an attempt by the right
wing of the party to win and hold power. But a rapid deterioration of
the economic situation under a moderate Tory government followed by
the return to power of a Labor government might well encourage the
transformation of the Tories into a radical right-wing party.

At the moment the right wing of the Conservative Party wants too much.
It asks for an uncontrolled economy and is restless under the measures
imposed to defeat inflation. But it also wants a stabilization of
prices. It wants a "tough" foreign policy, but it opposes the taxation
necessary to make the arms on which such a policy must rest. It has an
almost reckless desire to curb the trade unions without reckoning the
effect on industrial relations.

The moderates who fashioned the present Conservative Party and who now
lead its government appear to understand their country and its position
better than their critics on the right wing. In addition, their
programs have attracted the attention and support of young people to a
degree unknown on the right wing.

In the late thirties, when I first was indoctrinated in British
politics, it was smart to be on the left. The young people before the
war were very certain of the stupidity of the Conservative government
policies, at home as well as abroad, and their political convictions
ranged from communism to the socialism of the Labor Party. "All the
young people are Bolshies," a manufacturer told me in 1939. "If we do
have a war, this country will go communist."

A good proportion of young people still are on the left. But they do
not seem to hold their convictions as strongly as those I knew in the
pre-war years. On the other side of the fence there has been a movement
toward an intellectual adoption of conservative principles. In some
cases this verges on radicalism, in a few almost to nihilism: the
"nothing's any good in either party, let's get rid of them both" idea.

There is always a danger to democracy in such attitudes. They are
encouraged in Britain by a tendency in some circles to adopt an
arrogant, patrician distaste for all democratic politics. This is
understandable. The revolution that began with the war has weakened
the economic and political power of a once dominant class. But that
does not excuse those who seek to destroy faith in democratic processes.

The position of the Conservative Party is both stronger and weaker than
it appears. There are reasons for believing that by the next general
election, probably in 1959 or 1960, the policies of the government
will have relieved the more immediate problems such as inflation
and the need for increased exports. This success will not change
Britain's position as a comparatively small power competing militarily,
politically, and economically with the larger established powers, such
as the Soviet Union and the United States, and the reviving powers,
Germany and Japan.

The dominant group in the Conservative Party and government has,
however, a considerable degree of competence and experience in
government. It has an effective parliamentary majority during the
present administration. Against these positive factors we must place
the probability that some of its policies will continue to alienate an
important group of its supporters; the result may be a rebellion within
the party or worse.

The Tories are not politically dogmatic. Like the people, the whole
people, they claim to represent, they are flexible in their approach
to policies and programs. They change to suit economic conditions and
political attitudes. In Britain's present position, the appeal of a
party that contends it is working for the nation rather than a class or
a section should not be minimized.

But it is precisely Britain's position in the modern world that
forces upon the Conservatives today, and would force upon Labor if it
came to power tomorrow, certain policies that are at odds with the
principles of each faction. The Tories, for instance, must manipulate
the economy. The idea of "getting government out of business" may be
attractive to some industrialists, but in the nation's situation it
is impractical and dangerous. Similarly, the Labor Party, despite its
anti-colonialism, must follow policies that will enable Britain to
keep her investments in Malaya's tin and rubber and in the oil of the
Middle East.

We see the two great parties meeting on such common ground. Perhaps
because they are less restricted by dogma and can boast greater talents
at the moment, the Tories appear slightly more confident of their
ability to meet the challenges of Britain's position.




[Illustration]




V. _The Labor Party_

POLITICAL MACHINE OR MORAL CRUSADE?

 _The idea of Socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced,
 possible of realization; but such a state of society cannot be
 manufactured--it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine._

  HENRY GEORGE

 _We are all Socialists nowadays._

  EDWARD VII WHEN PRINCE OF WALES

[Illustration]


"The Tories won the election because they understood the changes that
had taken place since 1945," said a Labor politician in 1955. "We
misunderstood them and we lost. Yet we call ourselves 'the party of the
people.'"

This assessment, made on the morning of defeat, explains to some degree
the Labor Party's defeat in the general election of 1955. It raises
the question of whether the party, as now constituted, is in fact a
working-class party. The growth of the Labor Party, the emergence of
its saints and sinners, the triumph of 1945, the disaster of 1955 make
up one of the truly significant political stories of the century.

For Americans it is especially important. The British Labor Party
is the strongest non-communist left-wing party in any of the great
democracies of the West. Granted the normal shifts in political
support, it will be back in power sometime within the next ten years.
The government and people of the United States must regard it as
a permanent part of British political life, and they will have to
understand it better than they have in the past if the alliance between
the United States and the United Kingdom is to prosper.

The British Labor Party is the political arm of what the old-timers
like to call "the movement." And it is as well to remember that not
so very long ago--Winston Churchill was a young politician then and
Anthony Eden was at Eton--it was a "movement" with all the emotional
fervor the word implies. The men who made the Labor Party a power in
the land were not cool, reasoning intellectuals (although, inevitably,
these assisted) but hot-eyed radicals who combined a fierce intolerance
with a willingness to suffer for their beliefs.

The movement includes the Labor Party itself; the Trades Union
Congress, known universally in Britain as the TUC; the Co-Operative
Societies; and some minor socialist groups.

The Trades Union Congress is one of the centers of power in modern
Britain. We will encounter it often in this book. Here we are concerned
with its old position as the starting-point for British working-class
power. The first Labor Party representatives who went to the House of
Commons in 1906 were supported almost entirely by members of unions.
The Parliamentary Labor Party came into being as an association of the
Labor members of the House of Commons. Today it includes members of
the House of Lords. There was originally a much closer co-ordination
between the unions and the Labor MP's than exists now.

Today the TUC, although it exerts great political power both directly
and indirectly, is important principally as the national focus of the
trade-union movement. All the unions of any size or importance except
the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Local
Government Officers, and some civil-service staff associations, are
affiliated with it.

Its membership is impressive. The unions have a total membership of
9,461,000, of which 8,088,000 are affiliated with the TUC--this in
a population of just over 50,000,000. The TUC's power is equally
impressive. It is recognized by the government as the principal channel
for consultation between the ministries and organized labor on matters
affecting the interests of employees generally.

This power is not unchallenged. One of the disruptive situations in the
Labor movement today is the restlessness of a number of constituency
labor parties under the authority of the TUC. The constituency labor
parties are the local organizations in the parliamentary constituencies
or divisions. A number of them are and have been well to the left of
the official leadership of the party. In them Aneurin Bevan finds his
chief support for the rebellion he has waged intermittently against the
leadership during the last five years.

Another source of anxiety to the TUC is the unwillingness of some
unions--mostly those infiltrated by the Communists--to follow its
instructions in industrial disputes. The TUC leaders with whom I have
talked regard the strike weapon as the hydrogen bomb in labor's armory.
They oppose its indiscriminate use. But in a large number of cases they
have been unable to prevent its use.

The labor movement represents generally the industrial urban working
class in Britain. But it is no longer an industrial urban working-class
party. The modern movement relies on other sections of the population
for both leaders and votes. Just as there are working-class districts
that vote Tory in election after election, so are there middle-class
groups who vote Labor.

Horny-handed sons of toil still rank among the party's leading
politicians, but the post-war years have seen a steady increase in
two other types. One is the union officer, whose acquaintance with
physical labor is often somewhat limited. The other is the product of
a middle-class home, a public-school education, and an important job
in the wartime civil service. Hugh Gaitskell, the present leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party, is a notable example of this second group.

The party still includes intellectuals treading circumspectly in
the footprints left by the sainted Sydney and Beatrice Webb. The
intellectuals, perhaps in search of protective coloring, often assume
a manner more rough-hewn than the latest recruit from the coal face.
Incidentally, it was my impression that the defeat of 1955 shook the
intellectuals a good deal more than the practical politicians. They
departed, as is their custom, into long, gloomy analyses of the reasons
for the defeat. They, too, may have been out of touch with the people.

Of course the defeat of 1955 did not finish the Labor movement in
Britain any more than its victory in 1945 doomed the Conservative
Party. True, the Labor vote dropped from 13,949,000 in 1951 to
13,405,000 in 1955 and the party's strength in the House of Commons
fell from 295 to 277 seats. But the prophets of gloom overlooked the
movement's immense vitality, which comes in part from its connection
with certain emotions and ideals well established in modern Britain.

Within the movement the accepted reason for the defeat was the
interparty feud among the Bevanites on the left and the moderate
and right-wing groups. The moderates, representing the TUC and the
moderate elements of the Parliamentary Labor Party, provided most of
the party leaders in the election campaign. But in the year before the
election the squabbling within the party in the House of Commons and
on the hustings created a poor impression. One leader went into the
campaign certain that the party had not convinced the electorate that,
if elected, it could provide a competent, united government. These
bickerings thus were a serious factor in the Socialist catastrophe.

They were related to what seems to me to have been a much more
important element in the defeat. This was the party's lack of
understanding of the people, a defeat emphasized by the politician
quoted at the start of this chapter. There were times during the
campaign when Socialist speakers seemed to confuse their audiences
with those of 1945, 1935, or even 1925. This was understandable, for
the Labor Party owes much of its present importance to its position
in the twenties and thirties as the party of protest. There was
plenty to protest about. There was poverty--black, stinking poverty,
which wears a hideous mask in the bleak British climate. There was
unemployment--the miners stood dull-eyed and shivering in the streets
of the tidy towns of South Wales. There was the dole. There was, in
London and other big cities, startling inequality between rich and
poor, such inequality as the traveler of today associates with Italy or
France or West Germany's Ruhr.

Memories of those times scarred a generation. The bitterness spilled
out of the areas worst hit and infected almost the entire working
class. During the 1955 election I talked with a group in Merther
Tydfil in Wales. They were working, and had been working for ten years
at increasingly higher wages. They were well dressed, they had money
to buy beer and to go to see the Rugby Football International. The
majority--young fellows--seemed satisfied with their lot. But one
elderly man kept reminding them: "Don't think it's all that good, mun.
Bad it's been in this valley, and it may be again."

Just as the Democrats in 1952 harked back to the days of Hoover and
Coolidge, so the Labor orators in 1955 revived the iniquities of
Baldwin and Chamberlain. They saw behind the amiable features of R.A.
Butler and the imposing presence of Anthony Eden the cloven hoofs of
the Tory devils. They warned, with much prescience, that the economic
situation would deteriorate. They cajoled and pleaded. They waved and
sang "The Red Flag." It didn't work.

One statistic is important in this connection: since 1945, millions
who had voted for Labor in that election had died. It is reasonable
to assume that a high proportion of them were people with memories
of the twenties and thirties who would have voted Labor under any
circumstances.

Some died. Others changed. The spring of 1955 marked the zenith of
Britain's first post-war boom. A very high proportion of the population
felt that they had left the hard road they had traveled since 1940, and
had emerged from war and austerity into the sunny uplands of peace and
prosperity. They felt that to a great degree this change had been due
to their own efforts, which was true. They believed they had earned the
right to relax. It may be that a decade hence Britons will look back on
that period as a golden echo of the great days of the Empire. Perhaps
never again will Britain know a comparable period of prosperity and
peace.

Given this primary circumstance, it was almost impossible for a party
of protest to win an election. The industrial urban working class to
whom the Socialists chiefly appealed were doing nicely. The workers had
houses and television sets (known in Britain as "the telly"); bicycles
and motorcycles were giving way to small family cars. There had been
a steady rise in the supply of food, household appliances, and other
items for mass consumption.

A large group of Labor voters were consequently not so interested in
the election as they had been in the past. They voted, but in smaller
numbers. Some votes switched to the Conservatives, but I do not regard
this as a substantial element in the Tory victory. What did hurt Labor
and help the Tories was the apathy of many Labor voters. Repeatedly I
visited Labor election centers where a few elderly and tired people
were going through the motions. The Tory centers, on the other hand,
were organized, lively, and efficient.

For decades the Labor Party had promised the industrial workers
full employment, higher wages, social security. Now there was full
employment, wages were higher, present medical needs and future
pensions were assured by national legislation. To a great degree these
things had been achieved by the Labor governments of 1945 and 1950. But
monarchies can be as ungrateful as republics, and the Tory boast that
its government had ended rationing and produced prosperity probably
counted as much as the benefits given the industrial working class by
the socialist revolution carried out in six years of Labor government.

Another factor operated against the Labor campaign. There was then and
still is a perceptible drift from the industrial working class into a
new middle class. Later this drift must be examined in detail. It is
part of the pattern of constant change in British history, a change
that provides much of British society's strength. It is a change in
which new blood constantly flows upward into other classes, a change
in which the proletarian becomes lower middle class and the lower
middle class becomes upper middle class in respect to income and social
standing.

Here we are concerned with the political change. In many cases
the industrial worker who becomes a foreman and then a production
chief moves politically as well. He may still vote Labor, but it is
increasingly difficult for him to identify himself with the proletariat
or with Marxist doctrines. He lives in a better home, away from his old
associates. His new friends may spring from the same class, but they
are no longer preoccupied with the political struggle; often they are
enjoying the fruits of its victories.

Nor is he worried, politically. For the Tories' return to power in
Britain in 1951 did not produce a reactionary government. Sir Winston
Churchill, once regarded by the workers as a powerful and unrelenting
enemy, appeared in his last administration as a kindly old gentleman
under whose sunny smile and oratorical showers the nation prospered.
Why, he was even trying to arrange a talk with the Russian leaders! The
absence of openly reactionary elements in the Conservative government,
despite the presence of such elements in the party, and the promotion
of moderation by Conservative speakers encouraged a gradual movement
of the industrial working class away from the standards of pre-war
socialism.

The changes in British society between 1945 and 1955, the people's
refusal to respond to the old slogans in their new prosperity,
the damaging split within the Parliamentary Labor Party all are
contributing to the evolution of a new Labor Party that seems to be a
better reflection of its electoral support than the one which went down
to defeat in 1955. This does not mean, of course, that it is better
fitted to rule Britain.

Almost all the leaders of the Labor governments of the post-war years
have gone. Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps are dead. Clement
Attlee has passed from the House of Commons into the Lords. Herbert
Morrison and Emanuel Shinwell are back benchers in the Commons,
exchanging grins with their political enemy and personal friend Sir
Winston Churchill.

These men represented the old Labor Party. Bevin, Morrison, and
Shinwell were hard, shrewd politicians, products of the working class
they served. Cripps and Attlee were strays from the old upper middle
class who had been moved to adopt socialism by the spectacle of
appalling poverty among Britain's masses and what seemed to them the
startling incompetence of capitalist society to solve the nation's
economic and social problems.

This group and its chief lieutenants were bound, however, by a
common fight. They could remember the days when there was no massive
organization, when they had stood on windy street corners and shouted
for social justice. They remembered the days when "decent people"
looked down their noses at Labor politicians as unnecessary and
possibly treasonable troublemakers.

It was inevitable, I think, that this group would pass from the
leadership of the Labor party. When they did, however, the party lost
more than the force of their personalities. It lost an emotional drive,
a depth of feeling, that will be hard to replace.

Fittingly, the new leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, Hugh
Gaitskell, is an exemplary symbol of the new party. He is a man of
courage and compassion, intellectual power and that cold objectivity
which is so often found in successful politicians. He represents
the modern middle-class socialists just as Attlee two decades ago
represented the much smaller number of socialists from that class.

Attlee, however, led a party in which the working-class politician
was dominant. Gaitskell is chief of a party in which the middle-class
intellectual element and the managerial group from the unions and the
Party Organization have become powerful if not dominant.

Clement Attlee was leader of the party for more than twenty years.
Gaitskell has the opportunity to duplicate this feat. But he must first
heal the great schism that has opened in the movement in the last five
years, and to do so he must defeat or placate the left wing and its
leader, Aneurin Bevan.

Although the split within the Labor movement distresses all good
socialists, it has added notably to the vigor and, indeed, to the
gaiety of British politics. Aneurin Bevan was moved to flights of
oratorical frenzy and waspish wit. Nor is it every day that one sees
Clement Attlee temporarily discard his air of detachment and descend
into the arena to entangle his party foes in the streamers of their own
verbosity. It was a great fight, and, fortunately for those who like
their politics well seasoned, it is not over yet.

For the quarrel within the movement represents forces and emotions of
great depth and significance. In moments of excitement men and women
on both sides have described it as a battle for the soul of the party.
It may be more accurately described, I think, as a battle to determine
what type of political party is to represent the labor movement in
Britain.

Since the center and the right wing of the movement today dominate the
making of policy and fill most, but not all, of the important party
posts, it is the left that is on the offensive. But the left itself is
not a united band of brothers. It has its backsliders and its apostates
who sometimes temper their criticisms when they think of minor
government posts under a Labor government headed by Hugh Gaitskell.
But, personalities aside, convictions are so strongly held that there
seems to be little likelihood of an end to the offensive.

What, then, does the left represent? One definition is that it
represents those elements in the party who seek to complete the
revolution of 1945-51. They want the extension of nationalization to
all major industries and some minor ones. Aneurin Bevan, who enjoys
making flesh creep, once told a group of Americans that he wanted
to nationalize everything "including the barber shops." Extreme, of
course, and said in jest; but "Nye" Bevan is an extremist, and many a
true word is spoken in jest.

The left wing would move, too, against the surviving citadels of
pre-war England such as public schools and other types of private
education, and the power of the Church of England. It would impose upon
Britain an egalitarianism unknown among the great powers of the West.
It would limit Britain's defense efforts--this was the issue on which
Bevan broke with the party leadership--to forces barely sufficient
for police operations. It would liquidate as quickly as possible the
remains of the Empire. Finally, it would turn Britain from what the
radicals consider her present slavish acceptance of United States
policy to a more independent foreign policy. This would mean that
Britain would quit her position at the right hand of the United States
in the long economic and political struggle with the great Communist
powers and adopt a more friendly attitude toward Russia and Communist
China. Bevan has descried, along with a great many other people,
important economic and political changes within those countries, and he
pleads with the Labor movement for a more sensible approach to them.

Naturally many members of the movement's center and right subscribe to
some of these ideas. The admission of Communist China to the United
Nations is an agreed objective of the Labor movement. It is even
favored "in due course" by plenty of Conservative politicians. The
explanation is a simple illustration of British bipartisanship. China
means trade, and Britain needs trade. There are other considerations
involving long-term strategic and political planning, including the
possibility of luring China away from the Russian alliance. But trade
is the starting-point.

The left wing boasts that it speaks for the fundamentalists of
socialism, that it echoes the great dream of the founders of the party
who saw the future transformation of traditional Britain with its
economic and social inequalities into a greener, sweeter land. There is
and always has been a radical element in British politics, and, on the
left, the Bevanites represent it today.

The term "Bevanites" is inexact. The left-wing Socialists include
many voters and politicians who dislike Aneurin Bevan and some of his
ideas. But the use of his name to describe the group is a tribute to
one of the most remarkable figures in world politics today. Aneurin
Bevan has been out of office since 1951. He has bitterly attacked all
the official leaders of his party, and he has come perilously close to
exile from the party. His following, as I have noted, is subject to
change. He often says preposterous things in public and rude things in
private. He has made and continues to make powerful enemies.

"After all, Nye's his own worst enemy," someone once remarked to Ernie
Bevin.

"Not while I'm alive, 'e ain't," said Ernie.

Bevan is a man of intelligence, self-education, and charm. At ease he
is one of the best talkers I have ever met. He has read omnivorously
and indiscriminately. He will quote Mahan to an admiral and Keynes to
an economist. He has wit, and he knows the world. He likes to eat well
and drink well.

Bevan, in his eager, questing examination of the world and its affairs,
sometimes reminds his listeners of Winston Churchill. Each man has
a sense of history, although the interpretation of a miner's son
naturally differs from that of the aristocratic grandson of a duke.
There is another similarity: each in his own way is a great orator.

To watch Bevan address a meeting is to experience political oratory at
its fullest flower. He begins softly in his soft Welsh voice. There
are a few joking references to his differences with the leader of
the party, followed by a solemn reminder that such differences are
inescapable and, indeed, necessary in a democratic party. At this
point moderate Socialists are apt to groan. As Bevan moves on to his
criticisms of the official leadership of the movement and of the
Conservatives, it is clear that this is one orator who can use both
a rapier and a bludgeon. He is no respecter of personalities, and at
the top of his form he will snipe at Eisenhower, jeer at Churchill,
and scoff at Gaitskell. He is a master of the long, loaded rhetorical
question that brings a volley of "no, no" or "yes, yes" from the
audience.

Much of the preaching of left-wing Socialism is outdated, in view of
the changes in the urban working class. But Bevan is the only radical
who is capable on the platform of exciting both the elderly party
stalwarts who hear in him the echoes of the great days and the younger
voters who, until they entered the hall, were reasonably satisfied with
their lot. This is a man of imagination and power, one of the most
forceful politicians in Britain. One secret is that he, and precious
few others, can re-create in Labor voters, if only momentarily, the
spell of the old crusading days when it was a movement and not a party.

As Bevan typifies to many anti-Americanism in Britain, it should in
justice be said that he is not anti-American in the sense that he
dislikes the United States or its people. Nor could he be considered
an enemy of the United States in the sense that Joseph Stalin was
an enemy. Bevan believes as firmly as any Midwestern farmer in the
democratic traditions of freedom and justice under law.

But in considering the outlook on international affairs of Aneurin
Bevan and others on the extreme left of British politics there are
several circumstances to keep in mind. The first is that, due to early
environment, study, or experience, they are bitterly anti-capitalist.
The United States, as the leading and most successful capitalist
nation in the world, is a refutation of their convictions. They may
have a high regard for individual Americans and for many aspects of
American life. But as people who are Marxists or strongly influenced by
Marxism they do not believe that a capitalist system is the best system
for a modern, industrial state--certainly not for one in Britain's
continually parlous economic condition. In power they would alter the
economic basis of British society, and possibly they would change the
government's outlook on trade with the Communist nations. This means a
friendlier approach to the Russian and Chinese Communist colossi and
a more independent policy toward the capitalist United States. The
attractions of such a position are not confined to Aneurin Bevan; one
will hear them voiced by members of ultra-conservative factions of the
Tory party.

For a man who vigorously opposes all kinds of tyranny, Bevan has been
rather slow to criticize the tyranny of the secret police in the
Soviet Union or the ruthless methods of those Communists who have won
control of some British unions. There is in Bevan, as in all successful
politicians--Roosevelt and Churchill are the best-known examples in our
day--a streak of toughness verging on cruelty. This may explain his
apparent tolerance of some of the excesses of totalitarian nations.
Again, as some of his followers explain, Nye expects everyone to
realize that such tyrannies are culpable and to understand him well
enough to know that he would never give them the slightest support. Or,
they suggest, Bevan takes such a comprehensive view of world affairs
and has such a glittering vision of man's goals that he has no time to
concentrate on minor atrocities. Perhaps, but the excuse is not good
enough. The great leaders of Western democracy have been those who
never lost the capacity for anger and action against tyranny whether it
was exercised by a police sergeant or by a dictator.

Bevan has made a career of leading the extreme left wing in British
politics since 1945. He is sixty this year. If he is to attain power,
he must do so soon. How great is his following? What forces does he
represent?

The most vocal of the Bevanites are those in the constituency labor
parties. If you wish to taste the old evangelical flavor of socialism,
you will find it among them. Here are the angry young men in flannel
shirts, red ties, and tweed jackets, the stoutish young women whose
hair is never quite right and who wear heavy glasses. They are
eternally upset about something; they don't think any government, Labor
or Conservative, moves fast enough. They pronounce the word "comrades,"
with which laborites start all their speeches to their own associates,
as though they meant it.

The majority are strongly impressed by what has happened--or, rather,
by what they have been told has happened--in Russia. You can get
more misinformation about the Soviet Union in a half-hour of their
conversation than from a dozen Soviet propaganda publications. For in
their case the Russian propaganda has been adulterated with their own
wishes and dreams.

Some of them have been members of the Communist Party in Britain.
Others have flirted with it. My own impression is that most of them
rejected the discipline of the Communists and that, although they do
not want to be Communists, they have no objection to working with the
Communist Party to attain their ends. They know very little about the
history of the Social Democrats in Eastern Europe who thought in 1945
that they too could work with the Communists.

The left-wing radicals are not confined to the constituency labor
parties, but these parties are their most successful vehicles for
propaganda. For the CLP's present resolutions to the annual conference
of the movement, and these resolutions are usually spectacular,
combining extreme demands with hot criticism of the dominant forces
within the movement. The resolutions endorsing the official policies of
the party leadership attract far less attention.

The radicals of the CLP's are supported on the left by other dissident
elements within the movement. Some of these are union members who
oppose the authority of the Trades Union Congress within the movement,
considering it a reactionary brake on progressive or revolutionary
policies.

There is also a considerable group of union members who make common
cause with the political opponents of the TUC but oppose it principally
on its position in the industrial world. They see it as too temperate
in its objectives for wages and hours, too timid in its use of the
strike weapon, too unwieldy in organization, and too old-fashioned in
its approach to modern developments in industry such as automation.

In this opposition they are encouraged by the Communists. The Communist
Party is without direct political power in Britain. In the 1955
election it polled only 33,144 votes and failed to elect a single
candidate. But it has attained considerable indirect power in some key
unions in the British economy, and as the present leadership of the
TUC is moderate and fairly democratic, the party wages unceasing war
against it.

One method is to win control of unions. Where this is impossible the
Communists encourage opposition to the TUC--opposition that often
needs little encouragement. On both the political and the industrial
fronts the Communists support Bevanism and the extreme left wing
because these elements weaken the Labor movement, which up to now has
combatted Communist infiltration and sternly rejected invitations
to form a common front. Basically, the Communist Party in Britain
is just as strongly opposed to the Labor movement as it is to the
Conservative Party. This is true of the Communists all over Europe in
their relations with social democracy and conservatism. The difference
is that because of the common roots in Marxism, it is easier for the
Communists to infiltrate the unions and the socialist political parties.

Bevan is not the only spokesman for the radical left wing. R.H.S.
Crossman, a highly intelligent but somewhat erratic back-bench MP is
another. Crossman's political views are often somewhat difficult to
follow, but in the House of Commons he is capable of cutting through
the verbosity of a government speaker and exposing the point. Mrs.
Barbara Castle, a lively redhead, is a brisk, incisive speaker. Konni
Zilliacus, elected in the Conservative landslide of 1955, was once
ousted from the Labor Party because he was too friendly toward the
Soviet Union. Zilliacus is often immoderate, especially when dealing
with the ogres in Washington, but he has a considerable knowledge of
international affairs.

One of the most effective of the Bevanites in Commons until 1955
was Michael Foot, next to Bevan the best speaker on the Labor left
wing. Defeated in 1955 by a narrow margin, he provides the left with
ideological leadership through the pages of _Tribune_, a weekly
newspaper.

_Tribune_ is the only real Bevanite organ. The _New Statesman and
Nation_ is a forum for extreme left-wing views, but is more temperate
and stately. _Tribune_ is a battle cry flaying the Tories and the
official Labor leadership indiscriminately. Foot edits the paper and
writes in it under the name of John Marullus. Like Bevan, he was once
employed by Lord Beaverbrook.

_Tribune_ does not confine its activities to news and editorial
comments. Each year at the annual Labor Party conference the newspaper
stages what is usually the liveliest meeting of the week. During the
rest of the year it sponsors "brain trust" meetings throughout the
country at which the Bevanite ideology is expounded and defended.

The tabloid _Tribune_ is a good example of the old "hit him again,
he's still breathing" type of journalism. It does a wonderful job of
dissecting and deflating the stuffed shirts of the right and left. But
it is monotonously strident. The _New Statesman and Nation_, although
not so avowedly Bevanite as _Tribune_, may carry more weight with the
radical left. It is a weekly of great influence.

This influence is exerted principally upon an important group of
intellectual orphans--the young men and women whose education surpassed
their capacities and who now find themselves in dull, poorly paid
jobs, living on a scale of comfort much lower than that of the more
prosperous members of the urban working class. They are dissatisfied
with the system and the government that has condemned them to dreary
days of teaching runny-nosed little boys or to routine civil-service
jobs. Not unnaturally, they welcome political plans and projects which
promise to install them in posts worthy of their abilities as they see
them.

Politically they are on the extreme left. The _New Statesman_
encourages their political beliefs and assures them that their present
lowly estate is due to the system and not to their own failings. The
members of this group are poor. They are occasionally futile and often
ridiculous. But they are not negligible.

That wise man Sir Oliver Franks said once that the political outlook
of this group would have an important effect on Britain's political
situation ten or twenty years hence. My own conclusion is that this
group, like the Bevanites in the constituency labor parties, and the
dissidents in the unions, wants to remake the Labor Party in its own
image and then, when the party has come to power, remake Britain.

The left-wing radicalism of Britain--what we call Bevanism--is thus a
good deal more important than the occasional rebellions of a few MP's
on the Labor side of the House of Commons. It represents in an acute
form the evangelism that is so strong a part of the nonconformist
tradition in Britain. It rebels against the present direction of the
Labor movement and the Parliamentary Labor Party. It wants, not a
Britain governed by the Labor Party, but a socialist Britain.

Can it come to power? Movements of this kind usually win power
during or after some great national convulsion. A war or an economic
depression comparable to that of 1929-36 would give left-wing
radicalism its chance. But either might give right-wing radicalism and
nationalism a chance, too. To win, the Bevanites would have to defeat
the mature power of the great unions and the undoubted abilities of the
present leaders of the party.

The great unions are the result of one hundred and fifty years of
crusading agitation. The labor movement began with them. They have
money and they have power. The "branch" or "lodge" is the basic unit of
organization within the union. Every union member must belong to it.
In an individual plant or factory, the workers of the various unions
are represented by a shop steward, who recruits new members, handles
grievances, and, as the intelligence officer for the workers, keeps in
touch with the management and its plans.

There are regional, district, or area organizations on a higher level
for the larger unions. Finally, there is a national executive council
of elected officials which deals with the national needs of the unions.
At the top is the Trades Union Congress, a confederation of nearly all
the great unions.

The unions have grown so large--the Amalgamated Engineering
Union, for instance, includes thirty-nine separate unions in its
organization--that it is sometimes difficult for the TUC or the
national executive of an individual union to control its members.
But the moderate political outlook--moderate, that is, by Bevanite
standards--still prevails at the top, and the system of card voting,
under which all the votes of a union are cast at the annual conference
according to the decision of its national executive, insures that
the moderate policies of the union leaders will be approved at the
conference.

The imposing voting strength of the unions has been employed at
successive conferences to maintain the policies and leadership of men
like Attlee, Morrison, and Gaitskell. The steamroller in action is an
impressive and, to the Bevanites, an undemocratic sight. But it does
represent millions who advocate a conservative policy for the labor
movement and who, at the moment, are satisfied with evolutionary rather
than revolutionary progress.

The left-wing constituency labor parties create a great deal of noise.
Those which support the moderate leadership are less enterprising in
their propaganda, and, because criticism is often more interesting
than support, they make fewer headlines. But, despite the agonized
pleas of the left wing, hundreds of CLP's are satisfied with the
general ideological policy of the movement and its leaders. This is a
manifestation of the innate conservatism of the British worker. Just
as the Conservatives of twenty years ago distrusted the brilliant
Churchill largely because he was brilliant, so thousands of Labor
voters today distrust the brilliant Bevan.

This group puts its faith in the ebb and flow of the tides of political
opinion in a democracy. It was downcast after the 1955 election, but it
did not despair. "Give the Tories their chance, they'll make a muck of
it," said a union official. "We'll come back at the next election and
pick up where we left off in 1951."

The moderate section of the labor movement enjoys the support of the
only two national newspapers that are unreservedly Labor: the tabloid
_Daily Mirror_ and the _Daily Herald_. The _Mirror_, with an enormous
circulation of 4,725,000, consistently supported Hugh Gaitskell for
leadership of the party. So did the _Herald_, but it is a quieter
paper than the brash tabloid, and its influence in trade-union circles,
once great, seems to be declining, although the TUC remains a large
shareholder.

The election of Gaitskell as leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party on
Attlee's retirement was a severe blow to the Bevanites. But the tactics
employed by Gaitskell in his first months as Leader of the Opposition
were probably even more damaging to Bevan's hopes.

Bevan came out of his parliamentary corner swinging at the new leader.
In the past this had provoked Herbert Morrison, then deputy leader,
and even Attlee to retaliatory measures. Gaitskell paid no attention
to Bevan, but went about his work of presiding over the reorganization
of the party machine and of leading the party in the House of Commons.
Bevan huffed and puffed about the country making speeches on Saturdays
and Sundays. But as his targets said little in reply, the speeches
became surprisingly repetitious. Moreover, with the establishment of
the new Labor front bench in the Commons, Bevan took one of the seats
and became the party's chief spokesman, first on colonial affairs and
then on foreign affairs. It is difficult to make criticisms of the
party leader stick at Saturday meetings if, from Monday through Friday,
the critic sits cheek by jowl in the House of Commons with the target
in an atmosphere of polite amiability.

Bevan's bearing in the debate over the Suez policy increased his
stature in the party and in the country. Indeed, his approach to the
crisis impressed even his enemies as more statesmanlike and more
"national" than that of Gaitskell. Gaitskell, of course, labors under
the difficulty of being a member of the middle class from which so
many Conservative politicians spring. They naturally regard him as a
traitor, and criticisms by Gaitskell of Conservative foreign policy are
much more bitterly denounced than those of Bevan. To the Tories, Bevan
was speaking for the country, Gaitskell for the party.

The schism in the party is not healed. Too much has been said, the
convictions are too firmly held for that. But Gaitskell has been
successful in creating a façade of co-operation which thus far has
been proof against Bevan's outbursts on the platform or in _Tribune_.
However, the reaction of the two leaders to the Eisenhower doctrine
for the Middle East demonstrated the width of their differences on
a fundamental problem. The future of this struggle has a direct and
decisive bearing on the future of the labor movement. If Labor is to
return to power in an election that is unaffected by a national crisis,
foreign or domestic, the schism must be healed.

As a major political party, the labor movement has been molded by many
influences. Before the First World War, German Social Democracy and the
Fabians affected it. The party then acquired the tenets of national
ownership and ultimate egalitarianism in the most class-conscious of
nations which give it its socialist tone. But a party so large covers a
wide range of political belief. It is a socialist party to some. It is
a labor party to others. Above all, it is a means, like the Republican
and Democratic parties, of advancing the interests of a large number
of practical politicians whose interests in socialism are modified by
their interest in what will win votes.

The moderate center of the Labor Party now dominates the movement just
as the moderate center of the Conservative Party dominates the Tory
organization. In each the leader represents the mood of the majority
within the parliamentary party. Macmillan is a little to the left of
center among Conservatives. Gaitskell is a little to the right of
center in the Labor Party. The identity of interest among the two
dominant groups is greater than might appear from the robust exchanges
in the House of Commons.

The radical wings in both parties are handicapped at this point by
a seeming inability to understand that politics is the art of the
possible. Herbert Morrison, a great practical politician, summed up
this weakness of the radical left at a Labor conference. A resolution
demanding the immediate nationalization of remaining industry--at a
time when the country was prosperous and fully employed--was before the
conference. Do you think, he asked, that anyone will _vote_ for such a
program?




[Illustration]




VI. _A Quiet Revolution by a Quiet People_

 _Revolutions begin with infatuation and end with incredulity. In their
 origin proud assurance is dominant; the ruling opinion disdains doubt
 and will not endure contradiction. At their completion skepticism
 takes the place of disdain and there is no longer any care for
 individual convictions or any belief in truth._

  F.P.G. GUIZOT

 _Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a
 growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid
 far back._

  WENDELL PHILLIPS

[Illustration]


The changes in Britain since 1939 have been revolutionary. Yet because
Britain is a nation with a highly developed political sense, the
revolution has been fought not at barricades but in ballot boxes. And,
seen on the broadest scale, what has happened to Britain and its people
at home is part of what has been happening all over the world since
1939. The year that saw the start of World War II saw the beginning of
a terrible acceleration of forces that for fifty years had been slowly,
sometimes almost imperceptibly weakening Britain's position.

This book is concerned principally with Britain. But let us look
at what has happened to British interests abroad since 1939. The
Indian Empire is gone. The lifeline of what remains of the Empire is
unraveling in Ceylon, Singapore, Aden, and Cyprus. The rise of the
Soviet Union and the United States has dwarfed Britain as a world
power, and the imaginative conception of the Commonwealth is not yet,
and may never be, an adequate balance to these two vast conglomerations
of industrial and military power. Britain's ties with some of the
Commonwealth nations--notably South Africa--grow weaker year by year.
The remaining colonies are moving toward self-government, as the
British always planned, but it is doubtful whether after they leave
the Empire nest they will be any more loyal or responsive to British
leadership than Ceylon is today.

We are living through one of the most important processes of recent
history, the liquidation of an empire that has lasted in various
forms for about two hundred and fifty years. It is a tribute to the
people who gave it life, to their courage, political flexibility, and
foresight, that, despite the changes and the retreats, they are still
reckoned a power in world affairs.

History has its lessons. In 1785 Britain had lost her most important
overseas possessions, the American colonies, and the courts of Europe
rejoiced at the discomfiture of the island people and their armies
and navies. A third of a century later the British had organized the
coalition that ultimately defeated Napoleon, the supreme military
genius of his time, and were carving out a new empire in India,
Australia, and Africa.

We need not drop back so far in history. When, shortly before the
Second World War, I went to England, it was fashionable and very
profitable to write about the decay of Britain. Some very good books
were written on the subject, and they were being seriously discussed
when this island people, alone, in a tremendous renaissance of
national energy, won the Battle of Britain and saved the Western world
from the danger of German domination. As generations of Spaniards,
French, and Germans have learned, it is unwise to count the British out.

Yet an observer from Mars limiting his observations to the home islands
would find reason to do so today. For the Britain of today resembles
very little the Britain that, despite the long and, by the standards
of that day, costly war in South Africa, greeted the twentieth century
proudly confident.

Britain's old position as "the workshop of the world" has vanished.
There are now two other Britains--two nations, that is, which depend
largely on the production and export of manufactured goods to live.
Both these nations, Germany and Japan, are the defeated enemies of
World War II, and both of them were bidding for and getting a share of
Britain's overseas trade before that war and, indeed, before World War
I. The decline in Britain's economic strength did not begin in 1939.

The second world conflict, beginning only twenty-one years after
the close of the first, accelerated the decline. Into World War II
Britain poured both blood and treasure, just as she had in the earlier
conflict. But 1914-18 had left her less of both. British casualties in
World War II were smaller than in the first conflict, but the damage
done to Britain's position in the world was much greater.

The differences between the Britain of 1939 and the Britain of 1945
affected much more than the international position of the country. A
society had been grabbed, shaken, and nearly throttled by the giant
hand of war. After that bright Sunday morning in September when the
sirens sounded for the first time in earnest, things were never the
same again.

I remember an evening in April 1939. It was sunny and warm, and the
men and women came out of their offices and relaxed in the sunlight.
The Germans were on the move in Europe, but along the Mall there
was nothing more disturbing than the honk of taxi horns. London lay
prosperous and sleek, assured and confident.

Six years later I came back from Germany. I had been in London much of
the time during the war, but now I had been away for over a year, and
I found the contrast between that September evening and the far-off
evening in April impressive. It was not the bomb damage; there was
more of that in Germany. But London and Londoners had broken their
connection with the confident past. It was a shabbier, slower world,
face to face with new realities.

The impact of the war on the average Briton was greater than on the
average American because for long periods the Briton lived with it on
terms of frighteningly personal intimacy. Americans went to war. The
war came to the British. In the process an ordered society was shaken
to its foundations, personal and national savings were swept away, the
physical industrial system of the country was subjected to prolonged
attack and then to a fierce national drive for increased industrial
production. For close to six years the country was a fortress and then
a staging area for military operations. By the end of the war and the
dawn of an austere peace the nation was prepared psychologically for
the other changes introduced by a radical change in political direction.

Mobilization of military and economic forces during the war was more
complete in Britain than in any other combatant save possibly the
Soviet Union. The result of immediate peril and the prospect of defeat,
it began early in 1940. This mobilization was the start of the social
changes that have been going on in Britain ever since.

The mingling of classes began. Diana, the rector's daughter, and Nigel,
the squire's son, found themselves serving in the ranks with Harriet
from Notting Hill and Joe from Islington. In the end, of course, Diana
was commissioned in the Wrens and Nigel was a captain in a county
regiment, largely but not entirely because of their superior education;
however, their contacts with Harriet and Joe gave them a glimpse of a
Britain they had not known about before.

Things changed at home, too. The rectory was loud with the voices of
children evacuated from the slums of London or Coventry, and the
squire spent his days farming as he never had before and his nights
with the Home Guard. All over the country, men and women were giving up
those jobs which were unnecessary in war and venturing into new fields.
The assistant in the Mayfair dress shop found herself in a factory, the
greens-keeper was in a shipyard.

The old, safe, quiet life of Britain ended. There were no more quiet
evenings in the garden, no more leisurely teas in the working-class
kitchen, no more visits to Wimbledon. People worked ten or twelve hours
a day, and when they ate they ate strange dishes made of potatoes and
carrots, and when they drank they drank weak beer and raw gin. These
conditions were not universal. There were the shirkers in the safe
hotels and the black markets. And, despite the bands playing "There'll
Always Be an England" (a proposition that seemed highly doubtful in
the summer of 1940) and despite the rolling oratory and defiance of
Mr. Churchill, there was plenty of grousing. It was, they said in the
ranks, "a hell of a way to run the bleedin' war"; or, as the suburban
housewife remarked in the queue, "I really think they could get us
some decent beef. How the children are to get along on this I cannot
imagine."

They went on, though. They were bombed and strafed and shelled, they
were hungry and tired. The casualty lists came in from Norway, France,
the Middle East, Burma, Malaya. The machines in the factories were as
strained as the workers. Then, finally, it was over and they had won.
Only a minute number had ever thought they would be beaten. But they
were not the same people who had gone dutifully to war in 1939. Nor was
the world the same.

"Well, it's time to go home and pick up the pieces," said a major in
Saxony in the summer of 1945. He, and thousands like him, found that
the pieces just were not there any more. The economic drain of the war
had made certain that Britons, far from enjoying the fruits of victory,
would undergo further years of unrelenting toil in a scarred and shabby
country.

People were restless. They had been unsettled not only by the impact
of the war but by the glimpse of other societies. Not until the last
two and a half years of the war, when the American Army and Air Force
began to flood into Britain, did people become aware of the size,
power, and mechanical ingenuity and efficiency of the people who were
so inaccurately portrayed by Hollywood. Some saw in Russia's resistance
to the Germans and her final sweeping victories proof that the
Communist society could endure and triumph no less than those of the
Western democracies. Many who understood what had happened to British
power during the war were convinced that if the country was to retain
its position in the world, it would have to seek new, adventurous
methods in commerce and industry and new men and new policies in
politics. This conviction was held by hundreds of thousands who had
once voted Liberal or Conservative but who in the election of 1945 were
to cast their votes for the Labor Party.

The political history of the immediate pre-war period offers a reason
for this change. The defeats of 1940 and 1941 were a tremendous shock
to Britons. During the war there was no time for lengthy official
post-mortems on the alarming inadequacy of British arms in France in
1940 or in the first reverses in the western desert of Libya a year
later. But the polemics of the left managed to convince a great many
people that the blame lay with the pre-war Conservative governments of
Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin. When in 1945 the chance came
to revenge themselves on the Tories, even though Winston Churchill,
who had opposed both Chamberlain and Baldwin, was the Conservatives'
leader, millions took the chance and voted Labor into office.

The urge for change to meet changing conditions at home and new forces
abroad was not universal. The people of the middle class had not
yet fully understood what the war had done to Britain's economy and
especially to that section of it which supported them. There was very
strong opposition to the first post-war American loan in sections of
this class, largely from people whose confidence had not been shaken
by the cataclysm. The austerity imposed by Sir Stafford Cripps, the
Socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer, was neither understood nor
welcomed. The withdrawal from India was hotly opposed--and, it should
be remembered, not purely on imperialist grounds. For two hundred years
the middle class had provided the officers and civil servants who led
and administered the Indian Army and the government of British India.
As a class it knew a great deal more about India and the Indians than
the union leaders and earnest young intellectuals of Mr. Attlee's
government knew. The Socialist speakers and newspapers scoffed at "the
toffy-nosed old ex-colonels" who predicted bloody and prolonged rioting
between the Hindus and the Moslems once British power was withdrawn.
The rioting began, and before it was over the bloodshed was greater
than in all the British punitive actions from the Mutiny onward.

None of this generally Conservative opposition could halt or even check
a Labor government that had been voted into power in 1945 with 393
seats in the House of Commons as opposed to 216 for the Conservatives
and 12 for the Liberals. The Tories were out, the new day had dawned,
and the Labor Party, in full control of the government for the first
time in its history, set out to remake Britain.

No one in Britain could plead ignorance of what the Labor Party
was about to do. Since 1918 it had been committed to extensive
nationalization of industry and redistribution of income. Moreover, it
came to power at a moment when the old patterns of industrial power and
political alignments had been ruptured by war and when voters other
than those who habitually voted Labor were acknowledging the need for
change.

The 1945 policy statement of the Labor Party was called "Let Us Face
the Future." It dotted all the _i_'s and crossed all the _t_'s in
Labor's program.

The statement began with a good word for freedom, always highly
esteemed by political parties seeking power. But it added an
interesting comment. "There are certain so-called freedoms that Labor
will not tolerate; freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor
wages and to push up prices for selfish profits; freedom to deprive
the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives."

The statement went on to promise full employment, to be achieved
through the nationalization of industry; the fullest use of national
resources; higher wages; social services and insurance; a new tax
policy; and planned investment. There was to be extensive replanning of
the national economic effort and a "firm constructive government hand
on our whole productive machinery." The Labor Party's ultimate purpose
at home was "the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth of Great
Britain--free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public spirited, its
material resources organized in the services of the British people."

In 1948 Harold Laski, the Labor Party's ideological mentor, said in
the course of the Fabian Society Lectures that the party was "trying
to transform a profoundly bourgeois society, mainly composed of what
Bagehot called 'deferential' citizens, allergic to theory because
long centuries of success have trained it to distrust of philosophic
speculation, and acquiescent in the empiricist's dogma that somehow
something is bound to turn up, a society, moreover, in which all
the major criteria of social values have been imposed by a long
indoctrination for whose aid all the power of church and school, of
press and cinema, have been very skillfully mobilized; we have got
to transform this bourgeois society into a socialist society, with
foundations not less secure than those it seeks to renovate."

Doubtless these ominous words failed to penetrate into the clubs and
boardrooms that were the sanctums of the former ruling class. But
it was hardly necessary that they should. The businessmen and the
Conservative politicians understood Harold Laski's objectives.

Nationalization of industry is the most widely advertised economic
result of Labor policies between 1945 and 1951. In assessing its effect
on the changes in Britain since 1939, we must remember that neither
was it so new nor is it so extensive as Americans believe. The British
Broadcasting Corporation was created as a public corporation as long
ago as 1927. Today most manufacturing in Britain remains in the control
of private enterprise.

Between 1945 and 1951, however, the Labor government's policy of
nationalization created corporations that today operate or control
industries or services. In two industries, steel and road transport,
the trend toward nationalization has been reversed. But the following
list shows the extent of nationalization in Britain today.

_Coal_: The Coal Industry Nationalization Act received the Royal Assent
in May of 1946, and on January 1, 1947, the assets of the industry were
vested in the National Coal Board appointed by the Minister of Fuel and
Power and responsible for the management of the industry. For a century
coal was king in Britain, and British coal dominated the world market
until 1910. Coal production is around 225,000,000 tons annually--the
peak was reached in 1913 with 287,000,000 tons--and the industry
employs just over 700,000 people.

_Gas_: Under the Gas Act of 1948 the gas industry was brought under
public ownership and control on May 1, 1949. The national body is the
Gas Council, also appointed by the Minister of Fuel and Power. The
council consists of a full-time chairman and deputy chairman and the
twelve chairmen of the area boards.

_Electricity_: The Central Electricity Authority in April 1948 took
over the assets of former municipal and private electricity supply
systems throughout Great Britain with the exception of the area
already served by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, another
public corporation. But the industry had long been moving toward
nationalization. As early as 1919 the Electricity Commissioners
were established to supervise the industry and promote voluntary
reorganization. The industry is a big one, employing approximately
200,000 people, and production in 1954 was over 72,800,000,000
kilowatts.

_Banking_: The Bank of England, Britain's central bank, was established
in 1694 by Act of Parliament. Its entire capital stock was acquired by
the government under the Bank of England Act of 1946. As the central
bank, the Bank of England is the banker to the government, its agent
in important financial operations, and the central note-issuing
authority.

_Transport_: On January 1, 1948, under the Transport Act passed in
the preceding year, most of Britain's inland transport system came
under public ownership. Nationalization embraced the railways and
the hotels, road-transport interests, docks and steamships owned by
the railways, most of the canals, and London's passenger-transport
system. The public authority then established was the British Transport
Commission. Originally the Commission appointed six executive bodies
to run various parts of the system: the Railway Executive, the Road
Transport Executive, the Road Passenger Executive, the Hotel Executive,
the London Transport Executive, and the Docks and Inland Waterways
Executive. This generous proliferation of authority affected an
industry that employs nearly 2,000,000 workers.

Transport was one of the nationalized industries whose organization
was altered by the Conservatives when they returned to power in 1951.
Believing that "competition gives a better service than monopoly,"
the Tories passed the Transport Act of 1953. This returned highway
freight-haulage to private enterprise and aimed at greater efficiency
on the railroads through the encouragement of competition between the
various regions, such as the Southern Region or the Western Region,
into which the national system had been divided. The act also abolished
all the neat but rather inefficient executives except the Road
Passenger Executive, which had been abolished, unmourned save by a few
civil servants, in 1952, and the London Transport Executive, which was
retained.

_Airways_: British governments since the twenties have been involved
in civil aviation. Imperial Airways received a government grant of
£1,000,000 as early as 1924. By 1939 the Conservative government
had established the British Overseas Airways Corporation by Act of
Parliament. In 1946 the Labor government, under the Civil Aviation Act,
set up two additional public corporations: British European Airways
and British South American Airways. The latter was merged with BOAC in
1949.

_Communications_: The government took control of Cable and Wireless
Ltd., the principal overseas telegraph service, on January 1, 1947.
Thus, the Post Office now operates overseas telecommunications from the
United Kingdom and, of course, all internal telephonic and telegraphic
systems.

These were the most important milestones on the Labor Party's
progress toward nationalization. Viewed dispassionately, they were
evolutionary rather than revolutionary. There had been a trend toward
nationalization in electricity for some years. Objective investigators
had suggested nationalization to aid the failing coal-mining industry,
and during the war (1942) the Coalition government had assumed full
control of the industry's operations although private ownership
retained control of the mines.

We should avoid, too, the impression, popular among the uninformed in
the United States and even in Britain, that nationalization meant that
the workers took over management of the industries concerned. There
was no invasion of boardrooms by working-men in cloth caps. On the
contrary, employees protested that nationalization did not affect the
management of industries, and such protests were backed by facts. In
1951, after six years of Labor Party rule, trade-union representation
among the full-time members of the boards of the nationalized
industries was a little under 20 per cent, and among the part-time
members the percentage was just below 15 per cent. Five boards had no
trade-union representation.

The nationalization program of the Labor government between 1945 and
1951 nevertheless marked an important change in the structure of
British society. The financial and economic control of some of the
nation's most important industries was transferred from private to
public hands. The capitalist system that had served Britain so well
found its horizons limited in important fields.

There is now no important political movement in Britain to undo the
work of the Labor government in the fields mentioned above. But as long
as a generation survives which knew these industries under private
control, harsh and persistent criticism will persist. Some of it is
just. The standard of efficiency and comfort on British railroads, for
instance, has deterioriated since pre-war days. But in many instances
the critics are attacking aspects of the nationalized industries
which are the result not of nationalization itself but of the gradual
wearing out of much of the nation's industrial plant. Two wars, a
long depression, and a prolonged period of economic austerity during
which only the most important improvements and construction could be
financed have had their effect. Both British industry and the transport
system upon which it rests--railroads, ports, highways--need immediate
improvement and new construction.

Nationalization, however, was only one means of altering the bases of
British society. The historian of the future may consider that the
tremendous extension of government responsibility for social welfare
was a more important factor in the evolution of Britain. The Welfare
State has been a target for critics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Its admitted cost, its supposed inefficiency are denounced. British
critics, however, avoid a cardinal point. The Welfare State is in
Britain to stay. No government relying on the electorate for office is
going to dismantle it.

This is not a reference book, but we had better be sure of what we mean
by the British "Welfare State" as we consider its effect on the society
it serves.

The system is much more extensive than most Americans realize.
The government is now responsible through either central or local
authorities for services that include subsistence for the needy,
education and health services for all, housing, employment insurance,
the care of the aged or the handicapped, the feeding of mothers and
infants, sickness, maternity, and industrial-injury benefits, widows'
and retirement pensions, and family allowances.

The modern John Bull can be born, cared for as an infant, educated,
employed, hospitalized and treated, and pensioned at the expense of the
state and ultimately of himself through his contributions. This is the
extreme, and it arouses pious horror among those of conservative mind
in Britain as well as in the United States.

Again, as in the case of the nationalization of industry, we find that
much of the legislation that established the Welfare State did not
spring from the bulging brows of Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Beveridge,
or Aneurin Bevan, but is the latest step in an evolutionary process.
National Insurance is the logical outgrowth of the Poor Relief Act of
1601, before there were Englishmen in America, and the contributory
principle on which all later measures in this field have been based
first appeared in the National Health Insurance Scheme of 1912.

The present system is big and it is expensive. The national and
local governments are spending about £2,267,000,000 a year (about
$6,347,600,000) on social services for the Welfare State, and the
expenditure by the Exchequer on social services amounts to over a
quarter of the total.

Yet, as this is Britain where established custom dies hard, voluntary
social services supplement the state services. There are literally
hundreds of them, ranging from those providing general social service,
such as the National Council of Social Service, through specialized
organizations, such as Doctor Barnado's Homes for homeless children and
the National Association for Mental Health, to religious groups such as
the Church of England Children's Society and the Society of St. Vincent
de Paul. The existence and vigor of these voluntary organizations
testifies to the wrongness of the assumption that all social work in
Britain today is in the hands of soulless civil servants.

Of all the actions taken to extend social services under the
Labor government, by far the most novel and controversial was the
establishment of the National Health Service, which came into being on
July 5, 1948. The object of the National Health Service Act was "to
promote the establishment in England and Wales [other acts for Scotland
and Northern Ireland came into force simultaneously] of a comprehensive
health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and
mental health of the people of England and Wales and the prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of illness, and for that purpose to provide or
secure the effective provision of services."

Before we consider what the service does, let us think of those it
was designed to help. The British working class up to 1945 suffered
to a considerable degree from lack of proper medical and dental care.
Doctors and dentists were expensive, and in addition there was a
definite psychological resistance to placing oneself in their care.
Health and medicine were not popularized in Britain, as they were
in the United States; among the poor there was still a tendency to
consider discussion of these subjects as ill-mannered.

There has been some change since the war, but not much. Britons of all
classes were surprised, and some of them a little disgusted, by the
clinical descriptions of President Eisenhower's illness in American
newspapers. But the National Health Service has done much to reduce
the old reluctance to visit the doctor or the dentist because of the
expense.

Three subsequent acts in 1949, 1951, and 1952 have modified the scheme
slightly and have provided for charges for some services. But the
National Health Service is otherwise free and available according to
medical need. Its availability is not dependent on contribution to
National Insurance.

What does the service do? The Ministry of Health is directly
responsible for all hospital and specialist services on a national
basis, the mental-health functions of the old Board of Control,
research work on the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of illness,
the public-health laboratory service, a blood-transfusion service.

These broad general headings cover an enormous organization, the basis
of which is the General Practitioner Services, which covers the medical
attention given to individuals by doctors and dentists of their own
choice from among those enrolled in the service. About 24,000 or nearly
all of the general practitioners in Britain are part of the service. Of
approximately 10,000 dentists in England and Wales, about 9,500 are in
the service.

Again, costs are high. For six years Labor and Conservative
administrations have sought to keep the net total annual cost of the
National Health Service to just over £400,000,000 or $1,120,000,000. To
limit the drain on the Exchequer it was found necessary to charge for
prescription forms, dentures, and spectacles. Like any welfare scheme,
the National Health Service invited malingerers and imaginary invalids
who cost the doctors--and the state--time and money.

I asked a young doctor in the West Country what he thought of the
scheme. "Well, I don't know if it has contributed much to the health
of my bank statement," he said, "but it has contributed to the health
of the folk around here. People are healthier because they don't wait
until they're desperately ill to see a doctor. And the care of children
has improved tremendously. Perhaps this might have come naturally under
the old system. I don't know. But it's here now, and we're a healthier
lot."

The opposition view was put by an elderly doctor in London who opined
that so great was the pressure on the ordinary general practitioner
from "humbugs" that he never got a chance to do a thorough job on the
seriously ill. The hospitals, he added, were crowded with people who
"don't belong there" and who occupied beds needed by the really sick.

This controversy, like those over the nationalization of industry, will
continue. Again there seems little prospect that any government will
modify in any important way the basic provisions of the National Health
Service Act.

In company with the National Insurance, which applies its sickness,
unemployment, maternity, and widows' benefits to everyone over
school-leaving age, and the National Assistance Board, with its
responsibility for the care of those unable to maintain themselves, the
National Health Service has established the Welfare State in Britain.
Another important function has been largely taken out of the hands of
private individuals and delivered to the state.

What effect did the nationalization of industry and the establishment
of the Welfare State have on British society? Obviously, the first
removed from the control of the moneyed and propertied classes certain
powers over the economic functioning of Britain. The second, because
of its cost, made certain that the heavy tax rates introduced during
and just before World War II would continue. These taxes were paid
principally by the middle class, which, at the outset, refused in many
instances to use the National Health Service.

The effect was a leveling one. The dominant class was stripped, on one
hand, of some of its power to control a large section of the national
economy, although, as we have seen, it managed to retain its direction
of the nationalized industries. At the same time this class found that
it must continue to pay year by year a high proportion of its earned
income for the state's care of its less prosperous fellows. The decline
in the influence, prosperity, and prestige of the old middle class was
definitely accelerated by these two bold advances toward socialism.

From the standpoint of the prestige of this class in Britain and,
frankly, of the usefulness of many of its members to the state,
the withdrawal of British rule from India and Burma and the steps
elsewhere toward the liquidation of the Empire were blows as grievous
as the creation of the Welfare State and the nationalization of some
industries.

Americans should realize that to Britons the Empire was not simply
a place to work and get rich. The people who did the Empire's work
usually retired with only their pensions and a conviction (which is not
much help when you need a new overcoat) that they had done their duty.

The propaganda of India and Pakistan and of their well-wishers in the
United States has obscured for Americans the grand dimensions of the
British achievement in India. For a hundred and ninety years, between
Plassy in 1757 and the withdrawal in 1947, British rule brought peace
and justice to peoples hitherto sorely oppressed by irresponsible
tyrants, many of whom were corrupt and decadent. The British stamped
out thuggee and suttee, ended the interminable little wars, introduced
justice, and labored to build the highways, railroads, and canals that
form the skeletons of independent India and Pakistan. All this was
done by a handful of British officials and white troops in the midst of
the subcontinents millions.

Parenthetically, it might be remembered that when the British Indian
army, which served with the British Army in India, existed, and when
the Royal Navy had the strength and facilities to take it where it was
needed, there was peace between Suez and Singapore.

The British are proud rather than defensive about their record in
India. Even the anti-colonialists of the Labor Party note that free
India and Pakistan operate under British political and legal forms.
Most of them, even those who knew the country well, regarded withdrawal
as inevitable after World War II. But it will take more proof than Mr.
Nehru is prepared to offer to convince many Britons with roots in India
that the people are happier, that justice is universal, that corruption
is declining.

This attitude galls the Indians and their friends, who never liked
the British much. But in the great days of empire the British didn't
care about being liked. This is a significant difference between the
American and British approaches to responsibility and leadership in
international affairs. The American visitor abroad worries about
whether he and his country are liked by the French or the Egyptians or
the Indonesians. The Briton, when the Empire's sun was at the zenith,
never gave a damn. What he wanted was respect, which he regarded as
about as much as a representative of a powerful nation could win from
the nationals of a less powerful nation under economic, political, or
military obligation.

"We ran that district with three officials, some Indian civil servants,
the police, and their white officers, and we ran it damned well," an
official recalled. "There were some troops up the line, but we never
needed them. When we made a decision or gave a judgment, we adhered to
it. We made no distinction between Moslem and Hindu. There was justice
and peace. No, of course they weren't free. They weren't ready to
govern themselves. And d'you think they'd have traded those conditions
for freedom and communal rioting?"

I asked the official the population of the district.

"Three, three and a half million," he said.

The loss of India and Burma under the first Socialist administration
and the consequent decline of British power thus constituted a severe
psychological shock to the middle class that had ruled Britain during
the last century of British administration in India. Later we shall see
the difference it made in Britain's international position vis-à-vis
the Soviet Union. Here we are concerned with the effect upon British
society at home.

That society contains thousands of men and women who knew and
served the Empire and who bitterly resent its liquidation. Usually
inarticulate and no match for the bright young men of the _New
Statesmen_, they can be goaded into wrath. Gilbert Harding, a
television entertainer who has become a national celebrity, found this
out. Mr. Harding referred on television to the "chinless idiots" who
made that "evil thing," the British Empire. The reaction was immediate
and bitter. Mr. Harding was abused in the editorial and letter columns
of the newspapers in phrases as ugly as any he had used. There are, it
appeared, many who glory in the Empire and in the Commonwealth that has
evolved from the old colonies.

Nationalization, the creation of the Welfare State, the withdrawal from
India--these were major events that changed the face and manner of
Britain. But the effect of the change in British life was evident, too,
in the way men lived. The austerity preached by Sir Stafford Cripps
may have been necessary if the nation was to overcome the effects of
the war. But continued rationing, the queues outside the shops, the
shortages of coal, the persistently high taxation all combined to
change the life of the middle class. Slowly they realized that the
sacrifices and dangers of the war years were not going to be repaid.
There was no brave new world. Instead, there was the old world looking
much more shabby than ever before.

"You see," people would say, explaining some new restriction, some new
retreat before economic pressure, "we won the war." It was a bitter
jest in the long, drab period between 1945 and 1950.

There was plenty of grumbling, some of it bitterly humorous. Lord
Wavell, surveying a glittering audience at a royal command performance
at Covent Garden Opera House, was told by a friend that the scene
reminded him of pre-war days. "The only difference," the great soldier
replied, "is that tomorrow we'll be doing our own washing up."

There was, of course, a good deal of snobbery in the middle-class
attitude toward the Socialist government and what it was doing. The
Conservatives and the dwindling band of Liberals just could not believe
that the Socialists were equipped to carry out such vast changes in
British life. They noted with sardonic humor the failures in Socialist
policy. They found the Labor ministers ineffectual and diffident
compared to their own leaders. "We had X and his wife to dinner last
week," the wife of an industrialist told me in 1948. "What a pathetic
little man! And in such an important post, too. Really, I looked at him
sitting there and thought of Winston and Anthony, and Duff, and I felt
like crying."

It was during this period that the Labor Party lost the support,
temporarily at least, of many of the Conservatives and Liberals who
had voted for it in 1945. The reasons for the shift are difficult to
ascertain. Certainly many people were affronted by nationalization,
especially when it directly affected their interests (though many of
them had voted for Labor expecting such changes). The continuation of
high taxation, which seemed permanent after the start of rearmament
in 1950, alienated others. The ineffectual way in which the Labor
government seemed to be handling many of its problems, particularly the
coal shortage, affected the political opinions of many. "Damn it, we
live on an island made of coal," said one civil servant who had voted
for Labor in 1945. "It's monstrous to have a coal crisis. What are they
playing at?"

In one field the Labor government won the grudging respect of the
Tories: its approach to the problem presented to the West by the
aggression of Soviet Russia. Mr. Attlee's dry, precise refutations of
Soviet policy might be a weak substitute for Churchill's thundering
oratory, but the nation found a paladin in the squat, rolling figure of
Ernest Bevin.

Bevin had spent much of his life fighting British communists for
the control of the unions. Entering the rarefied atmosphere of
international affairs at the top as Foreign Secretary, he brought to
his new task the blunt tongue and quick insight he had employed so
successfully in the old. Between 1945 and 1950, when the British Labor
Party was at the top of its power, Russian Communism was on the march
in Europe. It had no tougher opponent than this Englishman.

The Russians recognized him as a prime enemy. In Moscow in 1946 and
1947 the Soviet press denounced and assailed Bevin as hotly as they
did any other Western figure. Indeed, the whole Labor government
was vilified almost daily. The reason for this savage onslaught on
the earnest and industrious Marxists of the British government was
obvious. Stalin and his lieutenants had been talking about socialism
for decades. Here was a regime that might make it work without throwing
hundreds of thousands into labor camps and allowing millions to starve.
The anxiety of the rulers of Russia can be compared to that of the
proprietors of a black market who learn that an honest shop is going
into business across the street.

So this sturdy proletarian, Ernest Bevin, became one of the champions
of the West in the cold war and was praised by Conservatives and
Liberals. The left wing of his own Labor Party provided most of the
criticism. Still cherishing the illusion that the Russians could be
induced to drop their hostility to the West through "frank and open
exchanges," Bevin's comrades led by Aneurin Bevan attacked his policies
and especially his desire to maintain the Anglo-American alliance.

Those who cheered loudest, the people of the upper middle class who
detested Russia, were the ones who, in the end, suffered most from
the cold war. Britain's rearmament, under the impact of the Communist
seizure of power in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Blockade, and, finally,
the attack on South Korea, was a costly business. It began soon after
the great expansion of social services had created the Welfare State.
Taxes, already high, rose further.

In thousands of middle-class homes the decline from the old pre-war
standards continued. The maidservant gave way to the "daily" who came
in once or twice a week to help with the cleaning. The savings for old
age were diverted to the rising costs of keeping the boys at school.
In a hundred pathetic ways, the middle class strove to maintain its
standards under the burden of taxation in a Britain it neither liked
nor understood.

But to balance this gradual depression of one class there was the
expansion of another. The victory of the Labor Party in 1945 encouraged
the working class of the nation to seek a richer, fuller life. It
opened vistas of a new existence and greater opportunities. It created
confidence.

Traveling to Cardiff in September 1945, I talked with a miner's wife,
a huge woman who spoke in the singsong accents of the mining valleys
of South Wales. She dandled a plump baby on her knee and talked of
what life would be like now. "My Dai's not going down the mine like
his dad," she told me. "Now that _we_ have _our_ government, he can be
anything he wants, do anything."

British society, despite its fixed barriers between class and class,
has always enjoyed considerable mobility. In the past the country
gentry and the aristocracy had surrendered power to the merchants and
the industrialists. Now the urban working class that had served the
merchants and the industrialists believed it had wrested control from
its masters. Labor's election victory seemed to prove it.

This breaking down of the old relationship between the classes was a
matter of deep concern to many, and their concern went deeper than
partisan political feeling. Repeatedly one was told that the worst
thing Labor had done was to create class feeling, to encourage class
antagonisms in a country that until then had never been affected by
them. This was only a half-truth. The class antagonism had been there,
all right, but the middle class now was belatedly the victim of the
bitterness that a hundred years of slum housing, poor food, and lack of
opportunity had created among some but not all of the working class. I
write "not all" because there were members of that class who were as
disturbed by the growth of class antagonism as any retired colonel
in his club. They felt instinctively that the unity of Britain was
being sapped by the emergence of a powerful and militant socialist
group whose object was change. Most of them had voted for change. But
the British are a conservative people. They accept change within the
framework of familiar institutions. Extensive reconstruction may go on
behind the façade, but the façade must remain untouched.

The hope and confidence born of Labor's victory, however, had a
long-term effect upon British society. It encouraged those who had
dreamed, like the miner's wife, of a better life for their children.
Ambitious mothers aimed higher than a few years of school and a factory
job for their sons. Young men who had won commissions during the war
decided to remain in the Army or the Navy or the Air Force now that the
old barriers were falling and the right accent and the right private
income did not matter so much as it once had.

By 1950 the economic and social forces that were to create the Britain
of today were in full motion. Paradoxically, the British electorate was
moving slightly to the right.




[Illustration]




VII. _A Society in Motion_

NEW CLASSES AND NEW HORIZONS

 _There are but two families in the world--have-much and have-little._

  CERVANTES

 _Society is constantly advancing in knowledge. The tail is now where
 the head was some generations ago. But the head and the tail still
 keep their distance._

  THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

[Illustration]


Marie Lloyd, the darling of the music halls, sang a song that contained
the deathless line: "A little of what you fancy does you good."

In addition to their evangelism, their occasional ruthlessness, the
British have a streak of self-indulgence. This trait was encouraged
by the peculiar circumstances of the country after the Conservative
victory in the general election of 1951.

It was not a smashing victory. The Conservatives came back to power
with 326 seats in the House of Commons as opposed to 295 for Labor and
6 for the Liberals. Yet it is doubtful that even with double their
majority the Tories would have wished to undo all the work in the
fields of nationalization and social welfare accomplished by the Labor
administrations of 1945 and 1950. This was not politically feasible
and, with Britain still in the toils of economic difficulties, it would
have been unwise to convulse the industrial structure. There was no
restoration after the revolution. The Socialists obviously had not
attained the goals outlined by Professor Laski, but they had started
the nation in that direction.

If economic conditions had deteriorated, the new administration of
Winston Churchill might have been short-lived. But the world demand
for British products, especially such raw materials as rubber and tin
from Malaya, strengthened the economy. So did the gradual rise in
British production and the economic improvement in Europe which created
a larger market for British exports. After some uneasy months the
indices of economic health began to move upward. After twelve years of
military, political, and economic strain and anxiety the British were
ready for a little of what they fancied. Life around them looked good,
and they wanted to take advantage of it. There was a steady return of
confidence.

British exports were rising. You could actually go down to the
butcher's and buy all the meat you wanted. The Tories really were
building all those houses they had promised to build. It was easier now
to buy a new car and say good-by to Old Faithful that had served since
1938 or earlier. Taxes were as high as ever, but the government said
they would be reduced. And if you had a little money, there was plenty
in the shops to spend it on.

During the struggle with austerity after the war the British had been
surprisingly sensitive to foreign criticism of their apparent inability
to fight their way back to prosperity. Now here was prosperity or a
reasonably accurate facsimile of it. Those foreigners had been wrong.

Presiding over their recrudescence of national confidence was the
familiar figure of Mr. Churchill. The Prime Minister might lack the
acute economic penetration of Sir Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee's
social consciousness, but he was a world figure in a way that neither
Socialist could claim to be. When in May 1953 the best-known voice in
the English-speaking world proposed a conference at the summit with the
new masters of the Soviet Union, the British felt that their leader had
enforced their country's claim to a share in the leadership of the West.

Neither the economic nor the political developments of 1951-3 altered
the raw facts of Britain's existence: the importance of denial at home
to expand sales abroad, the rising competition of Germany and Japan in
international markets. But these facts, which had been presented to
the people with monotonous regularity under the pedagogical leadership
of the Socialists, slipped out of sight. There was money to spend
and there were things to buy. And reading about the Queen and the
preparations for her Coronation was much more interesting than worrying
about the dollar balance.

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was one of the most impressive
and romantic spectacles of modern times. It is quite possible that
this combination of national pride, religious symbolism, and perfectly
performed ceremony will never be duplicated. It is also possible that
from the standpoint of national psychology the Coronation did the
British a good deal of harm by leading some of them into romantic
daydreams at a time when it was essential that they should keep their
heads and face the ugly realities of their position.

The young Queen pledging herself to serve her people, the evocation
of a glorious past, the survivals of ancient custom, the splendid
ceremony in London, and the other smaller ceremonies around the country
all exalted values that, although real and important in their place,
are only a part, and not the most important part, of a society that
must fight to retain economic and political power. People should be
reminded occasionally of their place in the historical procession and
of the existence of values other than those of the market place. But
such reminders are useful only when the people return to their normal
jobs with a new vigor and enthusiasm. In Britain the festivities of the
Coronation year seemed to drag on interminably.

In the case of the Coronation the monarchy might be said to have
overfulfilled its function of arousing national patriotism. Whipped on
by the national newspapers and the BBC, patriotic fervor went beyond
the bounds of reason and led to an overoptimistic estimate of Britain's
position in the world. _We can make this the new Elizabethan age!_
chanted the newspapers.

The idea that the subjects of Elizabeth II would emulate their
restless, adventurous, enterprising forebears of the reign of Elizabeth
I was a pleasing one. But it sounded odd in a nation of whose citizens
millions were devoted to security. In 1953, Coronation year, the age of
adventure and chivalry bowed resplendent and beautiful before a nation
in which the forces that had been working since 1940 were evoking
new classes and new ways of life. Neither had physical or mental
connections with the heroic past of aristocratic rural England or with
the old middle class.

In preceding chapters we have encountered some of the forces that
changed British life: the leveling effect of the war, the Socialist
victory of 1945, the extension of nationalization of industry and of
the social services, the decline in the economic well-being of the old
middle class. Now in the mid-fifties, as a result of these forces and
two others--full employment and rising wages--a class new to modern
British history has emerged.

Over the years between 1940 and 1955 there was very little unemployment
in Britain. The percentage of unemployment in 1940 was 6.4. Thereafter,
under the special circumstances of the war, the percentage fell until
in 1944 it was only 0.6. In the post-war years it rose slightly, but
the highest figure was 3 per cent in 1947.

Simultaneously, wages rose. Using October 1938 for the base figure of
100, weekly average earnings in the principal industries rose to 176 in
1943, 229 in 1949, and 323 in 1954.

The new class resulting from these changes and the earlier political
ones is composed mainly of the manual workers of British industry,
better housed, better paid, and more secure than ever before in their
history.

Definition of the new class from either a geographic or an economic
point of view is difficult. In the 1930's there was an extensive
redistribution of the British working population. Industries, heavy and
light, began to spring up in places like Oxford and in the heart of
hitherto largely rural counties like Berkshire and Northamptonshire.
Tens of thousands of workers left their homes in slum areas or drab
working-class neighborhoods and moved to new jobs in new industries. In
the six years before the start of World War II more than 2,000,000 new
houses were built in Britain. This was important in the resettlement
of the industrial population. Equally important was the fact that over
500,000 of them were built and let by local government authorities who
in turn were helped by the central government.

Subsidized housing had come to stay. In the decade since the war more
than 2,000,000 new houses have been built. Of these about 1,600,000 are
owned by local governments, which let them at low rents made possible
by government subsidies.

Another development that benefited the new class was the advent of
the New Towns. These are self-contained communities outside the great
centers of population, complete with industries, schools, churches,
hospitals, and public services. They are intended to draw people from
the cities and conurbations, already too large, and establish them in
the countryside.

The idea is old. Ebenezer Howard proposed it in 1898 and the proposal
was promptly attacked as the spawn of the devil and his socialist
friends. It was not until 1903 that Letchworth, the first of the New
Towns, was established. But World War II impressed on both Socialist
and Tory the wisdom of dispersing the industrial population, and in
1946 the House of Commons approved the New Towns Act. Today there are
fourteen New Towns in Britain, eleven of them in England. None is
complete, although workers are moving into them by the thousand.

Harlow, which occupies ten square miles of Essex, is the most advanced
of the New Towns. Its present population is about 30,000. The target
is around 80,000. The cost of this vast resettlement scheme is high.
Thus far it has been about £112,000,000, approximately $313,600,000.
Estimates indicate that more than double that sum will be needed to
complete the New Towns.

The New Towns are by all odds one of the most interesting and
imaginative developments in modern Britain. Their social and political
consequences are almost incalculable. For the New Towns will continue
to grow and to house a new class whose political and economic power
will be a dominant factor in British society.

They will not be completed overnight. In most cases the rate of growth
depends on the willingness of industry to build in the New Towns.
Exceptions are towns like Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee in the North of
England which have been built to house miners and their families. On
the whole, however, industrial support has been encouraging. With the
establishment of a new industry in a New Town more houses are built and
schools, churches, shops, and parks constructed.

In the process hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the
working-class sections of the Clyde or South Wales or London, trading
tiny, old-fashioned flats or houses for well-designed houses. The
children are going to schools that are new and not over-crowded. They
are playing in fields rather than city streets.

But the New Towns are not the only factor in the emergence of the
new class. In addition, there has been a steady increase in the
construction of low-rent housing estates by local authorities.
Incidentally, the people of the New Towns are sharply critical of
ignoramuses who confuse them with the people of the housing estates.
The housing estates are most often built on the fringes of big cities;
the tall--for Britain--apartment houses rising in Wimbledon, outside
London, are an example.

Each housing estate, when completed, siphons off some hundreds or
thousands of Britain's slum population. In some cases, notably in east
London south of the Thames, new housing estates have been built in the
wastes left by German bombing.

As a consequence of these efforts by both Labor and Conservative
governments to resettle the working class, Britain's slums are slowly
disappearing. Of course many square miles of them remain, and any
newspaper can publish photographs showing conditions of appalling filth
and squalor. Yet a great deal has been done to destroy the slums. There
remain, of course, the miles and miles of old working-class districts,
shabby and dull, but these are part of the landscape of any industrial
nation and it is probably impossible for any government, British or
American or German, to eliminate them entirely.

The people of the New Towns, of the housing estates, and of the working
class generally enjoy full employment and higher wages than they have
ever dreamed of in their lives. Admittedly, prices have risen steadily
since the war. But rents have not. In Norwich, for instance, there were
in 1956 eight thousand council houses that rented at seven shillings,
or ninety-eight cents, a week. The manual worker in British industry
often pays only a nominal rent. The Welfare State has relieved him of
the burden of saving for the education of his children or for medical
care.

A skilled worker in industry may have a basic wage of £12 ($33.60) or
£13 ($36.40) a week. Overtime work may raise the total to an average of
£15 ($42.00) for a week's work. A worker at a similar job in a similar
industry before the war was extremely fortunate if he made £4 a week.

Under these circumstances the buying spree on which the British people
embarked in 1953 was inevitable. The new class had no need to save.
The state took care of its welfare, and taxes were taken at the source
under PAYE (Pay As You Earn). Workers had been fully employed for more
than a decade. Now at last the shops were full, and the hucksters of
installment buying, known in Britain as "buying on the Never-Never,"
were at every door.

One investigation of life in the New Towns revealed a typical weekly
budget for necessities. The family spent £5 10 _s._, or about $15.40,
for food and household necessities. Rent and local taxes cost £2, or
$5.60. Lighting and heating cost 10 _s._, or $1.40, while the same
amount went to clothes and repairs. Cigarettes took a pound, or $2.80,
and the weekly installment on the television set was 15 _s._, or $2.10.

Few things demonstrate more strikingly the change in the status of
the British manual worker than his insistence on a television set as
a "necessity." Cars, radios, and, earlier, gramophones were available
only to the middle class or wealthy in pre-war Britain. For the first
time they are within the range of the manual worker.

Few families budget the considerable sum spent each week on beer,
the obligatory trips to the local movie theater, or gambling either
through football pools or bets on horse races. But it is not unusual in
these new circumstances to find men who spend £2 or £3 a week for such
purposes. "Why the bloody hell not?" a worker in Liverpool asked. "I've
got me job and I don't 'ave to worry." The permanence of his job and
of high wages had become an accepted part of his life. He was one of
those who had not been moved by the Labor Party's dire forebodings of
unemployment and the dole under Conservative rule. To him these were as
shadowy and distant as the Corn Laws and Peterloo.

The new class has money, security, and leisure: this is the promised
land. According to theories of some reformers, the worker, freed from
the oppression of poverty, should be expanding intellectually, worrying
about the future of Nigeria rather than the football fortunes of
Arsenal. My opinion is that the opposite is true, that with the coming
of the good life the worker has gradually shed his responsibilities
(some of these, in fact, have been stripped from him) and has lost the
old desperate desire to improve his lot and make himself and his class
the paramount political power in the land.

There is no need to save, for the state provides for all eventualities
the worker can foresee. There is no compulsion to ensure that the
children get an education that will enable them to rise above the
circumstances of their parents. For the circumstances are so good, so
unimaginably higher than those into which the fathers and mothers of
this class were born, that there seems to be nothing further to be
sought. Why should a boy be given a good education--"stuffing 'is head
with a lot of nonsense 'e'll never use" was the way one father put
it--when he can make £10 a week after a few years in a factory? The
schools are there, they are free, but when the time comes the boy can
leave the school and take up a man's work in the factory.

There seems to be a conviction among working-class mothers that a girl
needs a little more schooling to fit her for an office job. But the
men of the class, proud of the money they are earning and the "rights"
their unions have won, see no virtue in an office job or the higher
education that fits one for it.

For the manual worker has found security, and that is what he is
interested in, that is what he has sought through the long, bitter
history of industrial disputes in Britain. He is not interested in and
he does not share the standards of the old middle class or even of the
artisan class that preceded him.

Charles Curran, in a brilliant article on "The New Estate in Great
Britain" in the _Spectator_, put it this way: "One word sums up the New
Estate: the word 'security.' It is security in working-class terms,
maintained and enforced by working-class methods. The traditional
values of the middle and professional classes form no part of it; among
wage-earners these values are meaningless.

"To the middle-class citizen, economic security is a goal to be reached
primarily by personal effort. It is a matter of thrift, self-help,
self-improvement, competitive striving. But the manual worker sees
it differently. To him, any betterment in his conditions of life is
essentially a collective process--something to be achieved not by
himself as an individual but in company with his fellows. He will
organize for it, vote for it, strike for it, always with them. It is
'Us' not 'I.' Eugene Debs, the American Socialist leader, put this
attitude into one sentence when he said, 'I don't want to rise from the
ranks; I want to rise with them.'"

In this psychological situation it is ludicrous to appeal for New
Elizabethans among the men and women of the new class. For they have
no great admiration for individual enterprise, for risk or sacrifice.
Among the many men I have talked to in the New Towns, I never met
one who was interested in saving enough money to buy his own small
business, to strike out for himself. The ideal seemed to be a community
of equals protected from economic dangers by full employment and high
wages, politically lethargic, unstirred by Socialist or Tory. Everyone
earned about the same amount of money, spent it on the same things, and
appeared to think and talk alike.

Yet theirs is a nation that desperately needs the imaginative,
inventive mind if it is to overcome its economic difficulties.

The paramount emphasis on security found among manual workers may
be regrettable. But in view of Britain's past it is natural and
understandable. These, after all, are the descendants of farm laborers
who worked twelve hours a day and lived in hovels. The grandfathers and
grandmothers of the young people in the New Towns knew the dank, dirty
poverty of the slums of London and Liverpool. There must be among the
miners at Peterlee men and women whose female ancestors dragged coal
carts through mine tunnels on their hands and knees.

The new class begins with a strong bias in favor of the Labor Party.
It is never allowed to forget the inhumanities of the past or the long
struggle of the unions against entrenched capital. It is reminded at
every election that all it has today is a result of the efforts of
the Labor Party. This is not true, but we are talking about politics.
Finally, in every new housing development or New Town there must be an
aging group who remember with fierce-eyed resentment the long periods
of unemployment and the marginal existence that were the lot of many
working-class families a quarter of a century ago.

The Welsh, in particular, have never forgotten. And hundreds of
thousands of bitter, talkative, excitable Welsh workers have left South
Wales in the last twenty years to work in other parts of Britain,
carrying with them their hatred of the Tories and their zeal for "the
movement." When Aneurin Bevan, that most Welsh of Welshmen, describes
the Tories as lower than vermin or genially compares them with the
Gadarene swine, he is expressing a sentiment strongly held by a
considerable percentage of his fellow countrymen.

The geographical redistribution of the working class altered the
political map of Britain. Housing estates and New Towns introduced
solid blocs of Labor votes into traditionally Tory constituencies. This
was a factor in the Socialist victory of 1945 and it is still a factor
today. The constituency of Melton, for instance, was long considered a
safe Liberal seat. Then it became equally safe for the Conservatives.
But the advent of a housing development and several thousand new votes
made this rural constituency insecure. The influx of a new type of
voter is one of the main reasons why this must now be considered a
marginal constituency by the Tories.

But the effect of the geographical redistribution is being matched and
balanced in many constituencies by the effect of their new economic
status upon the voters of the working class. They now have something
to conserve: jobs, good wages, pleasant homes. This does not mean an
immediate conversion to Conservatism. Among many, particularly the
older age groups, the memories of the past are still strong. But the
achievement of a new economic status has resulted in a lessening of the
fervor and energy for the Socialist cause. A class that puts security
above everything else is not likely to be won by a Labor platform that
endorses more nationalization and the ensuing upheaval in the British
economy. Its younger members, many of whom have never been jobless, are
unimpressed by dire prophecies of the return of the bad old days under
Tory rule because they themselves have never experienced such a period.

Nor should we forget that in each general election the Conservative
Party wins a substantial share of the working-class vote. Even in
the catastrophe of 1945 the Conservatives estimate they won between
4,000,000 and 4,500,000 votes among manual workers. In 1951 about
6,000,000 electors of this group voted Tory. Of course the vote for
Labor rose too: it is estimated that in the general election of that
year 52 per cent of the working class voted for Labor. But Labor was
defeated by the coalition of middle-class and working-class votes for
the Tories.

Nonetheless, the Tories continue to gain in the areas where the new
working class has reached a new economic status. In 1945 the Labor
Party won Chislehurst in Kent, normally a safe Conservative seat. The
influx of working-class voters was the principal cause. Ten years later
Chislehurst was safely back on the Conservative side.

The Conservative Party is thus faced with a difficult question. Like
all major parties, it is a coalition of various economic and social
interests. In the last decade a new interest, that of the working
class, has become vital to the party. But the Conservative government's
efforts to meet the wishes of that group, particularly its insistence
on the continuation of the Welfare State, clashes directly with the
interests of the old middle class, which has suffered a loss of social
prestige, economic standing, and political influence at the hands of
the working class.

The rebellion among Conservative voters of the middle class against
the government's policies, reflected in their refusal to vote in
by-elections, cannot go unchecked without damaging the Conservatives.
That this is fully realized by the party leaders was shown by the
warnings they gave the Tories against seduction by political groups of
the extreme right.

What kind of people are the new working class? You will not find them
portrayed in the novels of Angela Thirkell or, indeed, any other
English novelist popular in America. But veterans of World War II may
recognize them as the slightly older brothers of the British soldier
they knew in Africa, Italy, and France.

They are not at all reserved; reserve is the province of the
upper-middle-class Briton. They are friendly, incurious, and polite.
For the first time in history they are satisfied with themselves and
with their lot.

I mention this as a curiosity. When I first went to England to work
before the war I was struck by the powerful interest shown in the
United States. An American in a working-class pub was bombarded by
queries about the organization of the unions, John L. Lewis, the
absence of a labor party in the United States politics, the techniques
of mass production in industry. The young men were eager to know and
anxious to improve.

Today one encounters the same politeness but less interest. After the
preliminary and obligatory question about the "Yank corporal" named
Jackson who lives in Chicago and do you know him, the talk is likely to
trail off into inconsequentials. The English, as opposed to the Scots,
Welsh, and Irish, are a people notably difficult to arouse and, equally
important, difficult to quiet once they are aroused. But in recent
years the pubs have been quiet. The new working class has what it and
its predecessors wanted. It is not excited either by the prospect of
Tory rule or by the infiltration of the British Communists into the
union structure.

It would be aroused, however, by any policy that appeared to endanger
its new position. That is certain. And consequently both major parties
will be circumspect in their approach to the new class.

Socially, the new class is modern. Increasingly it is making use of
new techniques in living which were out of the economic range of its
fathers and mothers. The old family life built around the kitchen and
the pot of tea on the stove has been replaced by one built around the
television set.

For the first time in their lives the young people of the New Towns
and the housing estates have enough room in their homes to plan and
build. The three-piece bedroom suite is as important as the television
set as an indication of economic status. The "do it yourself" craze
that swept the United States did not "catch on" among the working class
in Britain for the simple reason that its members had always done it
themselves. A great deal of the painting and decoration and some of the
furniture-making is done by the man of the house in his spare time.

The class is not notably religious. The Catholics and the Methodists
support their churches, but the response to other faiths is not
ardent. The British are not "a pagan people," as some critics have
charged, but there certainly is little enthusiasm for conventional
religious forms.

The working class is a definable class. Thus it takes its place in the
graduated ranks of British society. Within the class, however, there
is very little snobbery. I have mentioned one instance: the resentment
of the dwellers in the New Towns when they are classed with the people
of the housing estates. But in a community in which all the men work
in the same or similar factories and in which everyone knows almost to
the penny what everyone else makes, pretense of economic superiority is
difficult.

Here is the new British workingman. He moved to a New Town or a housing
estate from a slum or near-slum. If he is in his late thirties or
forties, he fought in the war and his wife knows more about the effect
of high explosives, flying bombs, and rockets than most generals. He
is living in what is to him comparative luxury: a living room, a clean
and, by British standards, modern kitchen, a bedroom for the children,
a modern bath and toilet. He can walk or cycle to his work, and if the
weather is fine, he comes home for lunch. In the evening there is "the
telly" or the football-pool form to be filled out or the new desk he
is making for the children's room. Some two or three times a week he
drops in at the "local," the neighborhood pub or bar, for a few drinks
with friends from the factory. Even here his habits are changing.
The actually potent "mild and bitter" or "old and mild" that was his
father's tipple has been replaced by light ale--"nasty gassy stuff" the
old-fashioned barmaids report.

It is a quiet life but to our subject a satisfactory one. He reads the
_Daily Mirror_ rather than the _Daily Herald_, which was his father's
Bible, but he is only occasionally aroused by international problems.
He did get excited about the idea of arming "those bloody Germans," but
when the leaders of both the Conservative and Labor parties accepted
the necessity he went along with German rearmament. But he was never
particularly happy about it. In general, however, he is not interested
in world affairs. There are one or two fellows at "the works," he
will tell you, who get excited about China or Suez or Cyprus. Here it
should be noted that he is more nationalist than internationalist. He
doesn't like it when British soldiers are killed by the bombs of Greek
Cypriotes, chiefly because the Army is no longer a professional force
but one composed largely of conscripts of National Service. Young Tom
from down the street, a nice lad, has gone out there with the Green
Howards.

There he is: content, complete, complacent. His contacts with the rest
of the world, British or foreign, are limited, and this is especially
true of his contacts with the old middle class.

The old middle class itself is intensely interested in this new kind
of working class. Partly this is true because the new class is blamed
for many of the reverses that have fallen upon the middle class. Partly
it is because of political spite. Partly it is jealousy. Whatever the
dominant reason, the feeling is there, and the middle class, harking
back to the first Socialist boasts in 1945 about remaking bourgeois
Britain, will tell you: "They started it."

This class (here we are talking about the professional men, civil
servants, Army, Navy, and Air Force officers, the higher but not the
highest ranks of business and industry, the clergy of the Church of
England, and the retired pensioners of these groups) fights hard to
resist the uniformity that the last fifteen years have imposed upon it.
It finds itself unable to organize to win higher salaries, and it knows
that the taxation of the last decade has closed the gap between it and
the new class of industrial workers. Finally, its more intelligent
members are aware that it too is being challenged from within--that
there is arising in its ranks a new group which from the economic
standpoint can claim to be middle class but which has very little in
common now, socially or politically, with the old middle class. Yet,
as both groups claim a certain superiority over the class of manual
workers, it is safe to predict that the two groups will unite and
make common cause in defense of their standards. Interestingly, this
is already happening in the field of education, where the sons of the
physicists, engineers, and scientists who are among the leaders of the
new middle class are going to the public schools that were one of the
solid foundations of the old middle class.

Such schools, incidentally, are one of the bones of contention between
the political leaders of the Labor Party, which represents the majority
of the working class, and the old middle class. This class has pressed
the Exchequer for a tax allowance for public schools--i.e., private
education. The Socialists replied that such an allowance would be a
private subsidy to a system that spreads inequality. To this the Tories
of the old middle class retorted that part of the British freedom was
the right of the parent to decide how and where his child was to be
educated. They added a reminder that if the new working class were to
save a bit on installment payments for television sets and the football
pools, it too could send its sons to public schools. The answer, of
course, is that the new working class cares little for schools, public
or national.

The change in the composition of the middle class brought about
by the introduction of new members reflects a change in Britain's
industrial life and, to some extent, her position in the world. The
administrators, managers, and technicians of the new industries such
as plastics and electronics, the leaders in the newspaper, television,
radio, and movie industries are becoming as important as the lawyers,
judges, general officers, retired pro-consuls who once led the class.
Just below these leaders is a steadily increasing group of newcomers
to the class who have worked their way out of the working class since
the war. Industrial designers and chemists, buyers, advertising men,
production engineers--all these have come to the top.

This group reflects modern Britain and her problems. The colonial
governor is less important to it than the expert on foreign markets.
The scientist is infinitely more necessary to the country's progress
than the soldier.

There is an important difference in income between the new entries into
the middle class and the professional men who formed its backbone in
the past. On the whole, the incomes of the new group are a good deal
higher. It is engaged, for the most part, in industries, businesses, or
quasi-public organizations that are expanding. Moreover, many of its
members augment their incomes with expense accounts.

But these differences in types of activity and in income are only the
beginning of the differences between the two segments of the middle
class.

Many members of the new group have just arrived, pushed to the top by
the necessities of war or of Britain's long economic struggle. The
percentage of public-school graduates is lower than in the established
middle class. Attention to that class's recognized totems is much
less. The new group is less concerned with the Church of England, the
Army and the Navy--the Air Force and the production of new weapons
are, however, its special province--the Foreign Office and active
politics. These it has left largely to the established middle class,
and frequently the interests of the two groups clash. For example, the
conflict within government between the traditionalist view of the Navy
as vital to Britain's defense and the view that all that matters is the
big bomber today and the intercontinental ballistic missile tomorrow is
essentially a clash between two groups in the same class.

The new group is not primarily managerial, although managers make up a
considerable percentage of its total. It includes a great many creative
workers, architects, scientists and engineers, and a surprisingly high
percentage of men who have risen without the aid of the Old School Tie.

The group has had less education and less leisure than the old middle
class, and, consequently, its approach to culture is different. Its
interest in the arts is limited, its taste in literature tends toward
Nevil Shute rather than Thackeray. But it has a furious curiosity about
Britain and the world: it devours magazine articles and books. Like
the new working class, it has reached income levels that seemed out of
sight fifteen years ago, but, unlike the new working class, it is not
content to rest in its present position. For it knows enough of the
world and the country to doubt that the present security is enough.

The middle class in Britain over the centuries has developed a
marvelous capacity for altering while maintaining roughly the same
façade. This process is going on now. The sons of the new group within
the middle class are going off to public schools and Oxford and
Cambridge rather than to state schools and the red brick provincial
universities that trained their fathers. But because this group has an
abiding interest in technical education, its members are anxious for
the spread of such education in the old classical schools.

It should be noted that the trend toward the public schools and the
great universities is not due entirely to snobbery. As an industrial
engineer told me, "That's still the best education in the country,
and my son's going to have it." He himself was the product of a state
school and a provincial university. Obviously he enjoyed talking about
his boy's public school.

Consequently, the two groups within the middle class are mixing slowly.
But the old middle class is on the defensive; its standards are not
those of the new group, and with the continued rise of the new group
this defensiveness probably will remain. As Britain's world political
and military responsibilities decline, the men and women charged
with overseeing her new position as an exporting nation--in which
salesmanship and industrial techniques are paramount--will find their
importance increasing.

Once again we find a new group that, like the new kind of working
class, has very little to do with Merrie England. Its roots are less
deep. It is not intimately concerned with the institutions that the old
middle class served. In its outlook toward the world it is much more
realistic and modern. Yet it is gradually assuming the forms of the old
middle class--the schools, the regiments, the clubs. These institutions
inevitably will change as a result of the admission of the new group.
However, if the outward form remains unchanged, the British will be
content.

Politically the new group within the middle class began its adult
life well to the left of center. In the ten years since the war it
has gradually shifted to the right. Young Conservative ministers like
Iain Macleod and Reginald Maudling represent the ideas of the group,
although they themselves are not of it. In general, the group admires
tidy planning and crisp execution in government. Its shift away from
Socialism probably began when many of its members realized that the
execution of Labor's economic plans left a good deal to be desired and
that some of the party's radicals were cheerfully advocating other
plans--the further extension of nationalization, for instance--that
might wreck an already delicately balanced economy. But the new
group's support of the Conservative Party is far removed from the
bred-in-the-bone, true-blue Conservatism of the old middle class. It
is on the right at the moment because the Tories offer the greatest
opportunity to the activities it represents.

The old middle class, based mainly on the professions and government
service, is thus under pressure from the new middle class and from the
new working class. Its importance in British society is diminishing
because the former has a closer connection with what is immediately
important to Britain's survival and because the latter will no longer
accept leadership by the old middle class. It is important to note,
however, that the ties between the new middle class and the new
working class are more substantial. Many of the new middle class have
risen from the urban working class in a generation. In regard to the
technical aspects of industry, the two groups speak the same language.

The influence retained by the old middle class should not be
underestimated, however. Especially in the countryside the lawyer,
the vicar, the retired officer who is the local Justice of the
Peace continue to wield considerable authority. And in clinging to
traditional forms through two wars and the long night of austerity, the
middle class has demonstrated its essential toughness.

The old middle class still reads _The Times_ of London, that great
newspaper, although you are liable to be informed in country
drawing-rooms that _The Times_ is "a bit Bolshie nowadays."

The forms and felicities of British life are encouraged and supported
by the old middle class. The Church of England, the local Conservative
Party fete, the gymkhana, the voluntary social services, the Old
Comrades Associations of regiments owe their continued life to
unstinting aid from the men and women of this class. It has had its
periods of blindness (Munich was one), but it has never doubted where
duty lay. When the war began in 1939--or, as its members would say,
"when the balloon went up"--it sent away its sons and daughters and
settled down to man the Home Guard and the civil-defense services. It
suffered bombing and austerity, but it made certain that when the boys
and girls came home there was a dance at the yacht club--some Polish
sailors lived there during the war, and everyone pitched in to put it
back in shape--and all the food the rationing would allow.

The positive characteristics of this class are impressive: its
courage, its desire that each generation have a wider education and
a greater opportunity, its cool calmness in the face of danger, its
willingness to accept as a duty the responsibility for the lives of
untaught millions living in famine and poverty and to labor for their
welfare, its acceptance of the conviction of duty well done as the
suitable reward for a lifetime of work. To me these seem to outweigh
the pettiness, the snobbery, the overbearing self-confidence. No nation
can do without such positive characteristics, and it will be a sorry
day for Britain if the change in the middle class eliminates their
influence on the country.

We Americans are fond of thinking of Britain as a settled, caste-ridden
society. But at least two groups, the new middle class and the
resettled working class, are on the move or have just moved into a new
status, politically, economically, and socially. Moreover, one large
class, the middle class, is in the process of changing. British society
is much more mobile than it appears from the outside because of the
Britons' desire to retain traditional forms while the substance changes.

As these changes take place, the value of many old indications of class
change also. Accent remains one of the easiest methods for placing
a Briton, but it is no longer an infallible guide. The effect of the
BBC upon British speech has been considerable, and today the clerk in
an obscure provincial shop may talk, if not in the accents of Eton,
at least in a pleasant voice that reveals only a trace of provincial
accent. The disappearance of old robust provincial accents would be a
loss. And an acute ear in London can still, like Shaw's Professor Henry
Higgins, place a Londoner in Wimbledon or Barnes or Stepney. It is the
conviction of many Socialists that equality will never reign in Britain
until there is a universal accent.

Clothes, too, are a much more accurate indication of class in Britain
than in the United States. The derby or bowler is the almost universal
headgear of the upper-class male in the city, with the cap for the
country. The workingman affects a soft hat, sometimes a Homburg and
often a cloth cap. The mass production of clothing came later in
Britain than in the United States, but today the miner can be as warmly
clothed as the banker. The difference lies in the styling given the
banker's clothes by his London tailor. Then, too, the banker may be
far more negligent in his dress than the miner: it is a mistake, if
not a crime, in Britain for a member of the upper class to be too well
dressed.

Nancy Mitford and Professor Alan Ross have made Americans aware of the
infinite variations of U (upper-class) and Non-U (non-upper-class)
phraseology in Britain, but many of the distinctions so carefully
drawn are changing. A young lady of my acquaintance habitually uses
"serviette" instead of "napkin," a crime Miss Mitford ranks just
below arson and beating an old woman with a stick. As she goes to an
expensive and very U school, the young lady was queried about her
choice of words. No one, she reported, had ever heard of Miss Mitford
at her school, and what did it matter anyhow?

There has been no mention of the aristocracy in this long chapter,
which will probably offend readers whose views on Britain have been
formed by the Merrie England school of writing. The fact is that the
aristocracy does not rate a great deal of space in a book dealing with
modern Britain.

The real aristocracy of Britain was composed of the great landowning
families whose power began to decline with the rise, at the start
of the nineteenth century, of the great industrial and commercial
families. The remaining British servants of the old school--the best
judges extant of who is and who is not an aristocrat--are inclined
to look down their noses at the pretensions of Johnny-come-latelies
who earned their titles by services, usually financial, to political
parties, or by the proprietorship of chain stores. To them the people
who count are the old families and the old names--Derby, Norfolk,
Salisbury.

Inheritance taxes, the import of foreign foodstuffs, reckless spending
all contributed to the reduction of the aristocracy's position. One
reason why the institution of monarchy is supported by most and
tolerated by some Socialists is that the Crown does not command the
immediate allegiance of a large, influential, and moneyed aristocracy.
There is no court party between the Crown and the people. The rulers
of Britain have become progressively more popular with the common man
as the influence of the real aristocracy declined. Of course, that
influence has been exerted in a different way. Two recent Conservative
Prime Ministers have been of aristocratic birth. Sir Winston Churchill
was born the grandson of a duke; he was offered a dukedom on his
retirement in 1955 and characteristically refused it. Sir Anthony Eden
comes of an aristocratic North Country family one of whose members was
a colonial governor in Maryland. They headed a Conservative Party that
was middle class rather than aristocratic.

A few members of the old aristocracy strive to continue life as their
fathers and grandfathers knew it, but they fight a losing battle. The
opening of the great country houses to the public, the most desperate
expedients to cut down spending so that the heir can enter the Guards
and the daughter enjoy a proper introduction to London society cannot
compensate for the taxation and for the changes in the character of
British society and in the world.

The aristocracy, the real aristocracy, makes its presence felt in
modern Britain only when such men as Lord Salisbury or Lord Mountbatten
leave the peaceful countryside and contend with the active body of
Britons.

The moment of a significant decline in the aristocracy's position has
seen a gallant defense of it in literature. Both Miss Mitford and
Evelyn Waugh have expounded its virtues of courage and responsibility
in war. The "damn your eyes, follow me, I'm going to do what's right"
idea always appeals powerfully to those who reject thinking for
themselves. It is easy for an author to poke fun at the sober civil
servant or the earnest trade-unionist dropping his _h_'s, but in modern
Britain they are far more important than Lord Fortinbras.

For, as we have seen, this is a society in the throes of change. New
groups are rising to the top just as, and frequently because, Britain's
survival demands new habits, new enterprises. Individual members of
the declining classes who adapt themselves to the changing times will
survive. Lord Salisbury, bearer of an ancient name, presides over
Britain's entry into the age of nuclear fission. But those who cannot
adapt will slowly disappear.

In all this change there is strength. Britain's hope for the future
lies in her ability, proven in the past, to change to meet new
conditions. The nation that has emerged since 1945 is the product of
greater changes than Britain has ever known. There are weak spots--the
lack of individual enterprise on the part of the working class is
certainly one. But the changes so bitterly resented by many are the
best reason for optimism concerning Britain's destiny in this century's
struggle with totalitarian powers.




[Illustration]




VIII. _The British and the World_

  _The tumult and the shouting dies;
  The Captains and the Kings depart._

  RUDYARD KIPLING

 _We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies; our interests are
 eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow._

  LORD PALMERSTON

[Illustration]


More than any other Western European nation, Britain has been
involved in mankind. Geography placed these islands on one of the
main routes between the Old World and the New. Ambition, avarice, and
absent-mindedness combined to create the greatest of modern empires.
Knaves and heroes, sinners and saints, fools and wise men took the
blunt Saxon tongue across the snarling seas and into silent jungles.
Now the Empire nears its end. But the drain of two world wars and the
changes in the world make it more vital than ever to Britain that she
remain a leader of international intercourse--a trader, a diplomat, a
financial clearing-house for much of the world.

In discussing Britain's relations and attitudes toward other peoples,
the whole field of international relations and diplomacy, we enter an
area in which the British feel they are experts. This is a view hotly
opposed by the piously patriotic operatives of the U.S. Department
of State, but perhaps there is something behind the complacent
British assumption. It is difficult otherwise to understand how this
comparatively small island people built a world empire and held it
despite the attempts of some of the greatest conquerors of modern times
to seize it.

One of the most interesting contrasts in British life is that between
the nation's world-wide interests and responsibilities and the strong
strain of xenophobia in the national character. "Niggers begin at
Calais" is only one expression of the Englishman's dislike for all
foreigners, Froggies, Eyeties, Boches, and Russkis. I remember a slight
shock at hearing one of the most eminent of British statesmen ask
what "the Froggies" were up to. Similarly, the British working class,
supposedly friendly to its comrades in other lands, has been remarkably
cool toward inclusion of Polish or Hungarian refugees in its ranks.

There is a strong strain of isolationism in Britain. Usually dormant,
it flowered late in 1956 after condemnation of the United Kingdom by
the United States and other members of the United Nations. In periods
of crisis the British have often been alone. In 1940 the surrender of
France left the British without a major European ally. Physically this
was a grievous blow. Psychologically it rallied the people. In the
past there has been considerable agitation in British politics against
imperialism. Overseas investment and new export markets in overseas
colonies made imperialism important. But the "Little Englanders"
persist. Their heir is the man who wants the British government to get
out of the United Nations, NATO, SEATO, and the rest, and concentrate
on Britain.

Britain's relations with the rest of the world are most important to
us in the United States in six major areas: the Soviet Union and the
Communist satellites in Eastern Europe; Communist China; Western
Europe; the Middle East; and, lastly and most important, the United
States.

Few aspects of Britain's position in the world are as little understood
in the United States as relations between the Commonwealth and the
mother country. This is a failing that irritates the British. "Do you
know what they asked me in Chicago?" a British author said. "They asked
me why we didn't stop taxing the Canadians to buy jewels for the Queen!"

Ignorance is not confined to the United States. One British diplomat
who had dealt with Russian diplomats and officials for years reported
that it was not until the summit conference at Geneva in the summer of
1955 that the Russians showed any glimmering of understanding of what
the Commonwealth was and how it worked.

The Commonwealth evolved from the Empire. Its original members were
the older colonies settled by Britons and Europeans: Australia, New
Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Its newer members are Asian or
African peoples whose countries were parts of the Empire and are
now sovereign within the Commonwealth; these include India, Ceylon,
Pakistan, and Ghana. It is a matter of fact that in the years since
1945, while the supposedly anti-imperialist Russians have been
establishing the rule of the red star over 100,000,000 souls, the
British have created out of their Empire sovereign states with
populations of over 500,000,000.

The Commonwealth is not "run" by anyone. But Britain, as the mother
country, as the source of political forms and constitutional ideas,
financial support and industrial exports, can claim to be the first
among equals. The ties that bind the members of the Commonwealth to
Britain vary in strength. And the ties between such Commonwealth
members as South Africa and India are virtually nonexistent. The common
purpose of preserving peace and the necessity of discussing common
problems bring the leaders of the Commonwealth together in London
periodically for conferences.

Despite the absence of a central ruling power, the system works fairly
well. In Britain and among the older members of the Commonwealth there
is a strong loyalty, almost a reverence, for the idea. The political
orators who describe the Commonwealth as "a great force for peace and
civilization" are speaking to a responsive audience. Because there is
no central power, Americans are prone to doubt the strength of the ties
that connect the nations. But it may be that today the very absence of
such a power strengthens the Commonwealth.

Strong economic links exist between the United Kingdom and the members
of the Commonwealth. As a basis there is the sterling area, in which
all the Commonwealth countries except Canada are joined with Burma,
Iceland, Iraq, the British Protected States in the Persian Gulf, the
Irish Republic, Jordan, and Libya. These countries contain one quarter
of the world's population and do one quarter of its trade.

Membership in the sterling area or sterling bloc, as it is sometimes
called, means that the greater part of the overseas trade of member
countries is financed in sterling. The members maintain their foreign
reserves largely in the form of sterling and maintain a fixed
relationship between their own currencies and sterling. For the most
part, they sell their earnings in foreign currency to the United
Kingdom Exchange Equalization Account for sterling, and they can
purchase for sterling such foreign currency as they need. The members
also sell gold in the London market for sterling, and the United
Kingdom's purchases of gold are held in the Exchange Equalization
Account. The gold and dollars in this account constitute the central
gold and dollar reserves of the sterling area.

The sterling area thus is an important means of maintaining Britain's
position as the banker of the Commonwealth and as the center of
financial transactions. It is also one of the chief markets for
British exports, taking roughly half of Britain's export total. Of
the Commonwealth countries, Australia is by far the biggest buyer. In
1955 Australia bought from Britain goods valued at £286,400,000, or
about $801,920,000--just under 10 per cent of Britain's total export
trade. Four of the five next biggest buyers of British goods were
also Commonwealth nations: South Africa, third; Canada, fourth; New
Zealand, fifth; India, sixth. The United States was the second-largest
purchaser, taking 6.6 per cent of Britain's total exports.

Britain, of course, buys extensively within the Commonwealth. In
the same year she imported goods valued at £1,888,200,000, or about
$5,286,960,000, from the Commonwealth and the Irish Republic. This
amounted to over half of Britain's total imports.

There are numerous irritations and imperfections in the conduct of this
great world trading concern. The Australians and New Zealanders, for
instance, complain often that British capital shies from investment in
their countries.

The huge British investments for the development of countries overseas
were among the most damaging losses in two world wars. As the nation
slowly recovered its economic health in the post-war years, overseas
investment was encouraged by successive governments. Many Commonwealth
officials say that, although private borrowing for development has been
encouraged, much more could be done.

The Capital Issues Committee, an independent group of seven men
experienced in finance, commerce, and industry, approved in 1953 to
applications for the investment of £40,000,000, or about $112,000,000,
for Commonwealth development. The next year the figure rose to
£48,000,000, or about $134,000,000. Compare this with the annual
net investment overseas of about $504,000,000 in the years 1951-3.
Evidently the Australians and New Zealanders have cause for complaint.

In contrast to commercial ties that transform credit in London into new
factories in western Australia, there is the emotional tie mentioned
earlier. The Crown's mysterious power to draw peoples as dissimilar as
the Australian cattleman and the Brighton clerk into a community of
patriotic loyalty cannot be denied. Whether in the next decade or so
the same sort of connection can be established between the Crown and
such sensitive newer members of the Commonwealth as India and Ceylon is
one of the most delicate questions facing British statecraft.

A host of other institutions--some official, others the work of private
individuals captured by the Commonwealth conception--strive to keep
the relations between Britain and the Commonwealth countries happy and
firm. In such dissimilar fields as the theater, literature, and sport
there is much more contact among the countries of the Commonwealth and
Empire than Americans realize. A British rugby football team tours
Australia or South Africa, a West Indian cricket team visits Britain.
British theatrical companies still make the long but financially
rewarding trip to play in Australia and New Zealand. British authors
tirelessly roam the provinces of Canada or India, discoursing at length
upon the merits of the mother tongue and its literature.

Many young Conservative Members of Parliament are convinced that the
Commonwealth is the great twentieth-century instrument for maintaining
and extending British prestige. They see it expanded from its present
form to include the Scandinavian countries and others in a world
confederation that will be not _a_ third force in the world but _the_
third force. They do not, however, discount the problems that plague
the Commonwealth now.

An economic problem is the filtration of American capital into the
Commonwealth. The British recognize the enormous potential of American
overseas investment, and they wonder what would happen to their
position in a Commonwealth country where the United States invested
heavily and purchased products with a free hand. The knowledge that the
United States could, if it wished, literally buy out the Commonwealth
is a patriotic incentive for greater British investment.

Two political problems are South Africa and Ceylon.

The National Party in South Africa is moving toward the establishment
of a republic and the progressive weakening of political and economic
ties with Britain. Complete independence of the Crown and the
Commonwealth probably is the ultimate South African aim. This would be
a grievous blow to the strength, both economic and political, of the
Commonwealth.

Ceylon has shown signs of moving in the same direction. One of the
first actions of the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the leader of
the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was to ask the British to leave the great
naval base at Trincomalee. This was a severe shock to the British and a
damaging blow to the position of the Western world in the Indian Ocean.
At the subsequent Commonwealth Conference an agreement that allowed the
British to remain temporarily was negotiated. But the restlessness of
Ceylon within the Commonwealth and the desire of many of its leading
politicians to divest themselves of all connections, cultural as well
as political, with the British are a bad omen for the future.

The British attitude toward the Commonwealth and Empire is a curious
mixture of indifference and interest, snobbery and friendship,
ignorance and knowledge. But the general approach has improved greatly
since before the war. The British know they need their friends and
markets overseas, and the old brusque approach to Commonwealth and
Empire problems has changed.

So has the social attitude. Not long before the war an elderly
and aristocratic lady told me she always "considered Americans as
colonials." She thought she had paid us a compliment. Today such a
remark would not be made.

The idea of a world-wide Commonwealth is imaginative and attractive.
But the efforts to sell it to the people of Britain, with the exception
of the almost daily exhortations of Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers, are
depressingly feeble. The English Speaking Union and other organizations
are devoted to the cause of strengthening Commonwealth relations, but
such organizations usually preach to the converted. The great mass of
public opinion has yet to be stirred. The British of all classes are
much more likely to be moved by events in France than by events in
Canada or Nigeria.

"They certainly have a different idea of dealing with the Russians
here," said the young wife of an American diplomat in 1954. "Why, they
have track meets with Russians running in them, and they talk about
how they're going to get the Russians to agree to this or that. Folks
at home think all the Russians have horns and tails."

She was describing the British ability to live with a problem while
thoroughly understanding its dimensions and dangers. Since 1945 the
leaders of Britain, Socialist and Tory alike, have been fully aware of
the dangers to Western freedom of Russian Communist imperialism. This
statement may evoke criticism from some stout Republicans who regard
the British Labor Party as an offspring of the Communist Party. But the
facts are that it was a Labor government that sent troops to Korea,
that carried on a long and successful campaign against the Communists
in Malaya, that joined the Royal Air Force with the United States Air
Force to build the air bridge that broke the Berlin blockade, and that
passed what was then the largest peacetime armaments bill in British
history. All these measures were part of the general effort to bolster
the defenses of Western Europe against Soviet aggression.

These exertions were a severe burden on a country whose economy was
already in difficulties and whose resources were strained. They were
undertaken because they matched the resolution of the leaders of the
Labor Party. They were heartily endorsed by the Conservative Party,
then in opposition, and were continued by that party when it came to
power in 1951.

The point of difference between the British and Americans was that at
the height of the cold war the British never moved toward abandonment
of normal diplomatic intercourse and welcomed any move by either side
which promised closer contact and friendlier relations with the Soviet
Union.

Socialist and Tory governments pursued this dichotomy in policy with
almost complete freedom from political interference. The British, an
island people dependent on international trade, strive in any crisis
to maintain communications with their enemies and thus retain a means
through which negotiations can be carried out. They will go to great,
often shaming lengths to avoid war. Once it comes, they wage it with
earnest intensity and fight it to the end.

In periods of danger such as followed the influx of Soviet power in
Europe, British politicians usually assume a bipartisan attitude. This
does not mean that the opposition of the time refrains from criticism
of the government policy. It does mean that opposition speakers
use restraint. During the period of maximum strain with Russia, no
politician shrilled a warning against talking with the Russians
about Berlin or Korea, or predicted that the admission of Russian
high-jumpers to a track meet would undermine the nation. The British
never gave up on the situation; they did not like it, but they thought
that any means of finding a way out should be used.

This was, as I have noted, a period of danger. The bipartisan approach
broke down completely over Suez. When Sir Anthony Eden ordered
intervention in Egypt the danger was real but indistinct. It was also
a long-term economic danger arising from threat to the country's oil
supplies rather than the immediate military danger represented by
the Soviet Union's military strength in East Germany and elsewhere
in Central Europe accompanied by Russian diplomacy and subversion.
Russian military power already had won its foothold in Egypt. But the
Labor Party refused to regard this power as an immediate threat and
consequently rejected it as a reason for the adoption of a bipartisan
approach.

The British people have never been so violently anti-Russian as
the Americans. There is a distinction between anti-Russian and
anti-Communist. Communism has had few more bitter opponents than
Ernest Bevin or Herbert Morrison, two leaders in the post-war Labor
government. They represented elements of the movement which for decades
had been fighting in the unions and in the constituency parties to
prevent the Communists from winning control of the Trades Union
Congress and the Labor Party. But neither the leaders nor the led could
be called anti-Russian.

The war alliance with the Soviet Union meant far more to Britons than
the military co-operation between the Soviet Union and the United
States during the same period meant to Americans. The British attitude
was rooted in the situation of June 1941 when the Germans turned east
and attacked the Soviet Union.

The British had then been fighting the Germans and the Italians
single-handed for a year. Their cities had been bombed, their armies
and navies grievously punished in France, Norway, Libya, and Greece.
Each month the German submarines in the North Atlantic were bolder
and more numerous and the toll of shipping losses was higher. Most
Britons knew they had stout friends in the United States, but the wiser
also recognized the strength of isolationist sentiment. And, although
American industrial mobilization was gaining momentum, that would not
avert another Coventry tonight or another Dunkirk tomorrow.

Suddenly all this altered. Russia, which had sided with Germany for two
years and had gobbled up parts of Finland, Poland, and Romania as her
reward, was invaded. Overnight the British became willing to overlook
the despicable role Russia had played in the first two years of the
war. Here, at last, was an ally. An ally, moreover, that fought, that
was undergoing the same punishment Britain had known.

Naturally this warm admiration for the Russian war effort and this
sympathy for the Russian people offered an opportunity for the British
Communists, who exploited it to the utmost. Propaganda from the Soviet
Union portrayed life there in glowing terms. The British working class
was informed that this was a working-class war--a few months earlier
the Communists had been calling it a capitalist war--and that side by
side the British and Russian "brothers" would fight it to a successful
conclusion.

The propaganda would not have made much headway, however, had it not
been for the basic strain of admiration and sympathy which existed.
The decade of cold war which included the rape of Czechoslovakia, the
Berlin blockade, and the Korean war obviously altered the British
working-class attitude toward Russia. But some of the old wartime
feeling remained. It is there yet in the minds of the working class,
tucked behind the football scores and the racing tips: the Russians
didn't let us down, they went on fighting, they must be like us, they
can't want another war.

The changes in Soviet leadership and tactics since the death of Stalin
have affected the British approach to Russia and Communism. In Britain,
as elsewhere, the immediate danger has receded. The East is slowly
opening up. This means a great deal more to Britain than to the United
States.

Trade is the answer. The British want to expand their trade with the
Soviet Union and with China. Again, as in their diplomatic relations,
this does not mean that they approve of Communism in either country.
But they live by trade, and they must take it wherever they find it.
To British industrialists and British ministers the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe represent a market for industrial products and a
possible source of raw materials. However, they are wary of Russian
methods of business. The initial approach has been circumspect. The
British do not wish to throw everything onto one market; they would
infinitely prefer an expansion of trade with the United States. Nor
will they sell to the Soviet Union one or two models of each type which
the industrious Russians can then mass-produce for themselves. Finally,
although Britain and other European nations are restive under embargo
restrictions on the sale of certain strategic goods, the Conservative
government has no intention of breaking these restrictions under the
encouragement of Mr. Khrushchev's smile.

The visits to Britain of a succession of delegations from the Soviet
government and of three top-ranking ministers--Nikita Khrushchev, First
Secretary of the Communist Party, Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and Deputy
Premier Georgi Malenkov--fanned British interest if not enthusiasm.

Much has been written about the effect of these visits on the British
public. Indeed, the faint hearts in Congress seemed to think that they
would result in the immediate establishment of a Communist regime in
Britain. But it appeared to many who had frequent contacts with "Krush
and Bulge," as the British called them, that the greatest effect
of the visit was on the Russians themselves. Like Malenkov before
them, the Communist boss and the head of the government encountered a
prosperous, vigorous democracy. To anyone accustomed to the crudity and
ugliness that express Russia's raw strength, industrial Britain was a
revelation. Here were huge, new, clean factories set in the midst of
comfortable towns enclosed by green fields and parks.

"We'll have all this one day in Russia," Khrushchev said to one of his
hosts. "But it takes time."

The British poured out to see the visitors. But it was symptomatic
of the maturity of public opinion that in London and the other great
cities, the Communists failed to generate any wild enthusiasm for the
Soviet leaders. On the contrary, they were met in most cases with
stolid, disapproving silence interspersed by volleys of boos.

Yet because the British were never so excited about the possibility
of war with the Soviet Union as were the Americans, there is and will
be in Britain greater willingness to accept the Russians at their own
valuation. Also, the British working class is far more interested in
the Soviet Union than American labor is.

To the American workingman there is nothing especially novel in
the description of huge enterprises breaking new ground in virgin
territory. Americans have been doing that sort of thing for a century.
But to the Briton, accustomed to an economy severely circumscribed by
the geographical limitations of his island, these Soviet enterprises
have the fascination of the unknown. So he marvels over the pictures
and the text in the magazines issued by the Russian and satellite
governments.

This propaganda is intended, naturally, to divert the reader's mind
from the innumerable cruelties that have accompanied the building
of the Soviet state by impressing him with a glowing account of the
results. Here, as elsewhere, the Russians underestimate their critics,
of whom the British workingman is one. People do not easily forget
cruelty, even if it has not been practiced on them.

"Certainly, I'm a trades-union man _and_ a good socialist," a printer
said to me during the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit. "That's why I 'ate
these bleeders. What they've done to the unions in Russia wants talking
abaht, chum. Know what I 'ates most about them? It's them arsing around
our country with a lot of coppers with them, the bleeders. We don't
want none of that 'ere."

Finally, we come to a factor of great importance in molding British
attitudes toward the Soviet Union. This is the large group of teachers,
writers, editors, movie-directors, and radio and television workers who
have been powerfully influenced either by Communism or by the results
of a Communist society in the Soviet Union. Proportionately, this group
is larger than its counterpart in the United States. It has never been
drastically reduced in numbers by the pressure of public opinion.
Outside of the "sensitive" departments of government, no great stigma
is attached to membership in the Communist Party in Britain.

Politically, Britain is deeply and justly concerned with the liberties
of the subject. Consequently, any discrimination by the government
against Communists evokes the wrath of politicians and public bodies
unconnected with Communism. This is true even when the government seeks
to eliminate a known Communist from a "sensitive" department. The
question is not whether Communism threatens Britain. The British know
that it does, and they are prepared to fight it. But Britain's place
in world society, it is reasoned, would be threatened even more if the
liberties of the subject were endangered. The view that only a truly
free society is capable of defeating Communism transcends party lines
in Britain.

It is important to remember that the powerful influence of Communism
on this heterogeneous group has affected it in two ways. Such people
as Malcolm Muggeridge, the editor of _Punch_, were once sympathetic to
Communism and are now among its best-informed and sharpest critics. In
Britain, as in the United States, there are apostates who have turned
from Communism and who now attack it. But their attacks, though often
brilliant, command less attention in Britain than in the United States.
This may be because the British never were so excited about the cold
war as we were in the United States (after all, they were grappling
with pressing economic problems). It may be because the British have
scant respect for those who betray causes and then make money out of it.

On the whole, however, the group influenced by the Soviet Union exerts
its influence to create friendlier relations between Britain and the
Soviet Union. In its attitude toward the United States this group is
sensitive, critical, and quite often abysmally ignorant.

The virtues and defects of the Soviet Union and the United States
thus are weighed in public by an influential group that has already
been tremendously impressed either by communism as a political creed
or by the industrial, military, or diplomatic achievements of the
Soviet state. They are receptive to news of Russia and, in many cases,
remarkably uncritical. Indeed, they are generally less skeptical and
critical in their approach to the Soviet Union than they are to the
problems of Germany or the United States. One of their favorite sayings
is "Let's try and keep an open mind about Russia."

In the battle for men's minds, this is a serious situation. It means
that a considerable proportion of what Britons read, of what young
Britons learn, of what the whole nation sees or hears through mass
communication media is prepared by people whose attitude toward Russian
claims and policies is less skeptical than it should be. On the other
hand, the danger has been exaggerated by anxious Americans.

Since 1950 these fields of endeavor have been invaded by a group of
young men and women much more favorably inclined to conservatism and
modern capitalism than the group influenced by Russia. Some of them
have been to the United States and are able to refute the anti-American
charges of the other group with first-hand knowledge. Most of them
developed intellectually in the period when the Russian danger
overshadowed Europe, and they are not prone to make excuses for the
Soviets.

Moreover, they are strongly influenced by the marked recrudescence
of national feeling in Britain. Perhaps this is a revulsion from
the internationalism of the group influenced by Russia. Perhaps it
reflects a desire to do something about Britain's waning prestige in
the world. Sometimes it indicates a new and welcome preoccupation with
the political possibilities of an enlarged Commonwealth. Whatever the
cause, it adds to the vitality of British thought. And it is healthy
for the country that its young people should be interested in British
development of nuclear energy rather than in Magnetogorsk or TVA.

The British attitude toward Communist China is unaffected by emotional
memories of a war alliance, as in the case of the Soviet Union, or the
sense of guilt regarding the conquest of China by the Communists which
affects some Americans. Chiang Kai-shek was never a public hero during
the war, as Tito and Stalin were. The London representatives of the
great Anglo-Chinese trading firms might portray Chiang as the hope of
the West in China, but the British people were not convinced.

Although the British military effort in the Korean war was considerably
larger than Anglophobes would have Americans believe, the war's effect
on the British was a good deal less. There has never been any sustained
public outcry against Britain's recognition of the Chinese government.
The danger of a Communist invasion of Formosa did not stir the British.
When such an invasion seemed likely, the Conservative government faced
a difficult situation: would the British people, in the event of war
between China and the United States, have followed the Americans into
the conflict?

The present British interest in Communist China is largely commercial.
No one entertains the happy belief that the Communist regime can
be overthrown--certainly not by Chiang and his aging forces. What
the British want from Comrade Mao is more trade. If they get it and
trade expands, the process will reflect not a national attraction to
Communism but a restatement of the familiar British position that
theirs is a trading nation which, in its present circumstances, must
find commerce where it can.

There would be no great opposition to China's entry into the United
Nations. Again, this would not reflect admiration for communism.
For many reasons the British doubt the effectiveness of the United
Nations. One reason is that a nation of over 500,000,000 people has no
representation in the UN's councils.

The relationship between the French and the British is a fascinating
one. For nearly a thousand years these two peoples have faced each
other across the channel. During that period, in Britain at least,
there has developed a curious love-hate relationship. By turns loving,
exasperated, and enraged, the British think of the French as a man
might think of an affectionate but wayward mistress.

In June of 1940, when the world between the wars was being shaken to
bits, the fall of France shocked and saddened the British as did no
other event of those terrible days. I remember that while waiting
in the Foreign Office, the morning after my return from France, I
saw an elderly official, a man with a brittle, cynical mind, walk
down the corridor with tears streaming down his face. There was no
recrimination. All he could say was: "Those poor people--God, how they
must be suffering!"

Few enemy actions during the war distressed the British as much as the
decision to attack the French fleet at Oran. Few post-war diplomatic
achievements gave them more pleasure than the re-establishment of the
old alliance with France. The rise and fall of French governments, the
convulsions of French politicians are watched in Britain sometimes with
anger and harsh words but never without an underlying sympathy.

Perhaps because of the alliance in two world wars or perhaps because
France offers such a complete change from their own islands, the
British know France very well, far better than they know the United
States or some nations of the Commonwealth. This is true of all classes
of Britons.

The elderly doctor or retired officer of the middle classes will spend
his holidays at an obscure resort on the coast of Brittany. Before the
war a Continental holiday was one of the indications of middle-class
status. Today the Continental holiday is within the financial reach of
the working class. The conductor on the bus I sometimes take to work
was full of his plans this spring for "me and the missus" to motorcycle
from Boulogne to the Riviera. Thousands like him tour France in buses
or spend vacations not in Blackpool but in a French seaside resort.

The national attitude ranges from tolerance to affection. I do not
believe, however, that the British respect the French as they do the
Germans or the Russians. The mutiny in the French Army in 1917, the
catastrophe of 1940, the Anglophobia of the Vichy government ended,
probably permanently, popular British reliance on France as a powerful
ally in world affairs. When the Suez crisis arose in 1956 and the
governments of Sir Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet hastened to reinvigorate
the alliance, their efforts awoke little response in Britain. "Now that
we're in this thing, we have to go on and win it," a friend said. "But
think of being in it with the French, especially these French--Mollet,
Pineau, and Bouges-Manoury." He made a sound more customary in Ebbets
Field than in a London club.

The British are amused by the French (the French, of course, are even
more amused by the British). Sometimes it seems that every Englishman
of a certain age and financial position has his own "secret" village
where the Hotel de la Poste provides a good dinner for five hundred
francs. Britons have great knowledge and affection for France born of
contact in two wars, but they do not rely on the French.

For other reasons the British hesitate to rely on the Germans. Two
generations of Britons have learned that the Germans are a tough,
resolute, and courageous people, characteristics admired in Britain.
But the British groups devoted to furthering friendship between the
two peoples are fighting a losing battle. There is among all classes
in Britain an underlying distaste for the Germans. This feeling is not
often expressed, but it is there, as it is in most countries in Western
Europe. The attitude is a factor in the relationship between Western
Europe and the key question facing the continent as a whole: Germany's
ultimate reunification.

The Germans, a singularly obtuse people in judging the reasons for
foreign attitudes toward Germany, are inclined to believe that British
mistrust is tied to the two world wars and the decline of British
power. This is inaccurate. British mistrust and dislike of Germany have
political rather than military roots. Both the Kaiser's imperialism of
1914 and Nazi imperialism in 1939 were seen not as overwhelming threats
to Britain alone but as dangers to the democratic system of the West
under which she had flourished. The horrors of the concentration camps,
the solemn lunacies of Hitler and his court, the death of personal and
political liberty--all these were factors more important than military
posturing. Finally, the British do not consider the Germans politically
stable, and they are suspicious--perhaps too much so--of German
ambitions and intentions.

Repeatedly this has affected British politics. The great pre-war debate
in foreign affairs was waged between those who, like Churchill, were
not willing to trust the Germans and those who, like Chamberlain,
were. Since the end of World War II the international political issue
that generated the most heat in Britain was the debate over the
rearmament of Germany. One effect of this debate was the emergence
of the Bevanites in the Labor Party as a political force. Aneurin
Bevan believed that German rearmament would unite the pacifists, old
anti-fascists, and others as no other issue could. He was correct. The
leadership of Clement Attlee was gravely endangered for a time when the
party officially supported arms for the nation's former enemies.

The State Department and other American officials have taken the
position that British opposition to German rearmament was the product
of wild-eyed agitators on the left and had no popular support. This was
an inaccurate, even a dangerous attitude. Field Marshal Lord Wavell
opposed it. So did Viscount Norwich, who as Alfred Duff Cooper had
allied himself with Churchill in the latter's long fight against the
appeasement policy of Chamberlain and Baldwin.

For the time being, the issue is dead. Germany is being rearmed. But
the excitement the issue provoked testified to the abiding British
uneasiness about Germany. This concern centers upon the prospect that
West Germany will someday succumb to Russian enticement, be united with
East Germany, and leave NATO. A permanently divided Germany may be a
danger to peace, but few Britons outside the Foreign Office see it that
way. Two wars have come out of a united Germany.

The attitude of the upper-class Englishman toward people of the same
class in Germany has altered since the war. Before World War I, and in
the long week-end between the wars, upper-class Germans and Britons
mingled a good deal. Ties of affection and respect were created. "I
can't stand this feller Hitler," you were told, "but I know old Von
Schlitz, and he's a first-rate chap. You can trust the Prussians."
But in the end Von Schlitz and his friends, with a few honorable
exceptions, threw in their lot with the Nazis. When the British see old
Von Schlitz nowadays they wonder what deceits, what cruelties, what
moral compromises he has countenanced to survive and prosper.

Seen from this background, the British acceptance of a Western policy
that rebuilt German industry into Britain's leading competitor for
export markets and created a strong state in the Federal Republic of
West Germany was a remarkable victory of the head over the heart. The
policy was accepted because the British saw that the Soviet Union under
Stalin was the greater, more immediate threat. Any relaxation of that
threat is bound to affect the British attitude toward Germany and her
ambitions.

The mutual affection of the British and the Italians was interrupted
but not broken by the second war. To a somewhat dour, unemotional
people the Italians and their land have an irresistible attraction.
Even when the war was at its worst the British regarded the Italians
with rueful perplexity: how could such an amusing, gracious people be
so deluded by Mussolini? Surely everything would be all right once
Mussolini was eliminated.

Characteristically, when he was eliminated many British objected to
the summary nature of his execution. They would not blink an eye when
military necessity required the destruction of the German city of
Kassel. But they did not like the picture of their old enemy, who had
vilified them and attacked them when it hurt the most, strung up by his
heels outside a gas station.

Now all is forgiven and almost forgotten. Each year the earnest
tourists pour southward to Rome, Florence, Venice. In the autumn they
come home to their fog-shrouded islands bringing with them memories of
long, sunny days.

The British attitude toward Italy and the Italians is symbolized by
their view of Italian Communism. They are not oblivious to the dangers
of Communism in Italy or elsewhere. But they find it difficult to
regard the Italians, communist, fascist, or republican, as serious
factors in world affairs. As only a few Italians seem to desire such a
position, and as the British are too polite to discuss the matter, all
goes well.

The traveling Briton has lost his old status in Europe. The British
tourist with his limited allowance of francs, marks, or lire is no
longer the "milord" of the nineteenth century. That role, with its
privilege of being the target for every taxi-driver's avarice, now
belongs to the Americans.

During the peak years of the cold war between 1945 and 1953, Western
Europe was threatened by military attack from Russia. The power to
whom the Europeans looked primarily was not Britain but the United
States. It is a disheartening reflection that, despite this military
dependence, successive American administrations failed to create the
reservoir of trust which would induce the nations of Western Europe to
accept our policies and follow our lead once the Russians altered their
tactics.

Despite their precarious economic situation, there has been a revival
of British prestige and influence in Western Europe. To some Americans
Britain may appear a small, almost insignificant power. But to a small
European nation Britain, with its bombers, its atomic and hydrogen
bombs, its thriving new industries, presents a different picture.
Another factor is the gradual movement of Britain toward some form of
union with the Continental nations, as evidenced in the Macmillan
government's approach to a common European market. Finally, there
are doubts about wisdom of United States policy, especially as it is
practiced and elucidated by John Foster Dulles.

Western Europe was not impressed by the statesmanship of Mr. Dulles
at two serious crises: one arising from the possibility of Western
military intervention in Indochina, and the other emerging after the
collapse of the European Defense Community. Nor was Mr. Dulles's
attitude toward America's closest allies, the British, in the period
of British and French intervention in Egypt calculated to create the
impression that the United States, as an ally, would remain true in
good times and bad.

Nowhere has British prestige and influence declined more rapidly as in
the Middle East. Yet nowhere are Britain's economic interests greater.

Recent events have emphasized the economic connection between Britain
and the Middle East. But the ties that connect a group of islands set
in the cold waters of the northern ocean with the arid, sunny lands of
that area were established long before the discovery and exploitation
of oil reserves made the Middle East vital to Britain's economic life.
Sidney Smith, Abercromby, Nelson, Gordon, T.E. Lawrence--a whole
battalion of British heroes won fame in the area. The empty deserts
and clamorous cities have exercised a fascination on Britons for more
than two centuries, have called explorers and scientists, missionaries
and merchants eastward. Nor was the Middle East's strategic importance
to Britain born with oil. Nelson destroyed the French on the Nile,
Kitchener triumphed at Khartoum, and Montgomery fought at El Alamein
because the land bridge between Asia and Africa and later the Suez
Canal were considered vital to the existence of Britain as a world
power.

Centuries of involvement in the Middle East resulted in a strong
British bias in favor of the Arabs. No such favoritism was extended to
the Egyptians as a people, although certainly the British were at first
as willing as the Americans to trust Colonel Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
This bias, amounting in some cases to a blind affection, played its
part in the formulation of British policy especially in the years when
the state of Israel was taking shape. One example is the fact that the
British consistently underrated Jewish military ability and overrated
that of the Arabs.

Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, was a punctuation
point in the long history of Britain's involvement in the Middle East.
No British government could permit control of the canal to be vested in
a single country, especially a country so openly hostile, without going
to the utmost lengths to break that control. Given the shipping and
pipeline facilities of the summer of 1956, the passage of oil tankers
through the canal was essential to Britain's economic life.

Even when the program for the industrial use of nuclear power has
been completed, oil will remain important to the British economy.
The British government of the day was angry with Colonel Nasser, it
was worried by Soviet infiltration in Egypt. But the primary cause
of Britain's intervention in Egypt was that she could see no other
way of securing freedom of passage through the canal. Reliance on oil
was an elemental fact of Britain's position as a world power; it is
extraordinary that the administration in Washington was so surprised
when Britain took steps to insure her oil supply.

The influence of Britain in the Middle East at the time of intervention
in Egypt was extensive. Tiny states on the Persian Gulf and on the
south side of the Arabian peninsula behind the Aden protectorate were
managed, if not ruled, by a few scores of officials from London. Iraq,
Britain's firmest friend in the Middle East, benefited from British
technicians and advisers. In Egypt and Jordan and Syria, Britain's
prestige had fallen. But as late as January 1956, when I toured the
Middle East, there was an evident respect for Britons and for British
power, a respect which often was difficult to reconcile with the actual
dimensions of that power.

In terms of oil, Britain took a great deal out of the Middle East.
From an altruistic standpoint, the return was small. But it is
important to remember that British power there did not take the same
form as in British colonies. The British could not order schools to be
built or irrigation works to be started; they could, and did, advise
such works.

They were the first power--the United States will be the second--to
encounter the jarring fact that the improvements which a big oil
company brings to a nation promote nationalism. In the end, peoples are
not content with oil royalties, clean company towns, and new schools.
They want all the money, not merely royalties, and they want to build
the towns and schools themselves.

The decline of British power in the Middle East coincided with
the entry into the area of a new power, Soviet Russia. One of the
oddest aspects of the relations between the United States and the
United Kingdom was the calm--almost the indifference--with which the
administration in Washington viewed the entry of Russia into the Middle
East. As late as November 1956, _after_ the British had destroyed large
numbers of Soviet aircraft and tanks in Egypt, the State Department was
undisturbed by intelligence reports that Russia had agreed to make good
the Egyptian losses with new arms shipments.

Because of their economic involvement in the Middle East, the British
undoubtedly will persevere in their efforts to maintain influence in
the area. Early in 1957 all the cards were stacked against them.

One advantage of a long and stormy experience in international affairs
is that it allows a nation to look with equanimity on reverses. After
the withdrawal from Egypt in December 1956, many Britons thought they
would make a comeback in the Middle East. No argument, neither Arab
enmity nor the advent of American and Russian power, could shake this
belief. They did not mean, of course, that they would come back along
the lines of nineteenth-century colonialism. The British recognize
that the days of British rule from the citadel in Cairo are as dead as
Thebes. But with that placid confidence which is one of their most
irritating characteristics, they predicted that in the future, as in
the past, they would play a major role in the area.

When I protested that this was not the view in Washington or, probably,
in Moscow, a soldier-administrator laughed and said: "Oh _they_ thought
we were finished in 1940." But it is in the Middle East that British
hopes and ambitions conflict directly with those of the United States.
And relations with the United States are another story--or at least
another chapter.




[Illustration]




IX. _The Atlantic Alliance_

STRENGTHS AND STRESSES

 _If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop
 was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms--never! never!
 never!_

  WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM

 _His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz.,
 New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island and Providence
 Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania,
 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and
 Georgia to be free, sovereign and independent states; that he treats
 with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors,
 relinquishes all claims to the government, property and territorial
 rights of the same, and every part thereof._

  TREATY OF PARIS, SEPTEMBER 3, 1783

[Illustration]


The alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom is a
paradox. This intimate association that has fought wars and carried out
the most delicate and intricate diplomatic tasks is not based on any
single treaty or agreement. It is a paradox because, although roundly
attacked from the outset by powerful groups in both countries, the
alliance has grown steadily in strength toward a position in which it
is almost invulnerable to political attack.

This situation is a tribute to the hard-headed appreciation of facts
which lies beneath the political oratory and posturing on both sides
of the Atlantic. For the alliance is not the result of the intrigues
of Anglophiles along the eastern seaboard of the United States or of
the Machiavellian diplomacy of Britons eager for a handout; it is
the result of mutual self-interest. In the dangerous world of the
mid-twentieth century it is the best hope of survival for both nations.

Americans, in the plenitude of power, often ask one another why they
need alliances, and why, in particular, there should exist any special
relationship with Britain. One way of answering the question is to
consider our situation if the United Kingdom were neutral in the world
struggle with the aggressive totalitarianism of the East. There would
then be no United States Air Force bomber bases in Britain. The British
naval bases with their facilities in Britain and the Mediterranean
would no longer be open to the United States. The United Kingdom would
not be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The British
divisions that have helped hold Germany since 1945 would have been
withdrawn. British hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs and the long-range
bombers built to carry them would not be on our side. The position
assumed by the United States at diplomatic meetings would no longer
be supported by the leaders of a stable, experienced power still
possessing considerable influence in many parts of the world.

Finally, the United States could not rely in times of crisis upon the
backing of fifty million people speaking the same language and adhering
to similar political beliefs--people who are resolute, ingenious, and
brave in war, progressive and industrious in peace.

Certainly the alliance is not to everyone's taste. There are and there
always will be urgings in both countries to "go it alone." There are
politicians and statesmen who would place each nation's reliance on
other allies. But custom, usage, common interests have combined to
create the situation; the problem is to see that the alliance works and
to realize its potential in the world.

No one would contend that the United Nations or NATO or the South
East Asia Treaty Organization or any one of half a dozen smaller
associations is not important. But examination shows that all these
rest on the basic union of American and British interests. If that
goes, everything goes.

It follows, therefore, that the popular attitude in Britain toward
the United States and Britain's relationship in international affairs
to the United States is of the utmost importance to both countries.
Understanding it calls for a thorough appreciation of Britain's
position in the world, not as we Americans see it but as the British
themselves see it.

To begin with, let us try to answer that familiar and inevitable
question: "Isn't there a good deal of anti-Americanism in Britain?"

If the question refers to personal dislike of Americans as individuals,
the answer is no. Of course if an American in Britain is noisy and
impolite he will be told off. Britons should expect the same treatment
in the United States under similar circumstances.

Americans as individuals are not disliked in Britain. But an American
must be prepared to encounter searching inquiry and often sharp
criticism about the policies and programs of the United States
government. He will learn that some institutions in the United States
of which we have a high opinion do not similarly impress the British.
Certain groups within British society view various aspects of life in
the United States with reactions ranging from hostility to hilarity.
This is natural. You cannot expect a socialist to be enthusiastic about
capitalism, especially when capitalism is so obviously successful. Nor
can you expect a British conservative to rejoice in the transfer of
world power westward across the Atlantic.

So, inevitably, there are discussions and debates when Americans and
Britons meet. Long may it be so. For this freedom to argue problems
is the very essence of the alliance. It is a means of ironing out
the difficulties that arise. It also emphasizes the common ground on
which we stand, which, put at its simplest, is a mutual belief in the
principles of democratic freedom.

In Germany I often encountered men of education and intellectual
probity who were convinced that a modern state should not have a
democratic form of government and that to encourage democracy was
inadvisable, even dangerous. In Britain or the United States one
often meets men and women who rail against the occasional inanities
of democratic government and deplore its weaknesses. But it is most
unusual to meet someone, save a member of the small band of communists
or fascists, who believes that the British or American people could or
should live under any other system. Differences must be worked out and
are worked out under the cover of this common acceptance of democracy.
This belief does not sound impressive until you talk about the same
subject with a middle-class Frenchman, a German professor, or a Soviet
diplomat.

Although of course there are plenty of people in Britain, as there are
in the United States, who are profoundly uninterested in the alliance
or in any other aspect of international affairs, it can be a salutary
experience to talk about Anglo-American relations with Britons. Often
you encounter candor, honest curiosity, and, sometimes, shrewd judgment.

Such conversations go a long way toward killing the old idea that
Britons--or, specifically, the English--are an aloof, chilly
lot. Aloofness was and, to some extent, still is a middle-class
characteristic. But, like so many other things in Britain, behavior in
public has changed in the last fifteen years. The time has not come
when Britons in a railway compartment will exchange telephone numbers
and photographs of their children, but the old social isolation is
breaking down.

The questions and criticisms that the American encounters are a
good sign. They testify to the average Briton's understanding of
the interdependence of the two countries. As long as the alliance
flourishes there will be and should be such exchanges. They are a
source of satisfaction, not offense.

Moreover, the questions are necessary. There is a dearth of serious
news about the United States in the popular British press, although the
remotest village will be informed of Miss Monroe's chest measurements.
_The Times_ of London, the _Manchester Guardian_, and the _Daily
Telegraph_ do an excellent job of reporting the United States within
the limitations imposed by the paper shortage. The popular press,
however, is something else.

There are, I believe, three factors that contribute to British
questionings and criticisms about United States policies and
statesmanship. These are:

(1) McCarthyism, by which the British mean the political attitude
in the United States which begins at a perceptible trend toward
ideological conformity and, at its worst, imitates totalitarian
measures;

(2) the United States's leadership of the free world, which has been
transferred from Britain in the last fifteen years. Doubts on this
score are fed by statements of American leaders, often belligerent
and uninformed, which raise the question of whether the United States
administration understands either its enemies or its friends;

(3) the trade competition between Britain and the United States and the
trade barriers to British imports raised by the United States.

It is difficult to say which of these is the most important factor in
forming British attitudes toward the United States. For a variety of
reasons McCarthyism was certainly the most important in the first five
years of this decade.

Not many Britons understand the emotional involvement of a large
proportion of Americans in the Far East and its problems. Nor was the
impact of the Korean War upon the United States fully appreciated in
the United Kingdom. Finally, the British, although they stoutly opposed
communism, were never so deeply concerned with communist infiltration
in government. Perhaps they should have been. The point here is that
for a number of reasons they were not.

Consequently, neither those who report and edit the news in Britain
(with a few exceptions) nor their readers were prepared for
McCarthyism. A good many otherwise well-informed people were shocked
when at the height of the McCarthy period Professor D.W. Brogan, one
of the most stimulating and knowledgeable British authorities on
America, pointed out that there had in fact been a considerable amount
of subversion in the United States government and that there was ample
proof of Soviet espionage.

The gradual reduction of the Senator's importance and power pleased
the British. This was not because he had been a good deal less than
friendly in his comments about them--they are not markedly sensitive to
foreign criticism. The reason was that many Britons saw in the methods
of Senator McCarthy and some of his associates a threat to the heritage
of individual liberty and equal justice under the law and, ultimately,
to the democratic government that is the common ground on which the
alliance is based.

The scars McCarthyism left on British popular opinion are deep. Months
after the Senator's star had faded, many people were only too ready
to believe that terror still reigned in the United States and to
discount the presence of a large body of moderate opinion that strongly
disapproved of extremism either of the left or of the right.

McCarthyism, of course, was a godsend to the British communists in
their efforts to turn the working class and the intellectuals against
the United States. They exploited his methods and his speeches to
frighten those who doubted the strength of American democracy. Their
propaganda was directed chiefly at the industrial workers, whose good
will the United States needs in Britain and, indeed, everywhere in
the world. This, said the Communists, is fascism. This, they said,
is what we warned you would happen in the United States. Look, they
said, here's an elderly general as President and McCarthy running the
country. Doesn't it remind you of Hindenburg and Hitler? they asked.
What freedom would you have, they inquired, in a country where McCarthy
considers socialists the same as communists? How long would your
trade-union organization last?

This may sound absurd to Americans, but it was dreadfully important,
and it can become dreadfully important again. Senator McCarthy did the
good name of the United States more harm in Britain than anyone else in
this century.

McCarthy did not have many friends in Britain. But it is symptomatic of
the importance attached to good relations between the two countries by
Britons that at the height of the anti-McCarthy uproar some Englishmen
attempted to point out that after all there were other forces in
the United States and that the wild pictures of fascism rampant in
Washington painted by left-wing journalists were, to put it mildly,
slightly exaggerated.

Such assurances made little headway. Many Britons, as I have said,
discerned in the Senator a threat to the basic liberties of the
American people and hence to the health of the alliance. Many more
were profoundly ignorant of the real situation in the United States
largely because they are profoundly ignorant of the American system
of government and how it works. There was, finally, the extreme
sensitivity of the British working class to anything that its members
consider to be capitalist reactionary action. In Britain the memories
of the fight against an organized and powerful reactionary group for
the rights of labor are vivid. As we have seen, they are nourished by
the speeches of Labor propagandists and politicians. There is also a
strong flavor of internationalism within the Labor movement. Given
these factors, it was easy enough for many thousands of working-class
people to believe that McCarthy represented the same forces they had
seen arise in Italy, Germany, and Spain to impoverish labor and smash
the power of the unions.

This group paid little attention to--if, indeed, it even heard--the
arguments of Americans and Britons that, while McCarthy was deplorable,
some measures had to be taken against Communist espionage in the
United States. Such arguments were drowned in the uproar raised by
the left wing in Britain over the plight of some poor devil of a
schoolteacher who had been a member of the Communist Party for a few
months fifteen years ago and who now was being put through the wringer
by Senator McCarthy and his fellow primitives. Finally, the British
public as a whole--and particularly the British working class--was not
so aroused emotionally by the cold war as Americans were, and there was
far less hatred and fear of the Soviet Union.

American critics of Britain have suggested that if the United Kingdom
had been as deeply involved militarily in Korea as the United States
was, this attitude toward the Communist bloc would have hardened. I
doubt it. The British are accustomed to casualties from wars in far-off
places. They do get angry and excited about casualties among their
troops from terrorism. The hanging of two British noncommissioned
officers by Jewish terrorists in Palestine during the troubles there
produced more public bitterness and animosity than did the grievous
casualties suffered by the Gloucestershire Regiment in its long,
valiant stand against the Chinese in Korea.

The attacks on British policies and British public figures by
Americans disturb those who are concerned with the future of the
alliance. I do not think that the effect of these upon the general
public is so great as is generally believed. Some newspapers feature
reports of these attacks and reply in editorials that are stately
or bad-tempered according to the character of the newspaper. The
attacks themselves, however, do not produce excessive anger among
ordinary people. To repeat, the British are not sensitive to foreign
criticism. One reason is that they retain a considerable measure of
confidence in the rightness, even the righteousness, of their own
position--a characteristic that has galled Americans and others for
years. (Incidentally, it is a characteristic they have passed on to
the Indians. Mr. Nehru in his high-minded inability to see any point
of view but his own is not unlike the late Neville Chamberlain.) A
second reason is that this generation of Britons has been insulted
by experts. Secretary of State Dulles, Senators McCarthy, Knowland,
and Dirksen can say some pretty harsh things. But, compared to what
the British have heard about themselves from the late Dr. Göbbels or
the various Vilification Editors of _Pravda_ or _Izvestia_, American
criticisms are as lemonade is to vodka.

Mr. Dulles's unpopularity among the British results not from his
taste for inept phrases but from the belief widely held among leading
politicians and senior civil servants that on two occasions--the
formation of the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the
negotiations with Britain after Egypt had seized control of the Suez
Canal--he told them one thing and did another. Such beliefs strongly
held by responsible people trickle downward.

This evaluation of Mr. Dulles's diplomacy is one cause for British
worry about the United States's leadership of the free world. The
idea that the British do not accept the transfer of power westward
across the Atlantic is superficial. They may not like it, but they do
accept it. Yet the idea has great vigor. An American editor of the
highest intelligence once said: "These people will never get used to
our being in the number-one position!" I think they _are_ used to it.
But acceptance has not ended their doubts and criticisms about how
we exercise the tremendous power that is ours, or their resentment
of United States suggestions that Britain is finished and no longer
counts in the councils of the West. The British do not mind when
Senator Knowland accuses them of feeding military matériel to the
Communist Chinese. They do mind when in an international crisis the
State Department treats Britain as though she were on the same level as
Greece.

For, whatever the alliance means to Americans, to Britons it has meant
a special relationship between the two countries under which the United
Kingdom is entitled to more consideration than she often receives.
It was the realization that the United States did not recognize this
special relationship which touched off the wave of criticism and doubt
during the Suez crisis.

From the welter of words loosed in that period--speeches, Parliamentary
resolutions, editorials, and arguments in pubs--a central theme
affecting relations between Britain and the United States emerged. The
decision of the United States administration to condemn British action
in Egypt and to vote with the Soviet Union against Britain in the
General Assembly of the United Nations smashed the conception of the
alliance held by millions of Britons. This sorry development is quite
unaffected by such considerations as whether the British government
should have ordered intervention or whether the United States
government should have been as surprised by intervention as it was.

The British regarded the alliance as one in which each partner
was ready to help and sustain the other. They felt that the
administration's actions mocked a decade and a half of fine talk
about standing together. Traveling through Britain early in 1957, I
found "that United Nations vote" was a topic which arose in every
conversation and to which every conversation inevitably returned.
Some could understand the logic of the United States. But very few
understood how, in view of the past, we could bring ourselves to vote
against Britain.

Whatever Washington may think, the British believe they deserve special
consideration because of their present exertions and past performances.
They point out, accurately, that the United Kingdom has put more men,
money, and matériel into NATO than has any other ally of the United
States. They assert that, although there have been differences between
the two powers, Britain has sustained United States policy in Europe
sometimes, as in the case of German rearmament, at the cost of great
political difficulty. An alliance, they say, should work both ways.

Britons are thankful for American generosity after World War II. But
their gratitude is affected by a powerful psychological factor often
overlooked by Americans, one that strengthens the British belief that
their country merits a special position in America's foreign policies.
This factor is the British interpretation of the role played by their
country in two world wars.

It is an article of popular faith in Britain that the nation twice went
to war in defense of smaller powers--Belgium in 1914 and Poland in
1939--and that the United States, whose real interests were as deeply
involved as Britain's, remained on the sidelines for thirty-three
months of the first war and for twenty-seven months of the second war.

Americans find it tedious to be told by the more assertive Britons how
their beleaguered island stood alone against the world in 1940. The
American conviction that the war really began when the Japanese blew us
into it at Pearl Harbor is equally tedious to Britons. Nevertheless,
the British did stand defiantly alone. They whipped the _Luftwaffe_,
and they took heavy punishment from German bombs. They fought hard,
if often unsuccessfully, in the Western Desert, Greece, Crete,
Abyssinia, and Syria. All this went on while we across the Atlantic
began ponderously to arm and to argue at great length whether the Nazi
dictatorship really was a threat to freedom.

These events affected those Britons who are now moving toward the
direction of the nation's destinies. The cabinet minister of today or
tomorrow may be the destroyer seaman, tank-commander, or coal-miner
of 1940. However deplorable the attitude may seem from our standpoint
and from the standpoint of some individual Britons, the British people
believe something is due them for their exertions. The wiser leaders,
speaking from both the left and the right, advise their countrymen to
forget the past and think of the future.

How they will think of their international future is a different
matter. For the first time since 1940 there is now a strong sentiment
in Britain for going it alone. There is also a revulsion against all
forms of international association, starting with the United Nations
and extending to NATO and SEATO. To anyone who understands the pride
and toughness that lie at the center of the British character this is
understandable. They have never been afraid of being alone.

In considering British dissatisfaction with the place accorded their
country in the American outlook, it should not be thought that this
reflects lack of liaison between the two nations on the lower echelons
of diplomacy. The co-operation between the United States Embassy
officials and the Foreign Office in London ordinarily is very close. So
is the co-operation between the British Embassy diplomats in Washington
and the State Department. To repeat, it is in situations like the
crises over Cyprus and Suez that the British feel they are treated by
the State Department and the administration not as the most powerful
and reliable of allies but as just another friendly nation.

This concern over Britain's place within the alliance is sharpened by
doubts over the ability of the United States to exercise leadership
in a manner that will secure both the peace of the world and the
maintenance of the interests of the West.

Such doubts arise generally from the wide differences between what
American policy really is and what various spokesmen for the United
States say it is. Let us consider two statements by John Foster Dulles,
a man who, when he became Secretary of State in 1953, was admired and
trusted by professional British diplomats and by politicians interested
in international affairs.

At one point Mr. Dulles spoke of "massive retaliation" against any
enemies of the United States in the Far East. The remark made a great
splash in the headlines of the world, and in the view of the British
it was totally useless. The Russians and Communist Chinese leaders,
they argued, realized that the United States had nuclear weapons and
would be prepared to use them in the event of war. As both nations
are dictatorships and as the government controls all communications
media in each country, there was no prospect of Mr. Dulles's warning
being relayed effectively to the Russian and Chinese masses whom it
might conceivably impress. But it was relayed to all those people in
the world, especially in the Asian world, who in any case consider the
United States as a huge, powerful, and possibly aggressive nation.
The British were appalled by the effect of the statement on India.
There, as elsewhere, it was well ventilated by the Communists and other
enemies of the United States as an example of America's devotion to
belligerence.

Earlier in his busy career as moral lecturer for the West, Mr.
Dulles had spoken of the possibility that the defeat of the European
Defense Community plan in the French National Assembly might provoke
an "agonizing reappraisal" of the United States policy toward Europe.
Again the result was quite different from that desired by the Secretary
of State. The National Assembly rejected EDC, just as everyone
interested in the matter, with the exception of the Secretary of State,
Dr. Adenauer, M. René Pleven, and M. Jean Monnet, knew it would. The
United States did not immediately begin any "agonizing reappraisal" of
its position in Europe because quite obviously it could not do so at
the time. It had to keep its troops in Europe, it had to rearm Germany,
it had to sustain the NATO alliance because these are the essentials of
a foreign policy that is partly the result of American initiative and
partly the outcome of our response to the challenges of the times.

In both cases it slowly became plain that neither the Congress nor the
people of the United States were prepared for massive retaliation or
even agonizing reappraisal. The reappraisal did start in 1956, but it
was the result of very different factors: the rising costs of nuclear
weapons and the necessity in both Britain and the United States of
reducing armament expenditures and taxes, the change in the tactics
of Soviet foreign policy, the reassurance (largely illusory) given
the West by the summit conference at Geneva in the summer of 1955,
which convinced many that the need for heavy armament expenditure was
receding. This reappraisal may be agonizing, but it has nothing to do
with the one the Secretary of State was talking about.

The crisis in European affairs caused by France's rejection of EDC
was solved largely by British initiative and diplomacy. Today most
Britons interested in international affairs feel that this feat has
received too little recognition in Washington. Sir Anthony Eden, then
Foreign Secretary, pulled the forgotten Brussels treaty out of his
pocket--or, more accurately, out of the soap dish, for he was bathing
when he thought of it--and hied off to Europe to sell the treaty
to the interested governments as an instrument under which Germany
could be rearmed. Sir Anthony was eminently successful in his sales
talks. Mr. Dulles remained aloof for the first few days, thinking dark
thoughts about the French. He had been advised by high State Department
officials that Eden didn't have a chance of selling the Brussels treaty
idea. When it became evident that Sir Anthony was selling it and was
being warmly applauded even by the Germans for his initiative and
diplomatic skill, Mr. Dulles flew to Europe. It looked very much to the
British as though he wanted to get in on the act.

Many Britons felt that Mr. Dulles let Sir Anthony and the Foreign
Office do the donkey work in patching up European unity in the autumn
of 1954 and in negotiating a settlement in Indochina that spring. The
Secretary of State and the administration were ready to take a share of
the credit for success, but were only too eager to remain aloof from
failure. Only the patience, experience, and forthrightness of General
Walter Bedell Smith, then Under Secretary of State, enabled the United
States to cut any sort of figure at the conference on Southeast Asia.

Such a policy of limited liability in great affairs is not in accord
with either the power of the United States or the principles preached
by Mr. Dulles and others.

Another American phenomenon that annoys and occasionally frightens the
British (and, incidentally, many other allied and neutral states) is
the belligerent loquacity of our generals and admirals. The American
public is not particularly aroused when someone in the Pentagon
announces that we must be on our guard and must build enough heavy
bombers or atomic cannon or aircraft-carriers to blow the Kremlin
to Siberia or even farther. The public is pretty well sold, perhaps
oversold, on defense. Besides, the public is much brighter than the
generals or the admirals or their busy public-relations officers think
it is--bright enough to realize that behind these dire prophecies of
doom, these clarion calls for more weapons, the services may be having
some trouble in squeezing the treasury. The citizen reads the first
few paragraphs and turns to the sports pages to see what Mantle did
yesterday.

The situation is far different in the United Kingdom or in France or
Italy or even Germany, to name only our allies.

The British people live packed on a relatively small island, and it has
been estimated that six hydrogen bombs dropped in Britain would be the
knockout. Consequently, the people do not like loose talk about nuclear
bombing. They have a shrewd suspicion that they, and not the talkers,
will be the first target.

Such apprehensions may be exaggerated. But there is sound thinking
behind British insistence that such announcements by our military
spokesmen damage the cause of the West and the good name of the
United States among our allies and, equally important, among the
growing number of states now neutral or near neutral in the struggle
between East and West. For many reasons, geographical, military,
political, even religious, these states abhor war and violence.
Russian propagandists recognized this attitude at the outset of the
cold war and have played upon it with great skill. And they have been
helped immeasurably every time Senator Blowhard or Admiral Sternseadog
suggests that we should blow hell out of the Russians or the Chinese.

These manifestations of combativeness may be helpful in reminding the
Russians of United States power. But the Russians are not our primary
concern: we are their enemies, whatever the surface policy of the
Soviet government. Our primary concern in this new period when the cold
war is being continued by more complex and subtle means than blockades
and _coups d'états_ is the new nations we have helped bring into being.

It is in relation to this approach, I believe, that the British
question our judgment. Particularly those officials and politicians
who deal with foreign affairs are not immediately concerned with the
prospect of Communist revolution in Italy or France. They estimate
that the leaders of the Soviet Union would avoid such upheavals in
the present state of world affairs because revolution would sound the
alarm bells in every Western capital and prevent the Soviet Union from
accomplishing a more important objective: the steady weakening of the
regional alliances--NATO, SEATO, the Baghdad Pact--which have been
laboriously constructed by the United States and the United Kingdom
to contain Communist aggression and to provide a safer, richer life
for the peoples of the allied states. Simultaneously, the Soviet
Union, through diplomatic, political, and cultural agencies, will make
every effort to pull the neutrals, great and small--India, Egypt,
Indonesia--onto their side.

It is in this arena, one where diplomatic skill and economic assistance
are more important than military power, that Britain believes the West
must exert its strength. Both diplomats and politicians are convinced
that in the next five years there must be a thorough overhaul of the
political planning and military arrangements made by the West in the
period 1949-55. They question whether this can be done if the principal
emphasis in defense circles in the United States remains on the
prospect of an imminent war.

A point arising from this discussion is that the British themselves are
unused to the spectacle of a soldier or sailor pronouncing on issues
of national policy. In Britain the warrior, retired or serving, is
kept in his place. If the government wants the advice of Field Marshal
Montgomery it asks for it and gets it in the privacy of the cabinet
rooms.

In the field of foreign affairs the British maintain that the
tremendous physical power of the United States and our immense
resources do not automatically guarantee that in the exercise of our
power we will always be right. Leaders of both parties feel that the
United States government, particularly President Roosevelt and his
advisers, misread Soviet intentions lamentably in the period 1942-6,
and that consequently Allied strategy strove only for victory and not
for a stable peace after victory. The political tides that sweep the
United States every two years give American foreign policy an aspect of
impermanence, even instability, which weakens United States influence
in the world. There is a feeling that United States diplomacy would
benefit from fewer press conferences and more private negotiations.

Naturally, these criticisms can be irritating, especially if they are
delivered in the Pecksniffian tones characteristic of many British
officials. But history will judge, I believe, that this transfer of
power westward across the Atlantic has been carried out with great good
sense and dignity. It may also hold up to scorn the present generation
of Americans if they fail to avail themselves not only of the physical
strength but also of the diplomatic experience and skill of a nation
wise in the ways of the world. This is not a time for Americans to be
too proud to listen.

Such considerations belong to the stratosphere of Anglo-American
relations. An American living in Britain will soon be brought down to
earth in any conversation with British businessmen.

Repeatedly he will be asked why the United States bars British imports
through high tariffs, why there is discrimination against British
bids for contracts in the United States, why Senators and Congressmen
belabor the British on one hand for trying to expand their trade with
the Soviet Union and on the other hand do all they can to block the
expansion of British trade with the United States.

"Trade Not Aid" is the British goal in their economic relations with
the United States, which is Britain's second-best market. In 1954 we
bought goods valued at £198,800,000 ($556,640,000) from Britain. But
this represented only 6.6 per cent of the total United Kingdom exports,
and in 1938, long before the export drives, when Britain still counted
on her overseas investments to help finance her own imports, the
percentage was 5.4 per cent.

So, although both nations recognize this trade's importance to
Britain--it is her principal source of dollar earnings--the increase in
the trade has been relatively small.

The inability of British exporters to sell competitively in the United
States because of tariff protection provokes sharp criticism. The
Republican administration of 1952-6 was attacked in the editorial
columns of newspapers that are usually most friendly to the United
States, for, despite the reassuring speeches of President Eisenhower,
British industry still claimed it was being denied access to American
markets by the tariff restrictions.

Certainly the tariff does bar many British imports. It may be, however,
that many of them, perhaps a majority, would not be able to compete
with similar American products. There is a great deal of ignorance
about the American market among British industrialists and some
reluctance to assume the long and complex job of analyzing a particular
market. I know of one manufacturer of women's handbags who has built up
an extremely profitable business in the United States largely through a
thorough study of the market on frequent visits to this country. I also
know of other larger firms that have failed to exploit their potential
American market because they would not change their methods or their
product to meet the market's demands. Beyond this, they could not
understand the importance of servicing their product and of maintaining
continuous relations with middlemen and buyers.

We have seen that Aneurin Bevan and other politicians of the extreme
left are wedded to the idea that successive Labor and Conservative
governments have danced to Washington's tune. There are many who would
deny undue political or diplomatic influence by the United States on
Britain; indeed, many in America would say the shoe was on the other
foot. But no one could discount the growing influence of American
customs and ways of living upon the people of Britain. Part of this
is the direct result of the popularity of American movies and the
continued presence of American troops. Part comes from the fact that
British manufacturers are rather belatedly turning out the household
devices which have revolutionized living in the United States. This and
the ability of the new working class and the new middle class to buy in
abundance has led to a change in the living conditions of millions.

Ignorance of the political system and international objectives of the
United States is still fairly widespread. In some important respects,
however, there is today among the people of England a greater knowledge
about the people of the United States than there ever was in the past.

Before the entry of the United States into World War II, for instance,
there was a strong conviction in Britain that ethnically we were the
same people. The mass of Britons expected us to be as British in our
background and national outlook as the people of Australia or New
Zealand. The war corrected that impression. The army that came to
Britain was composed of men of diverse ethnic stocks, and the people
among whom they lived learned that Americans could have names like
Magliaro, Martinez, or Mannheim and still be good Americans. This
shocked both the Americanophobes who thought of us as "Anglo-Saxons"
unchanged since the administration of Thomas Jefferson and their
political representatives who envisaged us as openhearted and
openhanded former colonials only too eager to help out the "mother
country." But in the long run this clearer, more realistic view of
modern America has had a good effect on relations between the two
countries.

Similarly, the presence among Britons of several million young men
representing the United States removed some illusions built up by
years of steady attendance at the local movie house. We were not all
rich, we were not all gangsters or cowboys, we did not all chew gum.
Americans worked just as hard, worried just as much, and had the same
hopes and dreams as Britons did. The period of the big buildup in 1943
and 1944 before the Normandy invasion was marred by saloon brawls
between Americans and British and by friction on both sides. But this
is outweighed, I believe, by the fact that the same period contributed
greatly to the two peoples' knowledge of each other.

When the United States Air Force sent forces to Britain at the peak of
the cold war, it was assumed by many that this process would continue.
But the present contingent is minute compared to the millions of
Americans who moved through Britain during World War II. Moreover, its
members are more professional. They do not have the opportunity or
the inclination for close contact with British homes. They want what
professional soldiers want the world over: a bellyful of beer and a
girl. They get both.

The senior officers of the United States Air Force units in Britain and
well-intentioned Britons, zealous for the improvement of relations
between the countries, spend a great deal of time worrying about the
behavior of the airmen and their treatment by British civilians. The
time is ill spent. It is the nature of young men far from home, in or
out of uniform, to drink, to wench, and to fight. Here and there they
may encounter tradesmen eager to make an extra shilling out of the
foreigner. But such profiteering does not seem to be on the same scale
as that practiced by the good people of Florida or Texas or Kansas upon
their own countrymen in uniform during World War II.

In many superficial respects Britain is more Americanized than before
the war. There are hamburger joints near Piccadilly Circus and
Leicester Square, and the American tourist can buy a Coke in most
big towns. A pedestrian in London sees windows full of "Hollywood
models" and "Broadway styles." In the years immediately after the war,
working-class youth copied the kaleidoscopic ties and broad-shouldered,
double-breasted plumage of the American male. Today, still following
styles set in America, he is adopting the more sober appearance of
the Ivy League, and the button-down shirt has made its appearance
in High Holborn. This is a curious example of styles traveling west
and then east across the Atlantic, for the Ivy League dresses as it
believes--or, rather, as its tailors believe--English gentlemen dress.
Now the working-class young man in Britain is imitating "new" American
styles that are themselves an imitation of the styles followed by his
own upper class. Whatever the fashion in the United States, this class
clings manfully to the dark suit, the starched collar, and the derby in
London, and to tweeds in the country.

Obviously the movies made in America have had an enormous effect on
the British way of life. For a number of reasons the effect has not
been altogether good. Accuracy in portraying the American scene is not
one of Hollywood's strong points. A couple of generations of young
Britons matured nursing an idealistic view of the United States as a
wonderland where hippy stenographers lived in high-ceilinged houses,
wore luxurious clothes, drove big, powerful cars, and loved big,
powerful men. There was almost invariably a happy ending to the minor
difficulties that beset hero and heroine of an American film.

Realism was restored to some extent by the advent of the American
soldier. Very few of the GI's resembled Mr. Robert Taylor, and their
backgrounds were quite different from those portrayed on the screen.
There were, of course, some fast talkers who could and did make a pig
farm in Secaucus sound like a ranch in California, but, on the whole,
the American soldiers came from civilian surroundings no more exciting
than Leeds or Bristol. The movie-going public now views pictures about
home life in America with a more skeptical eye.

The series of American films about juvenile delinquency, drug
addiction, dipsomania, and other social evils created a problem for
those interested in presenting a balanced view of the United States
to Britons. Great efforts were made by the United States Information
Service to demonstrate that the ordinary American did not begin the
day with a shot of heroin or send his boy to a school that would make
Dotheboys Hall seem like a kindergarten.

These efforts were inspired to some extent by the manner in which the
Communists exploited such films as genuine reflections of life in the
United States. Both the comrades and the USIS were wasting their time.
The British public can be agonizingly apathetic, but it is not stupid.
I never met anyone who thought these films represented the real America
or who believed the Communist contention that they did. The fact is
that the ability of the United States to make and show such pictures
testifies to the strength of America. When the Russians produce an
epic about the slave labor that built the White Sea-Baltic canal or an
exposé of the corruption that riddled Soviet industry in the war and
immediate post-war years, we can begin to worry.

The theater since the war has exercised an important influence in
bringing America to Britain. Starting with _Oklahoma_, a series of
Broadway musical shows dominated the London stage for a decade. One
of the minor occupations of British critics is grumbling about the
shortage of "real" British musicals. But even the grumpiest have been
won over by the music of Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin and the
lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.

British taste is not always in accord with our own. _South Pacific_ was
not the critical success in London that it was in New York. The British
loved _Guys and Dolls_--they had lost their hearts to the late Damon
Runyon in the thirties--but they did not like _Pal Joey_, in which John
O'Hara gave a much more realistic picture of the seamy side of American
life.

But the accent has been on musicals. Very few serious American plays
have successfully invaded London. In this field the traffic seems to be
the other way.

The comics, invariably described in left-wing publications as "American
Horror Comics," have been another medium for the spread of American
culture in Britain. Like the movies, they have their critics, and,
like some movies, they are used by the Communists to demonstrate what
fearful people the Americans are.

The reader will notice that British Communism, although of almost
negligible importance as a political party, is active in promoting
differences between the two nations. The Communists know very well that
the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is
the strongest link in the Western chain; if they can break it, the rest
will be easy.

I have been at pains to point out the issues over which governments and
peoples on both sides of the alliance differ and those aspects of our
national behavior which occasionally worry and concern the British.
It should be emphasized that the areas of ignorance in the British
attitude toward the United States are of minor importance compared to
the ignorance of the average Frenchman or the average Indian. British
misconceptions about the United States can be corrected and Communist
attempts to exploit these misconceptions defeated because the British
public does know something about the United States. This knowledge may
be slight, but it is enough to build on.

Over the years there has been a change in attitude on the part of
young people which I find disturbing. When I first came to England
in the late thirties I encountered a good deal of curiosity about the
political and social aspects of the American system. Young people
wanted to know about American opportunities for education, about
technical schools, about the absence of a class system. Today such
interest as is displayed centers mainly upon the material factors in
the United States.

Perhaps what I encountered nearly twenty years ago was the lingering
afterglow of that period in our history when we stood as a promise and
a hope to the peoples of the world. Certainly many of the egalitarian
aspects of American society admired in pre-war Britain have been slowly
introduced into British society. A cynic might even suggest that they
know us better now. At any rate, I meet fewer young people who are sure
they would like to live in America and be Americans.

Ignorance of the United States lies at the root of many of the
criticisms of our country one hears in Britain. This is being overcome
to some extent by the work of the USIS, but the task is a serious one.
Beyond such obvious difficulties as the shortage of newsprint which
limits the amount that responsible newspapers can print about the
United States, there is another important obstacle to better relations.
This is the fact, that although Americans travel to Britain each year
in tens of thousands, the prospect of the average Briton seeing our
country is remote. The British treasury doles out dollars with a sharp
eye on the gold and dollar reserves, and a large percentage of the
transatlantic travelers are businessmen selling British exports to the
United States. This is something, but it is not enough.

The industrial working class is the most numerous and politically
important in Britain. It is also the least informed about the United
States. Scholarships for Oxford and Cambridge students at Harvard
or Princeton and visiting professorships for English dons do not,
as a rule, help this class. The ideal would be an exchange system
under which hundreds of working-class men and women from Bradford,
Manchester, Liverpool, and the back streets of London were given the
opportunity to see America plain. The English Speaking Union in the
United States and the United Kingdom is attempting to bring this about.

Only through such contact, I believe, could the picture of the United
States built up by some Labor Party politicians be erased. There
remains a dangerous lack of understanding not only of our political
system but of what mass production and greater productivity in the
United States have done for the average workingman here. Newspaper
articles, television series, books help, but it is a thing that must be
felt as well as seen. It can be felt only in the United States.

The attention paid to differences and difficulties should not obscure
the value that Britons place on their relationship with Americans.
Materially, Britain's interest in maintaining the relationship is much
the greater; undoubtedly they need us more than we need them. But here
we must remember the national character of Britain. The British have
been an independent people for a thousand years. Even when the fortunes
of the nation have been at their lowest ebb, the people have been
outspoken in defense of what they considered their rights. The earliest
Continentals who traveled to England lamented the blunt independence of
the yeomen and the absence of subservience among the noisy city crowds.

Some sociologists have concluded that all this has changed and that
the industrial revolution and other social changes have transformed
the British from the rowdiest and most belligerent of nations into
law-abiding conformists. The national boiling-point, they report, is
high.

Certainly a superficial view of the British working class in its high
noon of full employment, security, high wages, and new housing would
seem to confirm this conclusion. Personally, I doubt that the turbulent
passions which sent Britons out to singe the beard of the King of Spain
and to make rude noises when Hitler proposed peace in 1940 are spent.

Phlegmatic, often apathetic, sentimental but not emotional, they are
a people capable of great outbursts of political action. They should
not therefore be considered a people prepared to follow docilely and
blindly where the United States leads. The failure to recognize the
presence in British character of this fundamental, unruly independence
even when it was flourished in their faces is one of the principal
reasons why President Eisenhower and his administration were surprised
by Britain's intervention in Egypt in the autumn of 1956. Granted that
the President was involved in the election campaign, it is mystifying
that a man of his experience in dealing with the British failed to see
the signs pointing toward independent action.

As early as August of that year letters in _The Times_ urged an
independent course for Britain and France in the Middle East. One
letter signed by Julian Amery, then a Conservative back-bench Member
of Parliament, ended with the reflection that if the two countries
followed such a course and took action independently of the United
States, it would not be for the first time. That _The Times_ would
give space to letters of this sort was a sign that the Establishment
recognized the ideas they contained. In September, when the Chancellor
of the Exchequer visited Washington, he made it clear to the most
important of his hosts that Britain would not take the Egyptian seizure
of the Suez Canal lying down--that if this was to be a struggle for
Britain's existence, his country would prefer to go down with the guns
firing and the flags flying. During that same month Sir Anthony Eden
had written to President Eisenhower in terms which to anyone familiar
with British official phraseology said that if Britain did not get a
satisfactory settlement of its difficulties over the Canal through
the United Nations, other action would be necessary. In speech after
speech, especially at the Conservative Party Conference on October
13, the leaders of the government carefully stated that they did not
exclude the use of force as a means of settling the Suez problem.

The British government badly miscalculated the Eisenhower
administration's reaction to intervention in Egypt. It expected
benevolent neutrality from a trusted ally. It got pressure and
criticism. But this miscalculation may have been natural under the
circumstances, for it can be argued that Britain did not expect the
United States administration to be surprised. It had, after all, given
abundant direct and indirect warnings that force might be used as a
last resort. How much of the administration's anger, one wonders,
was based in the realization that it had been told what was going to
happen--if only it had stopped to read again and think?

British diversions from co-operation in policy over Suez or anywhere
else are, to a considerable extent, the result of the circumstances
governing the existence of the United Kingdom--circumstances that are
as different from our own as could be imagined. Here is an island
absolutely dependent on world trade. Westward lies the continental
United States, with a continent's natural resources at its disposal--an
almost completely self-sufficient power. The difference is inescapable
and permanent. We must expect the British to react sharply whenever a
vital part of their trade is endangered. In 1956 the harsh equation was
"Suez equals oil, oil equals British production, British production
equals the existence of the United Kingdom." Likewise, we must expect
the British to expand, within agreed limits of strategic restrictions,
their world trade. This is particularly true of trade with Communist
China.

In this connection we might remember that, to the British, diplomatic
recognition is not a mark of approval, and that if there is a
possibility of dividing the Soviet Union and the Peiping regime, it
can be exploited only through diplomatic channels. Diplomatic attempts
to wean China away from Russia may fail. But they are worth trying.
Can they be tried successfully without the co-operation of both the
United States and the United Kingdom? I think not. In any case, the
task this generation faces of preserving Western freedom in defiance
of the Communist colossi is difficult enough without discarding this
diplomatic weapon.

An alliance flourishes when it is based on realism. Realism involves
knowing your ally and understanding his motives. In war the strategic
reasons for an alliance are laid bare; the motives are there for all
to see. In peace, when international relations are infinitely more
complex, the task of maintaining an alliance is consequently more
difficult. In this chapter I have cited salient aspects of American
political life and government policy which have irritated and angered
the British. The differences over the Suez crisis were the last and
most important of these. That issue generated a great deal of anger,
and some harsh and brutal truths were spoken on both sides. I think
that from the standpoint of the future of the alliance this was a good
thing. It forced the British, I believe, to adopt a more realistic
attitude toward the United States and United States policy, and it will
lead them to take more, not less, diplomatic initiative in the future.

There will be other differences in foreign policy between the two
countries, for differences are inevitable in the relationship between
two parliamentary democracies. Indeed, they are a strength. It is
because the British are an independent, outspoken, hard-headed people
that they are good allies. It is because British governments think for
themselves and enjoy the services of an experienced, incorruptible,
intelligent civil service that their support is welcome and necessary
in the contest with the East.

And we know--at least, we should know--that if the worst comes the
British are stout fighters, ready, once every effort to preserve peace
has failed, to fight with all they have and are.

I carry with me as a talisman the memory of a conversation at Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, during the darkest days of the
war in Korea. An American general officer, a man of the highest
professional qualifications, suggested to a small, intimate group
that, with more and more American power diverted to the Far East, the
Russians might jump in Europe.

"It will be pretty tough for you people," he told a British lieutenant
colonel, an amiable, rather rakish character. "They'll offer you a
chance of getting out. If you don't take it, they'll tell you they'll
blow London and half a dozen other cities off the map. They'll probably
tell the French the same sort of thing. What do you think your people
will do?"

"What do you think we'll do?" the lieutenant colonel answered. "We'll
tell them to go to hell."

Beneath the political bickering, the unrelenting self-criticism, the
pessimism there exists now, as there did in 1940, a fiery spirit. The
British will never be vassals. Nor will they ever be easy allies. But
if this alliance fails, there is little left on which an enduring peace
can be built.




[Illustration]




X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_

 _Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
 six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
 twenty pound ought and six, result misery._

  CHARLES DICKENS

 _It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private
 enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy._

  HAROLD LASKI

[Illustration]


We must now take a closer look at the British economy as it is today.
This is a big subject, one well worth a long book. It is my purpose
in this informal estimate of our ally to sketch the fundamentals of
the present economic situation and to deal briefly with some of the
factors in it. Earlier we have encountered the Trades Union Congress
and the emergence of a new working class. We have seen that Britain is
changing behind the mask of tradition. In this chapter we will see that
the change in the national economy is progressing perhaps even more
rapidly than the change in the structure of society and politics. And,
of course, all three changes are closely related and interdependent.

The British Empire, which half a century ago stood at the apex of its
economic power, was built on coal. Largely because of the extent of her
coal resources, Britain got a head start in the industrial revolution,
which originated in England. An organized coal-mining industry has
existed in Britain for over three hundred years, or three hundred years
longer than in any European country. Not only was there enough coal to
make Britain the world's workshop, but until about 1910 British exports
dominated the world export market. In the peak production year of 1913
the industry produced 287,000,000 tons, exported 94,000,000 tons, and
employed 1,107,000 workers. Contrast these figures with those for 1955:
221,600,000 tons produced, 14,200,000 tons exported, 704,100 workers.

Three centuries of mining means that the majority of the best seams
are worked out. Each year coal has to be mined from deeper and thinner
seams. Each year the struggle to raise productivity becomes harsher.
There are huge workable reserves; one estimate is 43,000,000,000 tons,
which, at the present rate of consumption, is more than enough to last
another two hundred years. But this coal will be increasingly difficult
to mine. Moreover, certain types, such as high-quality coking coal,
will be exhausted long before 2157.

In the reign of King Coal all went well. Britain built up a position in
the nineteenth century which made her the world's leading manufacturer,
carrier, banker, investor, and merchant. By the turn of the century,
however, other nations, notably the United States and Germany, were
challenging this position. Nevertheless, Britain was able to withstand
competition up to the outbreak of World War I through her huge exports
of coal and cotton textiles and through her ability to take advantage
of the general increase in world trade.

Coal and the industrial revolution, it should be remembered, gave
Britain something more than a head start in production: they enabled
her to train the first technical labor force in the world. The traveler
in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia will soon realize that
the British Empire and British influence of half a century ago were
built not on gunboats and redcoats but on the products of British
factories and on the bewhiskered expatriates, many of them Scots, who
tended locomotives in Burma and sawmills in South America. They, too,
as much as the booted and spurred heroes of Kipling, were builders of
empire. This advantage, at least, Britain has not lost. Today she still
possesses a large force of highly skilled labor.

The economic problems that developed into a whirlwind in the forties of
this century first became serious in the years after the close of World
War I. British textiles had to compete in Asia with textile products
from India and Japan which were produced at a much lower cost because
of low wages. Oil and coal from new European mines challenged Britain's
lead in coal exports. At the same period there was a fall in the demand
for many of the heavy industrial products that British factories had
supplied to the rest of the world; locomotives, heavy machinery, cargo
ships. The politico-economic dogma of self-sufficiency developed
in nations that for long had been British customers. They began to
protect their own growing industries with tariffs, quotas, and other
restrictions.

But the effect on the British economy of this decline in exports was
cushioned by income from investments overseas and by a substantial
improvement in the terms of trade. During the twenties and early
thirties British industry began to contract for the first time in
centuries. Unemployment averaged 14 per cent between 1921 and 1939.
By September 1939, however, the economy, stimulated by the armament
program, increased production, and greater industrial investment at
home, began to improve. Britain faced the Second World War on a secure
economic basis. Indeed, there were persuasive gentlemen in the London
of that Indian summer of peace who tried to persuade you that economic
strength alone could win the war.

When Americans think of the effect of World War II on Britain we are
apt to think in terms of bomb damage and ships sunk. Certainly these
were important parts of a generally disastrous picture, but the whole
is much more impressive than the parts.

The inability to continue industrial maintenance and make replacements
under the hammer of war, shipping losses, and bomb damage ran down
the British economy by about £3,000,000,000. At the present rate of
exchange this amounts to $8,400,000,000. The present cost of rebuilding
ships and houses and factories is, of course, infinitely higher due to
the upswing in labor costs and material prices since 1945.

This loss was accompanied by a drastic change in Britain's world
trading position. To begin with, she lost almost all her overseas
assets--those investments which had cushioned the shock of the
falling export market and whose income had largely paid for imports.
The terrible appetite of war--a ship torpedoed, a division lost, a
factory bombed--devoured them. Over £1,000,000,000 worth of overseas
investments ($2,800,000,000 at the current rate of exchange) were
sold to pay for war supplies. Of this amount, £428,000,000 (about
$1,198,400,000) represented investments in the United States and Canada.

Yet even this expenditure of the carefully husbanded investments, the
results of thrift and financial foresight, did not suffice to pay
for nearly six years of war. Britain also accumulated overseas debts
to the amount of £3,000,000,000, or, at current rates of exchange,
$8,400,000,000. When the money was borrowed, the pound sterling was
pegged at $4.03 and the dollar equivalent of the external debt was
closer to $12,000,000,000.

The emphasis on armaments and the priority given arms-producing
industries, the arrears of industrial maintenance and replacement, the
concentration of manpower in the services and industries of national
importance for the winning of the war, and the shortage of shipping all
reduced Britain's export trade during the war years. By 1944 exports
had fallen to less than one third of their 1938 volume.

This meant that, in some cases, nations whose economy had been less
strained by the war were replacing British sellers in these markets.
In other instances, nations long dependent on British exports began to
make their own products. When the British were prepared to return to
normal export trade, the markets were not so extensive as they had been
before the war.

The war affected Britain's financial position in two other respects. At
its end the real value of the gold and dollar reserves of the nation
had been reduced to about one half of the pre-war level. But the
physical destruction of the war had increased Britain's dependence, and
that of other sterling-area nations and other countries, upon supplies
of all kinds from the United States. Yet the dollar earnings by these
countries were not enough to pay for their supplies.

Finally, and perhaps most important from the standpoint of a country
that must live by trade, the terms of trade changed. The price of raw
materials imported into Britain rose sharply after the war. By 1948
about 20 per cent more goods had to be exported than in 1938 to pay for
the same amount of imports.

As a result of these changes in her position, Britain emerged from the
war as an empty-handed victor. The banker of the world was deeply in
debt. The market places of the world were crowded with other nations,
and her own goods were few in number and out of date. Shabby, tired,
undernourished, the island people, not for the first time, began the
long road back.

The road chosen was longer and more arduous than it might have been
because the British, government and people, Socialist and Tory, did
not wish to abandon their position as a world leader. War might have
impoverished them, circumstances might have made them dismiss the maid
and do their own washing up, but to an incurious world they turned a
brisk and confident face. For years the world had recognized that the
British never knew when they were licked. Now, it seemed, they did not
know when they were broke.

They knew, all right. On visits to London during the years I spent
chiefly in Russia and Germany I would meet friends in the services or
the ministries. "We're in a hell of a mess, old chap," they said, "but
we'll work out of it somehow." No one seemed to know just how; but no
one doubted it would be done.

The first problem then--and it is the first problem today--was the
balance of payments. Exports had to be increased quickly, for the terms
of trade continued to be against the United Kingdom. It was in the
years 1946-51 that American aid counted most. Loans from the United
States and Canada, it is estimated, paid for about 20 per cent of the
imports of the United Kingdom between 1946 and 1950.

Simultaneously, the drive to increase exports made headway. The
country, and especially the industrial worker, was, in the modern
jargon, made "export-conscious."

"Export or die"--the slogan may have seemed exaggerated to some, but
it was, and is, an accurate statement of Britain's position. British
exports had recovered their pre-war volume by 1947, only two years
after the end of the war. Three years later they were two-thirds higher
than in 1947. Thereafter, as Germany and Japan began their remarkable
economic recovery, exports rose more slowly. But they did rise, and by
1954 they were 80 per cent higher than in 1938.

The upswing in exports was accompanied by two other processes.
The pattern of industrial production for exports began to change.
Textiles were no longer a dominant export product. Instead, emphasis
shifted to the engineering industries: electric motors, factory
machinery, electronic equipment, precision instruments, chemicals, and
shipbuilding. At the same time, imports--including importation of some
raw materials essential to the export trades--were severely restricted,
and consumer rationing at home directed British production to foreign
markets.

Five years after the war Britain had made great strides toward
recovery. There was in that year a surplus of £300,000,000, or
$840,000,000, on the balance of payments. But the Korean War, which
began in June 1950, was a serious setback for Britain's economy. The
country, resolved to play its part, began to rearm. At the same time
there was a world-wide rush to stock raw materials, and this forced
up the prices of the imports Britain needed for her export trade.
The satisfactory balance of payments in 1950 became a deficit of
£403,000,000 by 1951.

Import prices began to fall after 1951, and in the next three years
there was a balance-of-payments surplus. This recovery was accompanied
by a steady rise both in industrial production and in the real national
product.

The average rate of increase in industrial production from 1946 to
1954 was 5 per cent, while the real national product increased by 3
per cent. The nation used this increased output, first, for exports;
second, to make good the capital losses of the war years by new
investment; and, finally, for rearmament. Those who wonder at the
rocketing German economic recovery after 1949 and the relative slowness
of British economic advance should ponder the fact that in 1950-3
defense expenditure gobbled up _approximately half_ of the British
total output.

The rationing and other restrictions held over from the war held
personal consumption at bay until 1954. Wages rose, but these were
offset by a sharp increase in prices, which by 1952 were about 50 per
cent above those of 1945. After that year, however, earnings rose more
rapidly than prices. With the end of wartime controls after 1952 the
standard of living, especially that of the industrial working class,
rose perhaps more rapidly than it had ever done before.

The increase in production, the end of rationing, the rises in wages
and prices, and the boost in internal consumption all took place
against a background of full employment. In the United Kingdom
unemployment averaged less than 2 per cent of the working population in
1946-54.

This, then, is the short story of British recovery since the war.
By the summer of 1956 the Central Statistical Office could announce
that from the beginning of 1946 through the end of 1955 the national
output of goods and services had increased in volume by one third.
Reckoned in monetary value, the increase was even greater: the figure
for 1946 was £8,843,000,000 ($24,480,400,000), while for 1956 it was
£16,639,000,000 ($46,589,200,000). The difference between the increase
in value and the increase in production is due to the continuous rise
in prices since 1946.

These are impressive figures. But no one in authority in Britain
believes that the nation can rest on them. The double problem of
maintaining exports abroad and defeating inflation at home remains.

The two are closely related. In 1950 Britain had grabbed 26 per cent of
the world market for manufactured goods. German, Japanese, and other
competition has now reduced the British share to about 20 per cent, the
pre-war figure. To maintain it, Britain must continue the export drive,
and this, in turn, involves the attack on inflation.

Inflation began at the time when the British people were emerging from
years of war and post-war austerity. There was more money, and suddenly
there was plenty to buy as one by one the controls on raw materials,
building licenses, food, and clothing disappeared. By 1955 cars and
other products that should have gone for export were being sold in bulk
in Britain, and gasoline was being imported for them. Industries that
should have been almost totally devoted to export trades were producing
for a lucrative home market.

The "squeeze" applied by the Conservative government early in 1956
to halt the buying boom is not, as so many Britons hope, a temporary
affair. Until British industry can increase its production and adjust
itself to the demands of world-wide competition, the country will have
to restrain its home purchases in the interests of overseas sales. The
preservation of the present standard of living depends directly on
exports. If this hard fact is rejected by the British people, then the
economy will deteriorate rapidly.

Those interested in the future of Britain, both Americans and British,
have been looking at the nation's industry for a decade and sadly
shaking their heads. It is too traditional, it is unenterprising, its
workers don't work as hard as the Germans or the Japanese, it is
restricted by the trade unions or the employers, monopolies and trade
rings stifle it. There is a little truth in each of these accusations.
But if all were true or even one completely true, how is the sharp
increase in volume of production and the general economic recovery to
be explained?

Early in 1956, about eleven years after the last Allied bomber flew
over the Ruhr, German steel production outstripped British steel
production. This caused a good deal of "viewing with alarm" in Britain,
much of it by people who failed to realize that before the war Germany
yearly produced about five million more tons of steel than Britain.
The health of the British economy today does not rely primarily on its
output of basic products such as steel or coal but on the nation's
ability to sell its manufactured products.

If the number of employees is taken as a criterion, the most important
of these manufacturing industries are: (1) engineering, shipbuilding,
and electrical goods, with 1,695,000 employees; (2) motor and other
vehicles, 934,000; (3) textiles, 898,000; (4) food, drink, and tobacco,
654,000; (5) precision instruments and other metal goods, 531,000; (6)
clothing, 524,000; (7) metal manufactures, 519,000; (8) manufacture
of wood and cork and miscellaneous manufacturing industries, 472,000;
(9) paper and printing, 445,000; (10) chemicals and allied industries,
402,000.

All of these industries contribute to the export drive, including food,
drink, and tobacco. There has been no overwhelming demand for such
Northern delicacies as toad-in-the-hole or Lancashire hot pot from
British markets, but the demand for Scotch whisky seems to be holding
up reasonably well.

These industries are the meat and potatoes of the British economy.
Since the war there has been a steady increase both in production
and productivity (output per man in industry) in these industries.
Fortunately for Britain, the greatest rises in over-all production have
taken place in the engineering-shipbuilding-electrical-goods group, the
vehicles group, and the chemicals group.

Productivity was a more serious problem. Lack of maintenance and
capital investment during the war, antiquated machinery, the
understandable physical weariness of a labor force that had been
working at top speed since 1939 all contributed to a relatively low
rate of output per man year in industry compared with the United States.

In 1948 the Labor government took an important step to meet the problem
when it formed the Anglo-American Productivity Council. Its goal was to
increase productivity in Britain through study of manufacturing methods
in the United States. Teams representing management, technicians, and
shop workers went to the United States to study American methods. They
returned to boost British productivity.

The effort did not stop there. An independent body, the British
Productivity Council, was established in 1952 to continue the work.
Represented on it are the British Employers' Confederation, the
Federation of British Industries, the Trades Union Congress, the
Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the National Union of
Manufacturers, and the nationalized industries. Under the aegis of
the Council, Local Productivity Committees have been formed and the
exchange of information and visits between groups from industrial firms
have been encouraged.

The Council is a good example of the British approach to a national
problem in modern times. The nation's difficulties have gradually,
but not entirely, eased the old enmities between some employers and
workers. Aware of the extreme seriousness of the situation, they are
working together to boost productivity, and they are making headway.
Employer-worker consultation is becoming the rule. When the rule is
broken by either side there is trouble.

The increase in productivity has been steady. Taking 1948 as the base
year with a figure of 100, output per man year in industry rose to 105
in 1949. Save for 1952, when there was a slight relapse, the figure has
improved steadily ever since.

Production has shown a corresponding rise. The general index of
industrial production, using 1948 as the base year of 100, rose from
114 in 1952 to 121 in 1953 and then jumped to 136 for 1955. But
production leveled off in 1956. As that year ended, the expectation
was that 1957 would see a new rise in production as the capital
investment of the previous five years began to show results.

These figures are one answer to questions often asked abroad: "Why
don't the British boost production? Why don't they work?" The answer is
that they have boosted production and they are working. Early in 1957
the factory where Jaguar cars are made was almost entirely destroyed
by fire. Great efforts by both management and labor put the factory
back into production two weeks later. Production and productivity are
rising fastest, of course, in the new industries such as electronics.
But the economy is burdened by elderly industries such as coal-mining,
where extra effort by labor and management cannot, because of existing
equipment and conditions, produce dividends in production as they would
elsewhere.

Britain's long predominance in both industry and commerce, especially
during the last half of the nineteenth century, fostered a lack of
enterprise and lethargy in management that is highly unsuitable to the
nation's present economic situation. This attitude lingered until the
period after the last war when the situation became plainly desperate.
Changes of styling and packaging abroad failed to impress British
business. "We make a much better product than some of this flashy
foreign stuff," one was told loftily. "Let them have their fancy
wrappings."

Memories of the golden days of the last century also encouraged a
conservative attitude toward change in business methods or the routine
of production. Some of the larger industries, however, emerged from
the war intent on drastic changes, and others, less progressive, were
forced to change by the increased competition for export markets and by
the new necessity of using the restricted quantities of raw materials
to greatest advantage.

Industrial engineering, including work study, work simplification,
plant layout, and planned maintenance, has become a primary concern of
industrial management. Many of the managers--the managerial class is
about half a million strong--are much more interested in new methods of
industry than are the workers. Any innovation that seems to disturb
the happy condition of full employment and high wages can provoke
discontent among the workers. The more progressive unions are doing
their best to explain and advocate change. It is in the middle ranks
of labor's officer class, the ranks most interested in the emotional
support of "the lads," that the strongest resistance to change is
located.

Management in industry, therefore, is beginning to assume some of the
importance and standing that it attained long ago in the United States.
Facilities for training in management are increasing, although the
majority of today's managers never received any special training. Trade
unions, employers' associations, and individual concerns are pressing
forward with training schemes.

There is a relationship between this development and the arrival
in British society of the new middle class. Many of the leaders of
this class are in management work in industry and commerce. As their
position is solidified by Britain's increasing reliance on the export
industries they serve, their social and economic importance is bound to
increase. In the past their social position has been well below that of
the lawyers, doctors, soldiers, and civil servants who were the elite
of the old middle class. That, too, is changing.

Gross fixed capital formation recently has been at about 14 per cent of
gross national expenditure. By 1954 its volume was 17 per cent above
that of 1938 and about 30 per cent greater than in 1948.

In 1951 and 1952 the government responded to the pressing needs of
defense and exports by taking measures to curtail certain kinds of
investment. In 1953 and 1954 the policy was reversed, and incentives
for investment were written into the Budget. But the wave of home
buying in 1955 made it necessary for the government again to impose
restraints on investment. In particular it sought moderation in
capital outlay for municipal and local building and improvements and a
deceleration of investment programs in private industry.

These and other actions taken at that time were the result of the
Conservative government's preoccupation with the balance of payments,
the nation's gold and dollar reserves, the inflationary trend in the
national economy, and the need for investment and expansion in the
export industries. These objectives will dominate the economic approach
of any government, Socialist or Tory, that achieves power in Britain in
the foreseeable future.

British industry has many problems of finance, of production and
productivity, of management. But to an outsider it appears that the
gravest problem of all is the indulgence by the two main partners in
industry, labor and management, in restrictive practices. By preventing
the most effective use of labor, technical ability, or materials, or
by reducing the incentive for such use, these practices gravely damage
the industrial efficiency of the country. Restrictive practices seem to
many competent observers a far greater danger to the British economy
than strikes.

It is important to understand that such practices are almost as
prevalent among management as among labor. Each group has the same
basic motivation. They seek a reasonably stable economic life free from
the strains and stresses of competition. The psychological explanation
may be unspoken desire to return to the old easy days of Britain's
unquestioned economic supremacy.

The employers' restrictive practices are less widely advertised than
those of the workers. Their classic form is the price-fixing agreement
which insures that even the least efficient manufacturing firms will
have a profit margin. To maintain the price-fixing system, employers
maintain private investigators and courts of inquiry; they can and do
discipline the maverick who breaks out of the herd.

One expression of the employers' approach is the tender of contracts
identical to the last farthing. Britain in 1955 lost the contract
for the Snowy River hydroelectric plant in Australia largely because
the eight British firms among the twenty that submitted tenders all
submitted exactly the same amount. In New Zealand nineteen out of
twenty-six companies bidding for an electric-cable contract submitted
identical figures.

The practice is embedded in British industry. Legislation to combat it
was introduced into the House of Commons in 1956, but objective experts
on the subject believed the legislation fell far short of the drastic
action necessary.

Restrictive practices are only too evident in the larger field of
relations between the worker and the boss. The importance of problems
in this area of conflict is multiplied by their political implications
and by the fact that Britain, like other countries, is entering a new
period of industrial development. The industrial use of nuclear energy
for power and the advent of automation can produce a new industrial
revolution in the homeland of the first industrial revolution. But
this cannot improve the British economy--indeed, the revolution cannot
really get under way as a national effort--without greater co-operation
between organized labor and employers and managers.

Throughout this book there have been references to organized labor and
to the Trades Union Congress. Now we encounter them in the special
field of industrial relations.

Organized labor in Britain is big. There are 23,000,000 people in
civil employment, and of these over 9,000,000, nearly the whole of
the industrial labor force, are union members. They have an enormous
influence on the economic policy of any British government; they are,
according to Sir Winston Churchill, "the fourth arm of the Estate"; in
the view of Mr. Sam Watson, the tough, capable leader of the Durham
miners, they are "the largest single organism in our society."

But organized labor is not a single force, an orderly coalition of
unions. It is an extraordinary mixture. Politically some of its leaders
are well to the right of the left-wing Tories although they vote
Labor. One important union and a number of smaller ones are dominated
by Communists. The Transport and General Workers Union has 1,300,000
members; the National Amalgamated Association of Nut and Bolt Makers
has 30. Some unions are extremely democratic in composition. Others
are petty dictatorships. Many are not unions in name. If you are
civil-service clerk, for instance, or even a member in good standing
of the Leeds and District Warp Dressers, Twisters and Kindred Trades,
you join an association.

The Trades Union Congress is the most powerful voice in British labor.
Only 186 of about 400 unions are affiliated with it, but as these
186 include almost all the larger ones, the TUC represents nearly
8,000,000, a majority of the country's union members.

The outsider's idea of the typical trade-unionist is a horny-handed
individual in a cloth cap and a shabby "mac." But there are 1,500,000
white-collar workers, including 500,000 civil servants, among the
unionists affiliated with the TUC.

The tendency of the white-collar workers to affiliate with the TUC
probably will continue. In March of 1956 the London County Council
Staff Association decided to apply for affiliation. We can expect
that the clerical workers in this type of union will exert increasing
influence within the TUC and upon its Council. The TUC's claim to
represent the industrial working class thus is being watered down by
the admission of the white-collar workers' unions. As this class of
worker generally believes that the industrial workers' pay has risen
disproportionately and that inflation has hurt the office worker more
than it has the industrial worker, the new composition of the TUC may
produce sharp internal differences. At any rate, the old position of
the TUC as the spokesman only for the industrial worker is a thing of
the past.

The TUC is a powerful voice. But it is only a voice. It has great
responsibilities and little formal power. It can, for instance,
attempt to moderate demands for higher wages and urge restraint, but
it cannot prevent any union from pressing such demands. The TUC can
advise and conciliate when a strike begins, but it cannot arbitrarily
halt one. When two member unions are in a dispute--and such disputes
can seriously damage both the national economy and labor's position in
British society--the TUC can intervene, but too often its intervention
is futile. Each union is self-governing. The TUC's influence,
nonetheless, is enormous. The restraint shown by the major unions
after the war and during the war on the question of wage increases
was largely due to the influence of the TUC. The general growth of
responsibility on the part of many unions can also be attributed, to a
great extent, to the missionary work of the TUC.

In recent years the General Council of the TUC has moved toward
assuming a stronger position in the field of industrial strikes. It has
tried to show the workers that the strike is a two-edged sword that
wounds both worker and employer. The TUC maintains that the strike,
the workers' great weapon, should not be used indiscriminately because
of the damage a strike by one union can do to other unions and to the
national economy.

At the 1955 TUC conference the General Council won acceptance of a
proposal that it intervene in any case of a threatened strike when
negotiations between the employers and the unions seem likely to break
down, throwing the members of other unions out of work or endangering
their wages, hours, and conditions. This is a significant step forward.
Formerly the TUC could move only after negotiations had broken down and
a deadlock had been reached. In other words, the TUC acted only at the
moment when both sides were firmly entrenched.

But this advance does not improve organized labor's position in regard
to the problem of restrictive practices, a problem that is as serious
as strikes or threats of strikes.

The _Daily Mirror_ of London, that brash, vigorous tabloid which is
the favorite newspaper of the industrial working class, published an
inquiry into the trade unions in 1956. Its authors, Sydney Jacobson and
William Connor, who conducts the column signed "Cassandra," traced the
origin of restrictive practices back to 1811, when bands of workers
known as the Luddites broke into lace and stocking factories and
smashed the machinery. "The suspicion toward new methods has never
entirely died out in this country," they wrote, "and although sabotage
of machinery is rare (but not unknown) the protests have taken a new
direction--the slowing down of output by the men themselves and the
development of a whole series of practices that cut down the production
of goods and services."

Any reader of the British press can recall dozens of instances of
restrictive practices by labor. One famous one concerned the floating
grain elevator at Hull, an east-coast seaport. This elevator, which
cost £200,000 ($560,000), was kept idle for two months because the
Transport and General Workers Union insisted that it should be worked
by twice as many men as the Transport Commission thought necessary. The
Transport Commission, incidentally, represented a nationalized industry.

And there was the union that fined a milkman £2 for delivering milk
before 7:30 a.m.

The unions are quick and brutal in their punishment of those who break
their rules. Indeed, today, when there is full employment and the
unions generally enjoy a prosperity and power undreamed of by their
founders, they are more malicious than in the old days when they were
fighting for their rights. The principal weapon against an offending
worker is to "send him to Coventry." No one speaks to him; he eats
and walks home alone. Ronald Hewitt, a crane-driver, endured this for
a year. He had remained at work, obeying his union's rules, when his
fellow workers, who belonged to another union, went out on strike.
Hewitt was a person of unusual mental toughness. Another worker sent to
Coventry committed suicide.

Many of these punishments are the outcome of situations in which
unofficial strikes send out the workers. Those who remain and who are
punished are accused of being "scabs" because they obey the union's
rules.

All union leaders publicly acknowledge the great importance of
increased productivity in British industry. But the methods of
boosting productivity often seem to some union leaders to strike at
the principles for which they have fought so long. For instance, an
increase in output is regarded by the veterans solely as a traditional
means of increasing the profits of the employers. Moreover, increases
in productivity often involve the introduction of new machines and
layoffs for some workers. To the short-sighted, appeals for greater
productivity thus seem calls to smash the job security that is the
fetish of the industrial working class. This sort of union leader
just does not seem to grasp, or to want to grasp, the principle that
increased productivity is a general good benefiting workers, employers,
and unions.

Efficiency is not the sole god of British industry, as is evident when
one studies the weird system known as "demarcation" in the shipbuilding
industry. To install a port light under this system requires the
labor of a shipwright to mark the position of the light, a caulker to
indicate and make the hole for the light, another driller to make the
surrounding holes, and another caulker to fix the bolts and chain. In
addition, a foreman for each of the trades supervises the operation.
Interunion disputes arising out of such unnecessarily complicated
operations frequently result in a stoppage of work and a delay in the
filling of export contracts.

The most alarming example occurred at Cammell Laird's, a shipbuilding
company, in 1955 and lasted until well into 1956. New ships were being
built--for dollars--and the strike began over a difference between
woodworkers and sheet-metal workers. The new vessels were to have
aluminum facing in the insulation. Formerly the woodworkers had done
this sort of work, and they claimed rights over the new job. But the
sheet-metal workers said that, as aluminum was metal, the job was
theirs. The two groups and management finally reached an agreement.
Then the drillers of the Shipwrights' Union entered the affair and a
new strike developed.

The construction of the ships was delayed for six months and more. The
ability of Cammell Laird's or other British shipyards to offer foreign
buyers a firm date for completion of ships became a matter of doubt.
About 400 workers were dismissed as redundant. About 200 strikers found
work elsewhere. Thousands of other jobs were jeopardized. There was not
the slightest indication that those who inspired the strike took much
account of its effects on their country's future.

As a result of the application of the demarcation principle in
shipyards--you drill holes in wood, we drill holes in aluminum--wage
costs are often as much as 6 per cent higher than normal.

The innate conservatism of union leaders and the rank and file in
shipyards, industrial plants, and factories has been proof against the
missionary work of critics extolling the far different approach of
American labor. The leaders are often unmoved by figures which show
that increased productivity by the American labor force has resulted
in a far greater national consumption. In many cases neither the union
leader nor the union member will accept the idea that new machines and
new methods mean more efficient production, lower costs, and higher
wages.

British union leaders often counter that the American worker has no
memory of unemployment and depression. This is, of course, untrue.
Indeed, in many instances political and economic it seems that British
labor has made too much of its experiences, admittedly terrible, in the
depression of two decades ago. American labor, by eagerly accepting
new processes and machines, has attempted to insure itself against the
recurrence of a depression. British labor has not.

Industrial disputes affect the British economy's ability to meet the
challenge of the new industrial revolution. Disputes between union
and union are especially important. In 1955 there were three national
strikes. All were complicated by interunion friction.

Another complicating factor in industrial relations is the slow
disappearance, under the pressure of increased mechanization, of the
system of wage differentials in British industry. These differentials
represented a reasonable difference between the wages of skilled and
unskilled workers. With their disappearance, skilled workers in one
industry have found themselves earning less money than unskilled
workers in another. One cause is the ability of the big "general"
unions to win wage increases. Another is the practice of demanding wage
increases solely on the basis of the rising cost of living.

Naturally the disappearance of differentials has led to hot disputes
among workers and unions. In this atmosphere it is difficult for either
the union leaders or the employers to urge increased productivity
and harder work. "Everyone is furious with everyone else," an
industrialist in the Midlands said. "They start with me, but they are
pretty mad at each other, too."

In this interminable war between labor and management, the former
wields a weapon of enormous potency--the strike. Labor acknowledges
its disadvantages, but the right to strike is fiercely guarded. The
whispered suggestion that strikes might be made illegal unites the
labor movement as does nothing else. Labor needs the strike as its
ultimate weapon: the hydrogen bomb of British industrial relations. And
because of the peculiar economic conditions in Britain, the employer
finds himself almost weaponless. He can still dismiss an unsatisfactory
employee, if he has a good reason and can convince the employee's union
that it _is_ a good reason. But dismissal does not mean much in an era
of full employment.

Right-wing critics on both sides of the Atlantic have contended for a
decade that British economic difficulties are rooted in strikes and
other industrial disturbances. There is something in this, but, as H.L.
Mencken would have said, not much.

From 1946 through 1954 the days lost through strikes in Britain ranged
from a low of 1,389,000 in 1950 to a high of 2,457,000 in 1954. Due
to strikes in the newspaper and railroad industries and on the docks,
1955 was an exceptionally bad year: 3,794,000 working days were lost.
The figures look big, and of course it would have been much better
for Britain if they were half as large. But let's put them into
perspective. The figure for 1955, admittedly high, represents a loss of
less than one day's work per man in every five years' employment. The
loss to production through industrial accidents is eight times as high.

Both sides know that a strike is a costly business: costly to labor, to
management, to the union, to the nation. In many cases the threat of a
strike has been enough to force the employers to give way. Inevitably,
the higher cost of production resulting from the new wage rates is
passed on to the consumer. The merry-go-round of rising prices, rising
wages, and rising costs spins dizzily onward. Overseas the buyer who is
choosing between a Jaguar or a Mercedes finds that the price of the
former has suddenly risen, so he buys the German car rather than the
British one. This is what the economists mean when they warn British
labor and industry about pricing themselves out of the export market.

As we have seen, the industrial worker is doing pretty well in Britain,
even if the rise in prices is taken into consideration. The average
weekly earnings for all male adult workers, according to the records
kept by the Ministry of Labor, show a rise from £3 9_s._ 0_d._ in
1938 to £10 17_s._ 5_d._ in 1955--an increase of 215 per cent. The
coal-miners who were earning £3 2_s._ 10_d._ in 1938 are now earning a
weekly wage of £13 18_s._ 6_d._ The figure does not represent wealth
by American standards, for it amounts to approximately $38.99. But it
is high pay by British standards, and when the low cost of subsidized
housing and the comparatively low cost of food are taken into account
it will be seen that the British miner is living very well.

The miner's view is that he does a dirty, dangerous job, that he has
never been well paid before, and that if a union does not exist to win
pay rises for its members, what good is it? The miners and the union
members in the engineering industry belong to strong unions able to
win wage increases by threats of a strike. Once these increases are
granted, other smaller unions clamor for their share of wage rises. The
merry-go-round takes another turn.

Government attempts to urge restraint, through the TUC, upon the unions
customarily fall afoul of the snag that each union believes that it
is a special case and that although other unions can postpone their
demands for higher wages until next year, it cannot. So one union
makes a move and the whole business begins again. If the increase is
not granted, there is a strike or a threat of a strike. The national
economy suffers, class antagonism increases, and export production is
delayed. For such is the interdependence of the British industrial
machine and so great is the drive for exports that any industrial
dispute that reaches the strike stage inevitably affects exports.

A modern strike is like a modern war. No one wins and everyone loses.
A classic case is the Rolls-Royce strike of 1955, which involved not
only employers and union labor but, eventually, the Roman Catholic
Church and the Communist Party. The cause of the strike was a conflict
between restrictive practices and a stubborn workman named Joseph
McLernon, who worked at the Rolls-Royce factory at Blantyre in Scotland
as a polisher of connecting rods.

The workers in Joe's shop feared that, in view of reduced work, some of
their number might be let out. So they agreed to share their work by
limiting bonus earnings to 127 per cent of the basic rate. McLernon,
however, refused to limit his overtime. He polished as long and as
hard as ever and refused the assistance of another worker. For this,
McLernon was reprimanded by his union, the General Iron Fitter's
Association.

Joe had been working for Rolls-Royce for twelve years. The firm is
considered a good employer. But its managers were men of conviction.
They objected to the union picking on Joe and said so. Three months
later the union expelled McLernon.

Enter the Communists with many an agonizing cry about the solidarity
of labor. They demanded that Rolls-Royce fire McLernon on the grounds
that he no longer belonged to the union. The employers refused, and
immediately all the other polishers stopped work. Joe kept right on. By
the end of the day the entire factory labor force of 600 men was out on
strike.

The Amalgamated Engineering Union's local branch then entered the
picture. After a few days another 7,500 workers at the Hillington and
East Kilbride factories had struck.

Was it a strike? Certainly, said the General Iron Fitter's Association.
The Electrical Trades Union, dominated by Communists, recognized
the strike as official in accordance with its rule of recognizing
all strikes involving electricians as official until they are
declared otherwise. The Amalgamated Engineering Union, after much
soul-searching, decided to back the strike and approved strike pay
for its members. Negotiations between the Employers' Federation and a
committee representing the various unions got nowhere.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow then issued a pastoral letter
warning the workers against Communism. McLernon is a Catholic. But so
were many of the workers who wanted him fired.

The strike dragged on for seven weeks. The strikers lost over £700,000
($1,960,000) in wages. By the time the strike was over, no one on
the strikers' side could disentangle the objectives of the various
groups that had called it. Rolls-Royce export contracts were delayed.
The Royal Air Force failed to get delivery on time of some important
machines. Other industries also involved in the export trade and in
national defense were slowed down. The unions had maintained solidarity
at a tremendous cost. But when the strike collapsed, Joe McLernon was
still at his job, polishing away. He alone could be termed a winner.
Rolls-Royce, the unions, industry, and the nations were losers.

The Communist intervention in the Rolls-Royce strike symbolized its
current role in Britain. This is to win control of key positions in the
British unions so that the Communist Party will be able to paralyze
British industry in the event of an international crisis or a war. To
achieve this ultimate objective, the Communists obviously intend to
establish a stranglehold on the communications and defense industries.

This is the real Communist danger in Britain. Active political
campaigning by the Communist Party has been fumbling, misdirected,
and notably unsuccessful. Neither the old colonel from Cheltenham
who classes the sprightly dons of the Labor Party with "those damned
Bolshies" nor the Bible Belt Congressman who confuses British Socialist
politicians with Russian Communists is on the right track. The danger
of Communism in Britain lies in the unions. So does the defense against
the danger.

The pattern of Communist success is uneven. Communists lead the
Electrical Trades Union, ninth-largest in the country, with a
membership of about 215,000. Because electricity is everywhere in
modern industry the union's members are everywhere. And although
probably not more than one in every sixty members of the ETU is a
member of the Communist Party, the party completely runs the union.

Here is a curious sidelight on Communist methods. The ETU is weak
financially, perhaps the poorest of the ten largest unions. But it
spends money freely on "education." The ETU has its own Training
College at Esher, where its more ambitious members can be trained to
further the interests of the Communist Party and to silence the voices
of critics and doubters. Although the non-Communist members of the ETU
consider the college as a valuable device for the advancement of the
worker, the institution plainly is a training school for Communists and
their creatures in their prolonged war against the British economy.

One of the basic concepts of British Socialism is the solidarity of
the working class. Acceptance of this concept makes it difficult for
the industrial worker to think of the Communist, who comes from the
same town, speaks with the same accent, wears the same clothes, as an
enemy. There is a pathetic ingenuousness about workers who try to tell
the visitor that the Communists "are just the same sort of blokes as us
except they've got a different political idea."

The _Daily Mirror_ team in its portrayal of the trade unions devoted a
chapter to "The Communist Challenge." Significantly, a large part of
the chapter provided an incisive and illuminating illustration of just
how the Communists move to gain control of a union.

Where else are the Communists strong? They are in control in some areas
of the National Union of Mineworkers. Arthur Horner, the Secretary of
the Union, is a Communist. But they are being fought hard in the NUM by
men like Sam Watson, who heads its Durham region.

The connection in the Communist mind between the control of the NUM and
the ETU is obvious. Control of these two unions would enable Communists
to halt the flow of coal and electric power to Britain's factories. Not
much more is needed to cripple a nation's economy.

But the Communists press on. They establish cells in the aircraft
industry. They work industriously at fomenting trouble on the
docks, especially in the ports--such as London, Liverpool, and
Glasgow--through which most of the exports pass. Already the threat to
block coal and power can be augmented with a threat to halt defense
production and exports. It is improbable that the Communists are now
powerful enough to carry their program to a triumphant conclusion. But
they are on their way.

How do they work? Very much as they do elsewhere in Europe. In Britain,
as in Germany or Italy or France, the Communists care very little
about better pay or better working conditions for union members. Their
objective is power, power that will enable them to push the interests
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And, to repeat, they have
learned that for them power in Britain is obtainable only through
control of the unions and not through Parliament.

The Communists try to establish cells in every important factory in
Britain. These cells maintain contact with the district secretary of
the Communist Party, who knows from the cell exactly what sort of work
the factory is doing. Little wonder that Soviet visitors are incurious
about the details of British production when they are shown British
factories. The information obviously is safely filed in Moscow.

When an industrial dispute develops in a factory, the Communists seek
to widen the area of dispute and to involve as many unions as possible.
They also do their best to bring the recognized non-Communist leaders
of organized labor into disrepute. One method is to organize support
for demands that the Communists know the management cannot accept.
When a strike organized on this basis fails, the Communists point out
to the union members that the leadership is weak and hint that a more
"dynamic"--i.e., Communist--direction would benefit the union.

The Communist drive to break the power of the unions and thus to
spread industrial discontent is assisted by the character of some
union leaders. In many instances leaders are elected to hold their
jobs for life, and after years of power they become dictatorial. It
is a favorite Communist charge that the union bosses are "in" with the
employers, and that as long as their jobs are safe they will do nothing
to upset the present situation.

In the trade unions, as elsewhere in British society, the war alliance
with the Soviet Union inspired sympathy with the people of Russia
and admiration for their resistance to the Nazis. These sentiments
altered under the impact of the cold war, and they altered faster at
the top levels of the labor movement than anywhere else. The Trades
Union Congress in 1948 attacked Communist activities in the unions in
a pamphlet called _Defend Democracy_ and followed this with another
pamphlet, _Tactics of Disruption_. In 1949 the TUC quitted the World
Federation of Trade Unions, which is dominated by the Communists, and
helped establish the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
A year later the TUC barred Communists and fascists as delegates to the
annual conference of Trades Councils.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the TUC strove to explain the true nature of
the Communist challenge to free unions, and to emphasize the refusal
of the Communists to accept democratic principles in the unions or
anywhere else.

All this has had some effect, but not enough. The TUC has thus far
failed to shake the average industrial worker out of his lethargy. Safe
in the security arising from full employment and high wages, he does
not take the Communist challenge seriously. And now that many of the
basic objectives of the labor movement have been won, he does not work
so hard to protect them as he did to win them.

In this atmosphere Communist successes are inevitable. For it is the
members of a Communist cell in a union or a factory who are prepared
to talk all night at a meeting, to vote solidly as a bloc in support
of one Communist candidate while the non-Communists divide their votes
among three or four candidates. In many cases the non-Communists will
not even turn out to vote--it is too much trouble, especially when they
can watch the "telly" or go to the dog races.

The official leadership of the unions faces a formidable task. It
must first educate the rank and file on the true nature of Communism.
After that, it must organize anti-Communist action in the unions. Here
they encounter a real obstacle in the minds of the rank and file. In
the past, reaction in Britain and elsewhere has lumped Communists,
Socialists, and trade-unionists together. To many a unionist,
anti-Communism seems, at first inspection, to be an employers' trick to
break the solidarity of the working classes. Of course the Communists
do all they can to popularize and spread this erroneous idea.

The Communists in Britain seem to have been moderately successful in
establishing themselves as a national rather than an international
force. When Frank Foulkes, the General President of the Electrical
Trades Union and a member of the Communist Party, asserted: "This
country means more to me than Russia and all the rest of the world put
together," few challenged this obvious insincerity.

We must accept, then, that Communism within the trade unions is a
far more serious threat to the welfare of Britain than Communism as
a political party. It is on hand to exacerbate all the difficulties
in the field of industrial relations which have arisen and will arise
during a change from obsolete economic patterns to the new patterns by
which Britain must live.

The introduction of automation--the use of machines to superintend the
work of other machines--and of nuclear energy for industrial power are
two of the principal adjustments that British industry must make. Each
will involve labor layoffs and shifts in working population. These are
important and difficult processes, and with the Communists on hand to
paint them in the darkest colors there will have to be common sense,
tolerance, and good will on the part of both management and labor. In
particular, the rank and file of British industry must be made aware
how important the changes are to the average worker and his family.
There is little use in publishing pamphlets, however admirable, if
the man for whom they are intended will not stir from in front of the
television set.

A comparison of some of the long-range economic plans laid down by
successive governments, Socialist and Tory, with the general attitude
of the man in the street leads to the conclusion that, whereas
government has been "thinking big," the governed have, in the main,
been "thinking small." There is in Britain little recognition of or
admiration for the truly impressive program for industrial use of
nuclear energy. By 1965 Britain expects to have nineteen nuclear power
stations in operation. These will be capable of generating between
5,000 and 6,000 megawatts, or about a third of the annual requirement
for generating capacity. It is estimated that the operation of these
nineteen stations can save the country eighteen million tons of coal
each year.

In addition to this basic program, the Atomic Energy Authority will
build six more reactors to produce plutonium for military purposes and
power for civil purposes. The total cost of the basic program alone
will be about £400,000,000 ($1,120,000,000) a year in the early 1960's.

The leaders of both Conservative and Labor parties believe that the
program is vital to Britain. Indeed, the foresight, imagination, and
ambition of the men at the top on both sides is one of the reasons why
the British economy, despite all its present weaknesses and future
difficulties, is a good bet to pull through. What is lacking is the
ability of any leader or party to evoke from the country the energetic
response necessary to meet and defeat the weaknesses and difficulties.

One instance of this lethargy on the part of either employers or
the industrial working class is their failure to respond to wider
educational advantages, especially in the field of technical knowledge.
Recognizing the necessity for greater technical education, the
government intends to spend £100,000,000 ($280,000,000) on technical
education from 1956 to 1961. Will the government and the people get
their money's worth in the present atmosphere?

Industrial research is on a much smaller scale in Britain than in the
United States. For years British industries thought it was cheaper
to buy patents abroad than to do their own research. As a result,
British technicians were lured abroad. Even today many industries are
indifferent if not openly hostile to the idea of "expensive" industrial
research.

The attitude of the new working class to education, technical or
otherwise, has been described earlier in this book. The boys, in the
eyes of their parents, need no more schooling than that given them
before they can leave school and go to work in the factory. The girls
need a little more if they are to graduate into the ranks of clerical
workers, but many girls, attracted by the independence offered by jobs
in mill or factory, leave school with their brothers.

Let me sum up some conclusions about the British economy:

 _The drive for exports is not a passing economic phase but a permanent
 condition. If wages and prices cannot be held down, Britain will be
 priced out of her markets, and the standard of living of the working
 class and of all other classes will fall._

 _The ability of the country to meet the adjustments made necessary
 by the revolution in the sources of industrial power and by the
 introduction of new industrial techniques is gravely endangered by
 the restrictive practices of both employers and labor, by interunion
 bickering often arising from these practices, and by the prolonged and
 vicious Communist attack on the trade-union structure._

 _Neither among the middle class nor among the working class is there
 sufficient awareness of the critical situation in which Britain finds
 herself._

This is a somber picture. It is relieved, I think, by our knowledge
that the British are a surprising people. They are going through a
period of change in their society and of adjustment to their society's
place in the comity of nations. The very fact that they are changing
argues for them. The Britain of 1938 could not exist in the modern
world. The Britain of 1958 can be at the top.

Granted the indifference of the working class to politics and its
fierce reaction against anything that seems to threaten its newly won
ease, granted the middle class's penchant for the past, its out-worn
ideas--these are still a great people, tough, energetic, at heart
politically mature. And they believe in themselves perhaps more than
they are willing to admit. Their character, more than coal or sea power
or fortuitous geographical circumstances, made them great in the past.
It can keep them great in the future.




[Illustration]




XI. _The British Character and Some Influences_

 _I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from
 vice._

  SAMUEL JOHNSON

 _I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at
 Hurlingham should be refined and polite while a rat-catching match in
 Whitechapel is low._

  T.H. HUXLEY

[Illustration]


Obviously there is great deal more to British society than political
and economic problems, although a casual visitor might not think so.
Visiting pundits find themselves immersed in the profundities of the
Foreign Office or following the ideological gymnastics of Socialist
intellectuals. Consequently, they depart firmly convinced that the
British are a sober, rather solemn people. These islanders, as a
matter of fact, are an exceptionally vigorous and boisterous lot and
have been for centuries. Their interest in diplomacy, politics, and
commerce is exceeded only by their devotion to cricket, beer, and
horse racing. Nor should we allow the deadening background to bemuse us
about the essential character of the British. The misty mournfulness
of the English countryside, the bleak inhospitality of a Midland city,
the eternal sameness of suburbia have failed to tame the incorrigible
robustness of the national character.

To know the British today one must know not only their government
and politics, their industry and commerce, but other aspects of life
through which the national character is expressed. The press, the
schools, the military services, sports and amusements, pubs and clubs
all are part of the changing British world. Each has been affected
by changes in the class structure. Each, in its way, is important to
Americans and their understanding of Britain. Opinion about the United
States in Britain is based largely on what Britons read in their
newspapers. And, whether or not Americans admire the class distinctions
inherent in the public-school system, perhaps a majority of the leaders
with whom the United States will deal in the future will be products of
that system.


THE PRESS:

THE THUNDERER AND THE TIN HORNS

A graduate of Smith, home from a stay in London, asked: "How can you
read those London newspapers? Nothing but crime and sex--I couldn't
find any news." Years ago Webb Miller, the great United Press
correspondent, advised me: "Read _The Times_ every day, read all of it,
if you want to know what is going on in this country and the world."
Both Webb and the young lady from Smith were right: the British press
contains some of what is best and a great deal of what is worst in
daily journalism.

Most Americans and many Britons, when they speak of the press, mean the
London daily and Sunday newspapers. The London papers concern us most
because they are national newspapers circulating throughout Britain and
influencing and reflecting opinion far beyond the boundaries of greater
London. One newspaper published in the provinces, the _Manchester
Guardian_, may be said to have national--indeed, world--standing. One
of the most influential, interesting, and well-written newspapers, it
can also assume on occasion a highly irritating unctuousness.

There are a large number of provincial newspapers--about a hundred
morning and evening dailies and Sunday papers, and about eleven hundred
weeklies. Many of them are read far more thoroughly than the London
"national" paper that the provincial family also buys.

Not long ago a British cabinet minister who represents a constituency
in the western Midlands told me his constituents "got their news
from the BBC, their entertainment from the London dailies, and their
political guidance from the principal newspaper in a near-by provincial
city." Other politicians have referred to the same pattern.

Because most London daily and Sunday newspapers circulate all over the
British isles, circulation figures are high by American standards. The
_News of the World_, a Sunday newspaper that built its circulation on
straight court reporting of the gamier aspects of British life, had a
record circulation of about 8,000,000 copies. Recently its circulation
has dropped slightly, a development that puzzles Fleet Street, for
there is no lack of sex, crime, or sport--or interest in them--in
Britain.

Of the London dailies, the largest in circulation is the _Daily
Mirror_, a tabloid whose circulation average between January and June
of 1955 was 4,725,122. The _Daily Express_, the bellwether of the
Beaverbrook newspapers, had a circulation of just over 4,000,000 during
the same period, and three other London dailies, the _Daily Mail_, the
_Daily Telegraph_, and the _News Chronicle_, all boasted circulations
of better than 1,000,000.

For every 1,000 Britons, 611 copies of the daily newspapers are sold
each day. Compare this with the United States figure of 353 per 1,000.
Britain is a good newspaper country, and the London press is lusty,
uninhibited, and highly competitive.

American newspapermen working in London customarily divide the press
between the popular newspapers, such as the _Daily Mirror_ and
the _Daily Mail_, and the small-circulation papers, such as _The
Times_ and the _Manchester Guardian_. The circulation of _The Times_
for January-June 1955 was 211,972 and for the _Guardian_ 156,154.
Similarly, on Sundays there is a division between the _Sunday Times_
(606,346) and the _Observer_ (564,307) and such mass-circulation
"Sundays" as the _Sunday Express_, the _Sunday Pictorial_, and the
_People_.

The distinction is not based primarily on circulation. _The Times_ and
the _Manchester Guardian_ and the _Daily Telegraph_ on weekdays and
the _Sunday Times_ and the _Observer_ on Sundays print more news about
politics, diplomacy, and world events than do the mass-circulation
papers. They are responsible and they are well written. The _Daily
Telegraph_, which has a circulation of over 2,000,000, is the only one
in this group whose circulation is in the "popular" field. But it has
given few hostages to fortune: its news columns contain a considerable
number of solid foreign-news items as well as first-class domestic
reporting.

The shortage of newsprint (the paper on which newspapers are printed)
has curtailed the size of British papers since 1939. Almost all
newsprint is imported, and with the balance of payments under pressure
the expenditure of dollars for it has been restricted. But the
situation has improved slowly and the London papers are fattening,
although they remain thin by New York standards.

Considering this restriction, the responsible newspapers do a
splendid job. Day in and day out the foreign news of _The Times_
maintains remarkably high standards of accuracy and insight. The
anonymous reporters--articles by _Times_ men are signed "From Our
Own Correspondent"--write lucidly and easily. _The Times_ has never
accepted the theory that involved and complicated issues can be boiled
down into a couple of hundred words with the nuances discarded. News is
knowledge, and no one has yet found a way to make it easy to acquire
knowledge.

But _The Times_, often called "_The Times_ newspaper," is a good deal
more than a report on Britain and the world. It is an institution
reflecting all British life. By reading its front page entirely
devoted to classified advertising one can get a complete picture of
upper-class and upper-middle-class Britain. In the left-hand columns
are births, deaths, marriages, and memorial notices. If an American
wants to understand how unstintingly the British upper classes gave
their sons and brothers and fathers to the First World War, let him
look at the memorial notices on the anniversary of the Battle of the
Somme. If he wants to see how hard-pushed these same classes are today,
let him read the painful, often pathetic admissions in the columns
where jewelry, old diplomatic uniforms, and the other impedimenta of
the class are offered for sale.

The editorials of _The Times_--the British call editorials "leaders" or
"leading articles"--are, of course, one of the most important features
in journalism. _The Times_ is independent politically, but it does its
best to explain and expound the policies of the government of the day.
Over the years since the war it has supported individual measures laid
down by Conservative and Labor governments and it has assailed the
policies of both the left and right when this has been conceived of as
the duty of _The Times_. The editorial writing in _The Times_ often
attains a peak of brilliance seldom achieved in any other newspaper.
For a time, especially in the period before World War II, "The
Thunderer," as it was once called, had become a whisperer. Recently
_The Times_ has spoken on national and international issues with its
old resonance and sharpness.

The influence of _The Times_ among politicians, civil servants, and
diplomats is extraordinary. It is, I suppose, the one newspaper read
thoroughly by all the foreign diplomats in London. As recently as the
spring of 1956 an editorial in _The Times_ discussing a reconsideration
of Britain's defense needs sent the German Ambassador scurrying to the
Foreign Office to inquire whether the editorial reflected government
policy. It did.

This influence is the result of _The Times_'s special position in
British journalism. The editorial-writers and some of the reporters
of _The Times_ often are told things that are hidden from other
reporters. Also, they are members in good standing of that important,
amorphous group, the Establishment, which exists at the center of
British society; they know and are known by the politicians, the key
civil servants, the ministers. Occasionally _The Times_ is used to test
foreign or domestic reaction to a measure under consideration by the
government. By discussing the measure in an editorial, _The Times_ will
provoke in its letter columns a wider discussion into which various
sections of public opinion, left, right, and center, will be drawn.

No other newspaper in the free world has a letter column comparable
to that of _The Times_. The first letter may be a sharp analysis of
government policy in Persia and the last the report by a Prime Minister
that he has seen a rare bird on a walk through St. James's park.
Some of the letter column's discussions touch on matters of national
interest. Others deal with the Christian names given to children or the
last time British troops carried their colors into action.

The _Manchester Guardian_, with a smaller circulation and a smaller
foreign staff, still manages to make its influence felt far beyond
Manchester. Its policies are those of the Liberal party and, as
the Liberal Party is now in eclipse, the _Guardian_ brings to the
discussion of national and international affairs a detached and
refreshing sharpness. Where _The Times_ occasionally adopts the tone
of a wise and indulgent father in its comments on the world, the
_Guardian_ speaks with the accents of a worldly-wise nanny. When the
_Guardian_ is aroused, its "leaders" can be corrosive and bitter. It
is less likely to support the foreign policy of the government of the
day than is _The Times_. Consequently, the _Guardian_ is liable to be
more critical than _The Times_ in dealings with the United States and
American foreign policy. (The Suez crisis was a notable exception.) But
it is well informed about the United States, and so are its readers.
In Alistair Cooke and Max Freedman the _Guardian_ has two of the
best correspondents now writing in the United States for the British
press. Their reports are long, detailed, and accurate, and Cooke, in
particular, never forgets that what a foreign people sees in its
theaters, reads in its magazines, and does on its vacations is also
news to the readers at home.

Such great provincial newspapers as the _Yorkshire Post_ and the
_Scotsman_ follow the conservative approach to news adopted by _The
Times_, the _Manchester Guardian_, and the _Daily Telegraph_. With
the responsible London dailies they serve the upper middle class and
are its most outspoken mouthpieces in a period when, as we have seen,
that class is being pressed by high taxation, the rising cost of
living, and the simultaneous development of a new middle class and a
prosperous working class. The _Sunday Times_, for instance, has devoted
many columns to the plight of the professional man and his family,
and all of these papers have reported at length on the appearance
of associations and groups devoted to, or supposedly devoted to,
the interests of the middle class and opposition to the unions that
represent the new working class.

The cult of anonymity has persisted longer in Britain's responsible
and reliable newspapers than in the United States. Although Fleet
Street knows the names of _The Times_'s reporters, the public does
not. Richard Scott, the Diplomatic Correspondent of the _Manchester
Guardian_, has no byline, nor has Hugh Massingham, the brilliant
Political Correspondent of the _Observer_. The influence wielded in
the United States by columnists still is reserved in Britain almost
entirely to the anonymous "leader"-writers of the responsible British
newspapers. Working with the editorial-writers are hundreds of
industrious, well-educated, experienced reporters. They are good men to
talk to and to drink with, and they are tough men to beat on a story.

But they and the newspapers they represent are not a part of the
bubbling, uproarious, pyrotechnical world of the popular London
dailies. Here is a circus, a daily excitement for anyone who enjoys
newspapers. The _Daily Express_, the _Daily Mail_, the _News
Chronicle_, the _Daily Herald_, the _Mirror_, and the _Sketch_ compete
hotly for news and entertainment. Their headlines are brash, their
writing varies from wonderfully good to wonderfully bad, and their
editorials are written with a slam-bang exuberance that is stimulating
and occasionally a little frightening. This is the true, tempestuous
world of Fleet Street.

In this world the great names are not confined to the writers and
editors. The publishers, called "proprietors" in Britain, tower over
all. Of these the most interesting, successful, and stimulating is
Lord Beaverbrook, who runs the _Daily Express_, the _Sunday Express_,
and the _Evening Standard_ with a gusto undiminished by seventy-eight
active years.

"The Beaver" occupies a unique place in British journalism and
politics. No one has neutral feelings about him. Either you like him
or you hate him; there is no middle course. I suppose nothing gives
him more satisfaction than knowing that when he arrives in London, men
in Fleet Street pubs and West End clubs ask one another: "What do you
think the Beaver's up to now?"

Is "what the Beaver is up to" really important? The enmity of the
_Express_, which is the enmity of Lord Beaverbrook, can make a
politician squirm. But does it really lower his standing with the
voters? I doubt it. Lord Beaverbrook is an incorrigible Don Quixote who
has tilted at and been tossed by many windmills. He is, incidentally, a
more powerful writer than most of his employees. Early in 1957 he was
prodding his newspapers to the attack against the government's plans
for closer economic association with Europe. The headlines were bold
and black, the indignation terrifying. Will the campaign itself alter
government policy? I doubt it.

Lord Beaverbrook once remarked that he ran his papers to conduct
propaganda. Just before the retirement of Sir Winston Churchill, Lord
Beaverbrook was asked why his newspapers were so critical of Sir
Anthony Eden, the heir presumptive to the premiership. He replied
that Sir Anthony had never supported the policies of the Beaverbrook
newspapers. As no other leading politician had thrown his weight that
way, this seemed a rather weak reason for attacking the new leader
of the Conservative Party. The political affiliation of the _Daily
Express_ is Independent Conservative.

But the Beaverbrook campaigns perform a real public service by
fixing public attention upon issues. I do not think the editorials
convince--I have yet to meet a _Daily Express_ reader who confused the
"leader" column with pronouncements from Sinai--but they encourage
that discussion of public issues which is essential in a democracy. Of
course the _Express_ newspapers' tactics annoy nice-minded people. But
the tradition of a free press includes not only such august journals
as _The Times_ but the rip-roaring, fire-eating crusaders as well.
There is not much chance that the popular press in Britain will model
itself on _The Times_, but if it did so, the result would be a loss to
journalism and to the nation. And as long as the Beaverbrook tradition
survives--as long, indeed, as Lord Beaverbrook himself is around to
draw on his inexhaustible fund of indignation--one section of the
popular press is bound to remain contentious and vigorous.

The _Daily Express_, the morning paper of the Beaverbrook empire, is
technically one of the best newspapers in the world. Its layout is
admirable, and its headline-writers often show a touch of genius. In
its writing and its presentation of news it has been much affected by
such divergent American influences as _The New Yorker_ and _Time_.

The _Express_ is brightly written (too much so at times), and its
tastes in policies and politicians are incalculable. Along with
a liberal helping of political, foreign, and crime reporting it
offers two of the best features in British journalism: Osbert
Lancaster's pocket cartoon on the front page and the humorous column
of "Beachcomber" on the editorial page. "Beachcomber" and Lancaster
are sharp and penetrating commentators on the daily scene. In many
instances their references to the occasional inanities of the British
society are more cogent than anything to be found in the editorial
columns of the _Express_.

The _Express_ successfully caters to the new middle class that has
arisen since the war, especially that part of it which is involved
in the communications industry. The young advertising manager from
the provinces who has "arrived" in London may find _The Times_ too
verbose and the _Telegraph_ too stodgy. The _Express_, with its bright
features on the theater or London night life, attracts him. But, oddly,
three principal features of the _Express_ cater to very different
tastes. Osbert Lancaster's subject matter is drawn usually from the
upper middle class--his Maudie Littlehampton, after all, is a Lady. The
humor of "Beachcomber" appeals to tastes that reject the average in
British humor, and Sefton Delmer, the peripatetic foreign correspondent
of the _Express_, often writes stories on international issues which
are much more involved and adult than would seem suitable for the
majority of the newspaper's four million readers.

This divided approach is not so obvious in the _Daily Mirror_, which
has the largest circulation of any of the London dailies. This is an
important newspaper in that it is the most accurate reflection I know
of the tastes and mores of the new working class in Britain. There are
many indications elsewhere that Cecil King, its proprietor, and his
chief lieutenants have pondered long and earnestly about Britain's
problems. The _Mirror_'s pamphlet on trade unions and an earlier
pamphlet on Anglo-American relations are solid contributions to the
literature on these subjects. But the _Daily Mirror_'s customary
approach to policies and issues is as robust and sharp as that of a
policeman to a drunk. It is belligerent rather than persuasive; it
loves big type.

But the _Daily Mirror_'s handling of certain types of stories,
particularly those involving industrial disputes and crime, is
excellent. (British crime reporting in general, although circumscribed
by the libel laws, is of high caliber.) The _Mirror_'s editorials, with
their GET OUT or PASS THIS BILL approach to politicians and measures,
may alienate as many as they win, but the editorials are alive, dealing
often with problems--such as automation and wage differentials--that
are of the keenest interest to the industrial working class.

The _Mirror_ is much closer to the thinking of this class than is the
_Daily Herald_, usually considered the official Labor newspaper. The
Trades Union Congress owns 49 per cent of the stock in the _Daily
Herald_, and Odhams Press Ltd. owns the remainder. Once powerful and
well informed on industrial and labor-movement happenings, the _Herald_
no longer seems to represent either the movement or the industrial
working class that supports the movement. Its approach is stodgier
than that of the _Mirror_, less in keeping with the tastes of the new
working class.

The _Mirror_'s most renowned features are "Cassandra" and "Jane." The
former, written by William Connor, is one of the hardest-hitting and
most provocative features in British journalism. Connor has evoked the
wrath of statesmen of both major parties. The Communists hate him. He
is a deflator of stuffed shirts, a pungent critic, and a stout defender
of the British worker.

The _Mirror_'s other salient feature is a comic strip called "Jane."
Jane is a well-proportioned young lady whose adventures nearly always
end in near nudity. She is a favorite of British troops abroad and
their families at home. The information value of this daily striptease
is nonexistent, but a _Mirror_ employee once defended the strip on the
grounds that "the bloke that buys the paper to look at Jane may read
Bill Connor or the leader."

The London press enjoys an advantage that does not exist in the United
States. This is the presence of a remarkably well-informed critical
opinion in the weekly reviews that are also printed in London. The
_Spectator_, the _New Statesman and Nation_, _Time and Tide_, and,
occasionally, the _Economist_ are careful, if sometimes pecksniffian,
critics of the national newspapers. Fleet Street is one big family
(it would be stretching things to call so tumultuous a community
"happy"), and the inner workings of the great dailies are laid bare
to the weeklies often through the agency of disgruntled reporters.
Consequently, "Pharos" in the _Spectator_ and Francis Williams in the
_New Statesman_ are authoritative and knowledgeable critics of the
newspapers and their proprietors.

The weeklies themselves are a valuable supplement to the newspapers.
They have time to reflect and space to discuss. In many cases they are
often slightly ahead of public opinion, more so than the daily papers,
and they are not afraid to criticize tartly such sacred cows of British
journalism as the Crown.

Since the end of the war the tendency among the popular newspapers has
been to entertain rather than to inform. This recognizes what I believe
to be one of the fundamental truths of the communications business in
Britain: the majority of the people get their news from the British
Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television services and from the
news services of the Independent Television Authority.

Readers of the more responsible London and provincial newspapers listen
to the news on the BBC and then turn to their papers for expanded
stories and ample interpretative material. But the average reader does
not read _The Times_ or the _Manchester Guardian_ or the _Observer_.
When he turns off the radio in the morning and picks up his "popular"
newspaper, he is confronted with gossip columns, comic strips, newsless
but beguiling stories about the royal family, sports stories, and, in
some papers, a dash of pornography.

The "popular" papers do print hard news. Correspondents like Sefton
Delmer of the _Daily Express_ and William Forrest of the _News
Chronicle_ send interesting, factual, and frequently important stories
from Germany or Russia. But such stories are increasingly rare. The
trend even in this sort of writing is toward entertainment.

For example, not long ago a London popular daily, once renowned for
its foreign staff, sent a reporter to Communist China. This was
an opportunity for objective reporting. Instead the readers got a
rehash of the reporter's own political outlook plus a few flashes of
description of life in modern China.

This tendency toward entertainment rather than information is deplored
by those who believe that a democracy can operate successfully only on
the foundation of well-informed public opinion. In Britain, however,
newspapers are customarily considered not as public trusts but as
business, big business. If entertainment pays, the newspapers, with
a few exceptions noted above, will entertain. Unfortunately, the BBC
cannot provide the time necessary to give the news that the newspapers
fail to print. Obviously the great mass of the British people will
become less well informed about the great issues at home and abroad if
the present trend continues.

During the thirties the critics of the British press liked to repeat a
cruel little rhyme that ran:

  _You cannot hope to bribe nor twist,
  Thank God, the British journalist,
  But, seeing what the man will do
  Unbribed, there's no occasion to._

Yet, from a knowledge of the type of man who writes for the popular
press and a thorough acquaintance with his product, I would say that
the blame rests not with the reporter but with the management.

It is certainly within the power of the proprietors of the popular
newspapers to change the character of the papers. Some editors in Fleet
Street habitually sneer at American newspapers and their practices,
although these men are not above adopting some American techniques of
news presentation which they think will sell newspapers. But the amount
of factual information about national and foreign affairs in many
small-town American papers is far greater, proportionately, than that
provided by some great "national" newspapers in London.

Those who are interested in the improvement of relations between the
United States and the United Kingdom must be concerned about the
reporting of American news in the popular press. More space is devoted
to news from the United States than formerly, and correspondents for
the London dailies travel more widely than they did in the past. Men
like the late Robert Waithman of the _News Chronicle_ did their best to
get out of Washington and New York and see the country. But too often
the correspondents devote time and space to the more frivolous aspects
of American life. From the standpoint of international relations, the
space devoted to the stream of stories about the royal family might be
better spent on a frank discussion of why the mass of Americans feel
as they do about the Communist government in Peiping.

Some good judges of the national character believe that the great
mass of the British working class would not read such information
even if the newspapers provided it. They see this group as complacent
and politically lethargic, no longer willing to be stirred, as it was
a generation ago, by great events in the outside world. If this is
true, the future is dark indeed. For more than at any time since the
summer of 1940 the British people must take a realistic view of their
position in the world. They cannot do this if, beyond a few perfunctory
headlines, their newspapers provide only the details of the latest
murder or the bust measurements of Hollywood stars. To an observer from
abroad, it is only too evident that the great problems of our times are
not being brought to the people of Britain by their popular newspapers
in a serious manner.


THE OLD SCHOOL TIE

Few institutions in Britain are more difficult for Americans to
understand than the public schools. Yet a knowledge of the system,
how it works, its influence upon British society, its traditions and
customs, even its sports is essential to a knowledge of modern Britain.
We are going to hear a great deal about the public schools in the
coming years, for one of the great battles between the egalitarian,
socialist Britain and the traditional, conservative Britain will be
waged over the future of these schools.

The "public school" is in fact a private one. The public-school system
includes all the schools of this type in Britain. As an influence on
the national character it has been and still is extraordinarily potent.
This influence is social and political as well as educational. It is,
I think, fair to say that to hundreds of thousands in the upper and
middle classes, attendance at Eton is regarded as more important than
attendance at Oxford.

There are about two hundred public schools in Britain. They range
from old established institutions like Eton, Harrow, Charter-house,
Winchester, Rugby, Haileybury, and Wellington to smaller schools whose
fame is local and whose plant, equipment, and teaching staff are little
better, and in some cases inferior, to those of the state schools.

What keeps the public-school system alive in an era that has seen
the fall of so many bastions of class and privilege? To begin with,
the public schools represent a well-established, wealthy, and acute
force within British society. Such a force fights to maintain its
position against the public criticism and political maneuverings of
its enemies. The fight is led by men who are sincerely convinced that
the continuation of the public-school system is necessary to the
maintenance of Britain's position in the world, and they will devote
time, money, and effort to win the fight. One of the mistakes made
by the Socialist groups that attack the public-school system is to
underestimate the wit and energy of those who defend it.

Yet the existence of a powerful institution is no guarantee of its
future life in a country that has changed and is changing so rapidly
as Britain. The public schools survive and even flourish because of
the conviction widely held throughout the upper and middle classes
that such schools provide the best type of education for their boys.
Indeed, the conviction goes even deeper in the class structure: it
is noteworthy that as new groups move up the economic scale into the
middle class, these too seek to send their boys to a public school.

Elsewhere I have mentioned the sacrifices that the old middle class
makes to preserve its position in British society. Nowhere are these
sacrifices more evident than in the struggle to raise the money to
send the son or sons of the family to a public school. The Continental
holiday may be given up in favor of two weeks at an English seaside
resort. The car must be patched up and run for another year. Father
will go without a new overcoat, and mother will abandon her monthly
trip to "town" to see a play. But John will go to his father's old
school. Why?

At the best public schools the formal education is excellent. But when
the middle-class Briton speaks of the education his son gets at a
public school he is referring only partially to what the boy learns
from books. Principally, he is thinking about the development of the
boy's character at the school, about the friends he will make there,
and about how these friends and attendance at this old school will help
the boy later in life.

Critics of the Foreign Office have often charged that British diplomacy
is filled with the products of the public schools and that the
representatives of the great mass of the nation are excluded from the
Foreign Service because they have not attended public schools. Lord
Strang, a former Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
and thus head of the Foreign Office, answered this criticism in his
book _The Foreign Office_.

"The Foreign Office," he wrote, "can move no faster towards fully
democratic methods of selection than the State as a whole is moving in
its educational policies, though it has already moved far at the pace
set for it by these wider policies of political evolution. The fact is
that the Foreign Service always must and will recruit from the best,
in brains and character, that the prevailing educational system can
produce."

Note that "character" is coupled with "brains" in this indirect
reference to the public schools.

What does the middle-class Briton mean when he says that Eton or some
obscure public school in the Midlands will develop his son's character?
There is no complete answer. But I would say that he includes in
character such traits as willingness to take responsibility, loyalty
to the class conception of the nation's interests, readiness to lead
(which implies, of course, a belief that he is fit to lead and that
there are people willing to be led), truthfulness, self-discipline,
a love for vigorous outdoor sports. I have heard all these cited as
reasons why boys should go to public schools and why fathers will give
up smoking or limit their drinking to a small sherry before dinner to
provide the money for such schooling.

In considering the development of character in the public schools it
should be remembered that these schools often represent the third phase
in the education of a British boy. The boy's first preceptor will be a
nanny or nursemaid, often chosen from the rural working class. At eight
or nine he goes away to a preparatory school. At twelve or thirteen he
is ready for his public school. Because of economic pressure only a
wealthy minority can follow this system today, but it was the system
that produced the majority of the leaders of the Conservative Party and
not a few prominent Labor Party leaders.

Direct paternal influence is much less evident in the education of
Britons of the middle class than it is in the United States. One
argument for the system maintains that the boy learns self-reliance;
when in his twenties he is commanding a platoon or acting as Third
Secretary of Embassy in a foreign country he is not likely to be
wishing that Mom were there to advise him. This argument implies
acceptance of the proposition that people will consent to be led by the
public-school boy or that his education and character will fit him for
a diplomatic post abroad.

Critics of the public schools charge that the concept of public-school
leadership was exploded by World War II. This does not jibe with my own
experiences with the British forces from 1939 to 1945. I found that
most of the young officers in all three services were products of the
public schools and that, on the whole, they provided a high standard of
leadership in the lower echelons. Their earlier training had enforced
upon them the idea that they were responsible for their men, not only
in battle but elsewhere. So they would tramp through the Icelandic
sleet to obscure posts to organize amateur theatricals or sweat through
an African afternoon playing soccer with their men because this was
part of the responsibility. They were told that they had to lead in
battle, and they accepted the obligation without doubts.

A great many of them were killed all over the world while sociologists
and reformers were planning how to eliminate the public schools. Those
who were killed were no more intelligent, no more attractive in person,
no more energetic than those they led. But when the time came to lead,
they led. These remarks, no doubt, will annoy critics of the public
schools and public-school leadership. When I am informed how wars are
to be won or nations to be governed without leaders I will be properly
contrite.

The public school's place in British society rests basically upon this
conviction that a public-school education provides character-training
that will equip a boy for leadership in business, in politics, in the
military services, and in society. But the system as it appears in
British society is composed of much more than formal education and
character-building. The public schools also mean a body of traditions
and customs often as involved and as unrelated to the modern world as
the taboos of primitive man.

The Old School Tie is one. Almost all middle-class and some
working-class institutions in Britain have a tie striped with the
colors of the institution or ornamented with its crest. There are ties
for cricket clubs and associations of football fans, there are ties
for regiments and clubs. But the tie that generally means most is the
tie that stands for attendance at a public school. It is at once a
certificate of education and a badge of recognition.

The phrase "Old School Tie" stands not only for the public schools but
for their place in middle-class society. The tie is not merely a strip
of silk but all the strange, sometimes incomprehensible customs and
traditions that surround the public schools. Slang phrases used at one
school for generations. Rugby football rather than soccer because there
is more bodily contact in rugby and hence it is a more "manly" game and
better suited to character-building. School courses which have very
little to do with the problems of the modern world but which supposedly
"discipline" the mind.

British public schools, like American universities, have been
criticized for developing a type rather than individuals. There is a
resemblance among their graduates, and the old Etonian and the old
Wykehamist (Winchester) and even the graduate of some small school
in Yorkshire have a great deal in common. The public-school graduate
will be enthusiastic about sports, rather contemptuous and sometimes
shockingly ill-informed about the world outside Britain, well-mannered,
truthful, and amenable to discipline. In a crowd, whether it be an
officers' training unit in war or an industrial training school in
peace, he will seek out other members of the fraternity announced by
the tie. He is ready to serve and sometimes idealize the State. He
believes in, although he does not invariably personally support, church
attendance, _The Times_, the monarchy.

Naturally, there are mavericks. Some of the greatest individualists
in recent British history--the influence of the public schools on the
nation really became apparent in the middle of the last century when
the new mercantile and industrial leaders began to send their sons to
them--have been public-school products. By a pleasing coincidence, Sir
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Nehru of India, and Field Marshal
Earl Alexander of Tunis are old Harrovians.

Politically, the public schools are conservative in thought, and
usually their graduates adhere to the Conservative Party. But there
are many exceptions. Hugh Gaitskell, the present leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party, is an old Wykehamist. His predecessor, Earl
Attlee, went to Haileybury. Scattered through the ranks of the modern
Labor Party are dozens of Old Boys of the public schools. If the Labor
movement gradually sheds much of its old extremism, it is certain to
attract an increasing number of public-school graduates.

The principal criticism of the public schools voiced by reformers at
home and critics abroad is that it perpetuates in Britain a class
system that divides society during a period when unity is essential to
survival. There is truth in this, so much that it cannot be answered,
as supporters of the system do answer it, with the assertion that
there were no class differences in Britain until the Labor Party
created them. Nor is the argument valid that the masses in Britain
like class distinction, like to live their lives within a precise
social classification. British society is changing today just as it
has changed in the past. It would not have changed without popular
pressure. The newly rich manufacturer of cheap cotton who decided to
send his boy to a public school a hundred years ago was just as much a
part of this change as the Labor Party politician who wants to abolish
the public schools even though he himself is a graduate of one.

Another disadvantage of the perpetuation of the public-school system
in its present form is that it is unsuited in many ways to modern
conditions. It was admirable training for young men who were to rule
thousands of untutored natives or maintain the might, majesty, and
dominion of the British Empire with a handful of police or administer
without deviation the justice of the Crown in smelly courtrooms
half a world away. But today the young men are going out to sell
Austins or electronic products or to represent a weaker Britain among
peoples tipsy with the heady wine of nationalism. At home the old
stratifications are breaking up, new groups of technicians and managers
are shouldering the once unchallenged leaders of the professional
middle class, new industries requiring a high degree of technical
training are ousting the old.

In these circumstances the road will be difficult for a man who has
been trained to regard himself as a leader, either born or educated
to leadership, who has been taught that his caste is automatically
superior to the industrialists of Pittsburgh or the scientist at
Harlow or the excitable politicians of New Delhi and Athens. Certain
traits encouraged by the public schools will always be important. But
self-discipline, truthfulness, physical courage must be accompanied in
the modern world by a broader outlook on that world and a more acute
realization of Britain's place in it.

There is a strong movement in Britain for the expansion of technical
education. The public schools are not technical schools; their
object is the well-rounded product of a general education. While the
public schools maintain their social prestige, the new middle class
as well as the old will send its sons to them. But the leaders of
tomorrow's Britain will be the leaders of the new technology taught
in the technical schools. As these schools develop, they may offer a
real challenge to the public school's position as the trainer of the
governing or leading class.

The indictment of the public schools is that they are educating boys to
meet conditions that no longer exist. Yet the public schools are trying
to change with the times even while maintaining that what is needed
to meet the challenge of modern conditions is not narrow technical
education but precisely the comprehensive schooling backed by sound
character-training that public schools are supposed to provide.

We should not overlook the role the public schools are playing and will
play in the absorption into the middle class of the new groups that
have entered it from industry, science, communications, and management
in the last decade. Many men in these groups had no public-school
education. In fact, a decade ago many of them were among the severest
critics of the system. But a surprisingly large number today are
sending their sons to public schools. The desire to keep up with the
Joneses--the Joneses in this case being the old middle class that sent
its sons to public schools as a matter of course--is one reason for
this. Another is the recognition that the public schools endow their
graduates with certain social advantages.

When change occurs in Britain it often takes place behind a façade
that appears unchanged. The battle over the public schools is certain
to take place, and, whichever group wins, the schools themselves will
be altered by it. It is inconceivable that they will be eliminated
from the British scene. It is equally inconceivable that they will not
change under the pressure of the times.

In the spring of 1956 I lunched with a wartime friend who said he had
given up smoking in order to save money to send young Nigel through
Winchester. Someone else at the table muttered that "this public-school
business" was a lot of damned nonsense. My friend smiled. "Damn it,"
he said, "you [the mutterer] are always talking about how well the
Russians do things. Well, I read in _The Times_ this morning that
Khrushchev says they're going to start schools to train leaders. What's
good enough for old Khrush ought to be good enough for you pinks down
at the London School of Economics!"


THE ARMY, THE NAVY, THE AIR FORCE

"The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, they always play the game."
So sang the girls and boys of careless, complacent Britain in the
thirties. The verse symbolizes the middle-class public-school
atmosphere of the services' place in British society. Prior to World
War II the three services enjoyed a more honored place in British
society than did the Army and the Navy in American society.

The commanding officer of a battalion on home service thought himself
socially superior to the leading industrialist of the neighborhood,
and, in most cases, the industrialist agreed. The retired Navy
commander or Army major was a recognized figure in the life of the
village or town in which he lived--a figure of fun, perhaps, to the
bright young people down from Oxford or Cambridge, and an easy mark for
social caricaturists and cartoonists, but also a man of importance in
the affairs of the community.

He was also, in many cases, a man of means. Pay in the pre-war Army
was ridiculously small, and an officer in a "good" regiment needed
a private income if he were to live comfortably. Again, the retired
officer and the serving officer knew a good deal about the world, a
circumstance forced upon him (for he was never especially cordial to
foreigners) by the necessity of garrisoning the Empire. He had lived
in India or China or Egypt and fought in South Africa or France or
Mesopotamia, and he had formed firm conclusions about these countries
and their people. These conclusions, often delivered with the certainty
of an order on the parade ground, raised the hackles of his juniors
and were derided as the reactionary ideas of relics from Poona, the
citadel of conservatism in India. There is an old service verse about
the "Poona attitude":

  _There's a regiment from Poona
  That would infinitely sooner
  Play single-handed polo,
  A sort of solo polo,
  Than play a single chukker
  With a chap who isn't pukka._

After the Second World War had burst on Britain in all its fury and in
its aftermath, it occurred to many who had fumed while the ex-officers
talked that the Blimps had known what they were talking about. Earlier
I noted that the retired officers were right in their predictions about
what would happen in India once the British withdrew, and that the
politicians and publicists of the left were wrong. I do not suggest
that the British should or could have remained. But several hundred
thousand lives might have been saved if the withdrawal had been slower.

The services and their officers thus had established themselves as
a much more important part of society in Britain than had their
counterparts in the United States. They were always in the public eye.
The Army and the Air Force fought campaigns on the north-west frontier
of India. The Navy chased gun-runners and showed the flag.

Socially, the Army was the more important. The sons of the very
best families--which means the oldest and most respectable, not the
richest--went into the five regiments of the Brigade of Foot Guards
or into the Household Cavalry or into the old, fashionable, expensive
cavalry regiments like the 16th/5th Lancers or the Queen's Own Fourth
Hussars (which once, long ago, attracted a young subaltern named
Churchill). It was the fashion among the intellectuals of pre-war
England to laugh at the solemn ceremonials of the Foot Guards and
to snicker at the languid young men who protested when their horses
were taken away and replaced by armored cars and tanks. (It might be
remarked that when the time came there was nothing to laugh at and a
good deal to be proud of. The account for the parties at the night
clubs and the hunting, shootin', and fishin' of the careless days
was rendered and paid in blood. You could see them in France in May
and June of 1940 going out with machine guns and horribly antiquated
armored cars to take on the big German tanks.)

If the Army was predominant socially, the Navy held military
pre-eminence. It was the Navy which was the nation's "sure shield," the
Navy which had been matchless and supreme since Trafalgar. It was the
Navy which time and again had interposed its ships and men between the
home islands and the fleets of Spain, France, and Germany. The naval
officer standing on his bridge in the North Sea or off some tropic port
was a watchman, a national symbol of security.

As the two senior services were so firmly implanted in the public
consciousness, it is easy to see why the Royal Air Force, the youngest
of the three, lived on such short commons before the war. Socially it
did not count. "He's one of these flying chaps," a young Hussar said at
Lille one day in 1939, "but a very decent fellow." It did not attract
the young men who entered the Guards or the Cavalry, for the RAF dealt
with machines and grimy hangars smelling of grease and oil, and it
planned for the future without much hope of governmental financial
assistance or any real support from tradition. Whereas the Loamshire
Hussars had been fighting since Blenheim, the Secretary of State for
War was an ex-officer, and the port at the mess was beyond praise.

Militarily, the RAF meant a great deal more. When the war began, it
became the savior of Britain--for a few years the one service through
which the country could strike directly and powerfully at Germany. The
rise of the RAF to pre-eminence among the fighting services in post-war
Britain began with its long, bitter, successful battle against the
_Luftwaffe_ in the summer of 1940.

The ascent of the RAF to its present position is the first of the
changes that have overtaken the services in Britain, which is a martial
if not a militaristic nation. Of course, the development of air power
as the means of carrying the new nuclear weapons would have ensured an
improvement in its position in any case. But the expansion of the RAF
during the war, the post-war necessity for continued experimentation
in associated fields such as the development of guided missiles, and
the creation of a large, highly trained group of technical officers
provided an opportunity for the new middle class and the upper levels
of the industrial working class, the planners and technicians, to win
advancement in what is currently the most important of the services.

The Battle of Britain was won by public-school boys. But the modern
RAF, although it has its share of public-school boys especially among
the combat units, is increasingly manned, officers as well as the
higher noncommissioned officers, by products of the state schools. The
RAF needs now and will need increasingly in the future the services of
the best technical brains Britain can offer. The main source of supply
will be not the officers' training units at the public schools or the
universities but the new technical colleges and training courses in
Britain.

It follows, then, that in time the military defense of the realm will
rest primarily not upon the class who have always considered themselves
ordained by birth and education to carry out this task but upon a new
group springing from the new middle class and from the proletariat.
This is a social development of the first importance.

The change in the character of the officer class is not confined to the
RAF, although it is most noticeable there. There has been a change,
too, in the composition of the commissioned ranks of the Army.

When World War II ended, the "military families," which for generations
had sent sons into the local county regiments, found that the second
war, following the terrible blood-letting of the first, had almost
wiped them out. Perhaps one son in three or four survived. And he,
surveying the post-war Army and the post-war world, was disinclined
to follow tradition and devote the remainder of his working life to
the service. He might gladly have served another twenty years in the
"old" Army with its horses and hunting, its tours of duty in India,
its social importance. But now tanks and armored cars had replaced
the horses, India was gone, and a bunch of shirking Bolshies from the
Labor Party were running things. Above all, the two wars had swept away
many of the private fortunes with which young officers eked out their
miserable pay and allowances. So the survivor of the military family
became a personnel manager in a Midlands factory, and elderly men
said to elderly wives: "Do you know that for the first time since '91
there's no Fenwick serving with the Loamshires?"

But the Second World War also raised to officer rank thousands of
young men whose social and educational background would not have been
considered suitable for commissioned rank in peacetime. They came from
the state's secondary schools, from technical colleges, or from the
ranks, and they did remarkably well. Many of them are still serving as
officers.

At the war's end many of them remained in the service. I was always
interested during the maneuvers of the British Army of the Rhine to
find how many of the young officers in the infantry and tank regiments
had served in the ranks or had come to the Army with a sound education
and a proletarian accent from one of the state schools. The technical
branches of the Army, such as the Royal Electrical and Mechanical
Engineers and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, draw an increasing number
of their officers from the noncommissioned officers and from among the
graduates of technical schools.

Nowhere is the middle class's ability to assimilate new groups and thus
perpetuate itself more striking than in the Army. The officers from
the ranks or from a state school assume the social coloration of the
established officer class. Manners, accent, turns of phrase, and dress
alter to conform with those of the old officer class. At present the
new group is in a minority. There naturally are many members of the old
officer class still serving. With the return of prosperity the upper
middle class has resumed the tradition of sending its sons into the
Army as a matter of course.

The general officers of the old school, which in this case means the
old public school, vehemently defend the middle class as the only
proper breeding-ground for service officers. They assert that only
men from a certain class, by which they mean their own, and from a
certain background, by which they mean a public school, will accept the
responsibility and provide the leadership necessary in war. A general
told me: "It's really very simple. Men who drop their _h_'s won't
follow an officer who also drops his _h_'s. They don't think he'll take
care of them as well as some young pipsqueak six months out of Eton but
with the correct accent."

This will strike Americans as ridiculous. Certainly it ignores the
high quality of leadership exercised by sergeant pilots of the RAF
Bomber Command. But the general cannot be dismissed as unrealistic. The
correct accent _does_ count in Britain. The public-school boy _has_
been trained to look after others. The idea of an officer class may
offend us as contradictory to democratic equality. But it can and does
work. Nowhere in the world is the officer caste better treated than in
the proletarian society of Soviet Russia.

The Army and the Navy will continue to assimilate into the commissioned
ranks of their services an increasing number of men of working-class
origin. Science's invasion of the military art, long established but
tremendously accelerated since 1945, makes it inevitable that the
sharp young technician, "without an _h_ to his name" as the middle
class says, will continue to rise to commissioned rank. It also seems
relatively certain that as he rises he will assume some of the social
patina of the middle class.

The old conception of military leadership as a prerogative of the
aristocracy died hard. It took the blunders and casualties of the
Crimean War, the Boer War, and the First World War to kill it.
During World War II the British services produced a large number of
outstanding leaders: Alexander, Brooke, Dill, Montgomery, Slim, Wavell,
Leese, Horrocks in the Army, Cunningham, Fraser, Vian, Mountbatten in
the Navy, Portal, Harris, Tedder, Slessor, Bowhill in the RAF. With the
exception of Alexander and Mountbatten, all were products of the old
middle class. But in a changing Britain the authority of this class
in the field it made particularly its own is being undermined both by
new techniques of war and by the shifts in internal power which have
occurred in Britain since 1940.

Those officers and ex-officers who recognize this are not greatly
concerned for the survival of their class leadership; most are
convinced that it will survive. They are concerned, however, lest
in this rapidly changing century the traditions that their class
perpetuated and, in some cases, changed into fetishes should perish.
Regimental traditions, some of which stretch back three centuries into
military history, will, they insist, be as important in the era of
guided missiles as they were in the days of the matchlock.

It is argued that the sense of continuity, the conviction that men
before them have faced perils as great and have survived and won
is essential if Britain is to continue as a military power. The
composition of the Army, Navy, and Air Force officer groups may change.
But the new men will have to rely quite as much on the service and
regimental traditions as did the men who fought at Minden, Waterloo, or
Le Cateau.


WORKER'S PLAYTIME

The leisure activities of the British people in the present decade
offer a revealing guide to the changes that have overtaken their
society. One can learn a great deal by comparing a rugby crowd at
Twickenham and a soccer crowd at Wembley. The rise in popularity of
some forms of entertainment, notably television, testifies to the new
prosperity of the working class. The slow decline of interest in some
sports and the shift from playing to watching illustrate other changes
in the make-up of Britain.

Television is the greatest new influence on the British masses
since the education acts of the last century produced a proletariat
capable of reading the popular press, a situation capitalized by
Lord Northcliffe and others. And the mass attention to "what's
on television," like every other change in Britain, has social
connotations. Among many in the middle class and the upper middle class
it is close to class treason to admit regular watching of television.
"We have one for Nanny and the children," a London hostess said, "but
we never watch it. Fearfully tedious, most of it."

Significantly, the middle class, when defending its right to send
its sons to public schools, emphasizes that the working class could
send its sons to the same schools if it were willing to abandon
its payments for television. This may reveal one reason for the
middle-class dislike for this form of entertainment. Television sets
are expensive, and possibly the cost cannot be squeezed into a budget
built around the necessity of sending the boy to school.

The spread of television-viewing in Britain has had far-reaching
economic and social effects. A sharp blow has been dealt the corner
pub, by tradition the workingman's club. Since the rise of modern
Britain, it is to the pub that the worker has taken his sorrows, his
ambitions, and his occasional joys. There over a pint of bitters
he could think dark thoughts about his boss, voice his opinions on
statesmen from Peel to Churchill, and argue about racing with his
friends. "These days," a barmaid told me, "they come in right after
supper, buy some bottled ale--nasty gassy stuff it is, too--and rush
home to the telly. In the old days they came in around seven, regular
as clockwork it was, and didn't leave until I said 'Time, gentlemen,
please.'"

Television also has affected attendance at movies and at sports events.
The British have never been a nation of night people, and nowadays
they seem to be turning within themselves, a nation whose physical
surroundings are bounded by the hearth, the television screen, and
quick trips to the kitchen to open another bottle of beer. My friends
on the BBC tell me this is not so; television, they say, has opened
new horizons for millions and is the great national educator of the
future. It is easy to forgive their enthusiasm. But how can a people
learn the realities of life if what it really wants on television is
sugary romances or the second-hand jokes and antics of comedians rather
than the admirable news and news-interpretation programs produced by
both the BBC and the Independent Television Authority? The new working
class seems to be irritated by attempts to bring it face to face with
the great problems of their country and of the world. Having attained
what it wants--steady employment, high wages, decent housing--it hopes
to hide before its television screens while this terrible, strident
century hammers on.

The view that the British have become a nation of spectators has been
put forward with confidence by many observers, British as well as
foreign. It is valid, I believe, only if one takes the view that the
millions who watch soccer (which the British call football), rugby
football, field hockey, and other sports on a Saturday afternoon in
autumn are the only ones who count. But there are hundreds of thousands
who play these sports. Some few hundred are professionals playing
before thousands, but many thousands more are amateurs. Stand in a
London railroad station any Saturday at noon and count the hundreds of
young men and young women hurrying to trains that will take them to
some suburban field where they will use the hockey sticks, football
shoes, or cricket bats they are carrying.

Neither soccer nor rugby football is so physically punishing as
American football, although both demand great stamina. So the British
play these games long after the American college tackle has hung up his
cleats and is boring his friends at the country club with the story
of how he blocked the kick against Dartmouth or Slippery Rock. An
ex-officer of my acquaintance played cricket, and pretty good cricket,
too, until he was well into his forties. On village cricket grounds
(the British call them "pitches") on a Sunday afternoon one can see
sedate vicars and husky butchers well past fifty flailing away at the
ball.

If one adds to these the thousands who take a gun and shoot or a rod
and fish, and the tens of thousands more who cycle into the countryside
spring, summer, and fall, the picture reveals a nation which does not
rely solely on watching sports for its pleasure but which still gets
enormous fun out of playing them.

Sports of all sorts, either spectator or participant, occupy an
important, even a venerated, place in British society. Kipling's
warning against the damage that "the flanneled fool at the wicket and
the muddied oaf at the goal" might do to the nation's martial capacity
was never taken very seriously. After all, Britons have been told
interminably and mistakenly that Waterloo was won on the playing-fields
of Eton. The Duke of Wellington, who commanded the British forces in
that notable victory, could recall no athletic triumphs of his own at
Eton save that he had once jumped a rather wide ditch as a boy. The
Duke's pastimes were riding to hounds and women, neither of which was
in the Eton curriculum at the time he matriculated. Nevertheless, the
tradition remains.

When an American thinks of British sport, he automatically thinks of
cricket. But cricket is a game that can be played in Britain only
during the short and frequently stormy months of late spring and
summer. In point of attendance, number of players participating, and
national interest, _the_ game is soccer. Soccer, the late Hector McNeil
loved to emphasize, is "the game of the people." It is also the game of
millions who have never seen a game but who each week painfully fill
out their coupons on the football pools, hopeful that _this_ time they
will win the tens of thousands of pounds that go to the big winners.
The football pools are an example of a diversion that has moved upward
in the social scale. The British, almost all of them, love to gamble,
and the retired colonial servant at Bath finds as great a thrill in
winning on the pools or even trying to win as the steel worker at
Birmingham does. These days the steel worker has a little more money to
back his choices.

To many Americans soccer is a game played by national groups in the big
cities and by high schools, prep schools, and colleges too small or
too poor to support football. Soccer, actually, is an extremely fast,
highly scientific game whose playing evokes from the crowds very much
the same passions that are evident at Busch Stadium or Ebbets Field.
There is no gentlemanly restraint about questioning an official's
decision in soccer as there is in cricket. The British version of "ya
bum, ya" rolls over the stadium on Saturday afternoons. Once I heard a
staid working-class housewife address a referee who had awarded a free
kick against Arsenal as "Oh, you bloody man!" The English can go no
further in vituperation.

Although soccer is principally the game of Britain's working masses,
there are some among the middle class who find it entrancing. But the
great game of this class in the autumn and winter is rugby football.

Here we encounter a social difference. Rugby was popularized at a
public school and is pre-eminently the public-school game. The "old
rugger blue" is as much a part of the rugby crowd as the ex-tackle from
Siwash in the American football crowd. The games, incidentally, have a
good deal in common and require similar skills. There is no blocking or
forward passing in rugby, but the great backs of rugby football would
hold their own in the American game.

In the middle class it is good form to have played rugby or to watch
rugby. At the big games at Twickenham just outside London one will see
a higher percentage of women than at the major soccer matches. The
difference between the classes watching the two sports is emphasized
by the difference in clothing. Twickenham costumes are tweeds, duffel
coats, old school ties, and tweed caps. At Wembley there are the
inevitable raincoat (usually called a "mac"), the soft gray hat, and
the decent worsted suit of the industrial worker on his day off.

Rugby crowds are as partisan as soccer crowds but less vociferous. A
bad decision will occasion some head-shaking and tut-tutting, but there
will be little shouted criticism--with one exception: the Welsh.

The people of the Principality of Wales take their rugby as the
people of Brooklyn take their baseball. In the mining valleys and the
industrial cities rugby, not soccer, is the proletarian sport. The
players on an English team in an international match with Wales will
include university graduates, public-school teachers, and law students.
The Welsh side will boast colliery workers, policemen, and teachers
at state schools. More than a sport, rugby is a national religion.
Consequently, the invasion of Twickenham by a Welsh crowd for an
international match is very like the entry of a group of bartenders
and bookmakers into a WCTU convention. The Welsh feel emotionally
about rugby, and they do not keep their feelings to themselves. They
are a small people but terribly tough. My happiest memory of the 1956
international at Twickenham is of a short, broad Welsh miner pummeling
a tall, thin Englishman who had suggested mildly that Wales had been
lucky to win.

There is another break in the pattern of middle-class allegiance to
rugby. A game called Rugby League, somewhat different from the older
and more widely played Rugby Union, is played in the North of England.
It is definitely a working-class game and a professional one, whereas
Rugby Union is, by American standards, ferociously amateur. The English
feel badly when one of their players succumbs to the financial lure of
Rugby League and leaves the amateur game. The Welsh feel even worse,
not because the player is turning professional but because "Look,
dammit, man, we need Jones for the match with England."

There are survivals of the old attitude toward professionals in sport
in the English (but not the Welsh) attitude toward rugby football.
Soccer football, like baseball in America, began as an amateur game and
at one time was widely played by the middle class. But middle-class
enthusiasm and support dwindled as the game became professionalized.
Of late there has been a revival of interest in the amateur side of
the sport, but basically the game is played by professionals for huge
crowds drawn from the industrial working class. However, thousands in
the crowds also play for club and school teams.

Yet here we encounter another contradiction. Cricket, considered the
most English of games, is played nowadays mostly by professionals,
as far as the county teams (the equivalent of the major-league teams
in baseball) are concerned. But many English approach cricket with
something akin to the Welshman's attitude toward rugby. Professionalism
is no longer looked down upon, and the old distinctions between
Gentlemen and Players are slowly vanishing.

John Lardner once mentioned how difficult it was to explain the
extraordinary ascendancy that baseball assumed over Americans in the
last half of the nineteenth century. It is equally difficult to explain
the hold that cricket exercises today on a large section of Britain.
More people watch soccer, but that game does not seem to generate the
dedicated, almost mystic attitude displayed by cricket enthusiasts.
Cricket is an extraordinarily involved, delicate, and, at times,
exciting game. But it cannot be merely the game itself which brings
old men doddering to Lord's and rouses whole families in the chill cold
of a winter morning to listen to the broadcast of a match played half a
world away in the bright sunshine of Melbourne.

Part of the hold may be explained by cricket's ability to remind the
spectators of their youth and a richer, greener England. To that
nation, secure, prosperous, and powerful, many thousands of the middle
class return daily in their thoughts. Cricket--village cricket or
cricket at the Oval or Lord's, twin sanctums of the game--represents
that other England. For a time they can forget the taxes, forget the
unknown grave in France or Libya, forget the industrial wasteland
around them, and return to the village green and the day the Vicar
bowled (struck out) the policeman from the next village.

It is a peaceful game to watch. The absence of the noise, the strident
criticisms and outbursts, of the baseball game has been noted by enough
Americans. In addition, there is a soporific atmosphere about cricket.
Men sit on the grass and watch the white figures of the players make
intricate, shifting patterns against the bright green of the grass.
Their outward show of enthusiasm is confined to an "Oh, well hit,
well hit indeed, sir" or applause when a player makes fifty runs or
is bowled. There is no need to hurry or to worry about anything more
important than saving the fellow who is on. The pipe is drawing nicely,
and later you can meet old So-and-so at the club, or the pub, for a
chat about the match. "I go out on a summer evening to watch them
play," a Londoner said. "Sort of rests me, it does."

The influence of cricket on the middle class that follows the game has
been and is remarkable. Cricket terms have become part of the language
of this class. Such phrases as "hit them for six" and "batting on a
sticky wicket" pepper the speeches of politicians. As cricket was
played originally by amateurs who were presumed to be gentlemen, it
assumed an aristocratic tone. Anything that was "not cricket" was not
gentlemanly.

Many Britons in World War II showed a tendency to think of the war in
terms of cricket. This was discouraged by the tougher-minded commanders
on the sensible grounds that war is not cricket. But no one could stop
Field Marshal Montgomery from promising his troops they were about to
"hit the Germans for six." This introduction of a sporting vocabulary
into a fight for survival is one of the reasons why many Continentals
regard the English as a frivolous race. I remember still the look,
compounded of awe and disgust, on the face of a Norwegian, lately
escaped from his homeland, when in the summer of 1940 he found that the
newspaper-sellers on the street corners were writing the results of
each day's fighting in the Battle of Britain in cricket terms. "Here
they are," he said, "fighting for their lives, and I see a sign reading
'England 112 Not Out.' I asked the man what it meant, and he said:
'We got 112 of the ----ers, cock, and we're still batting.' A strange
people."

If soccer is primarily a working-class sport and cricket the central
sporting interest of the middle class, horse racing is the attraction
that transcends all class distinctions. In Britain, as in America,
great trouble is taken by those who administer the business to clothe
it with the attributes of a sport. But essentially horse racing is a
means of gambling, and the British, beneath their supposed stolidity,
are a nation of gamblers. I do not recall during my childhood buying
a ticket for a sweepstakes on the Kentucky Derby. But in Britain boys
and girls of ten and eleven customarily buy tickets in "sweeps" run by
their classmates, and the more precocious swap tips on horses.

A tremendous amount is bet each day on racing in Britain, and it is
estimated that more money is bet on the Epsom Derby each June than on
any other single horse race in the world.

Derby Day at Epsom is one of the best opportunities of seeing
contemporary British society, from the Queen at the top to the London
barrow boy at the bottom, en masse. Inside the track are the vans of
the gypsy fortune-tellers, the stands of the small-time bookmakers,
scores of bars and snack bars, carousels and other amusement-park
attractions. Across the track are the big stands filled with what
remains of the aristocracy and the upper middle class of Britain
carefully dressed in morning coats, gray top hats, and starched
collars. Its members may envy the great wads of bank-notes carried by
some of the prosperous farmers and North Country businessmen across
the track, but on Derby Day anything goes, and there are champagne and
lobster lunches, hilarious greetings to old friends, and reminiscences
of past Derbies.

Queen Elizabeth II's love of racing endears her to her subjects.
An interest in racing has always been a passport to popularity for
monarchs or politicians. Sir Winston Churchill, who divined the wishes
and thoughts of his countrymen with uncanny ability during the years
of crisis between 1939 and 1945, had few interests in common with the
people he lectured and led. He cared little for soccer or cricket. But
when, after the war, he began to build up a racing stable, he acquired
a new popularity with the people. Naturally, this was the last thing in
Sir Winston's mind. He had made some money, he was out of office, and
racing attracted him.

Racing is an upper-class sport in the sense that only the rich
can afford it. But the true upper-class sports that survive are
fox-hunting, shooting, and fishing, known in upper-class parlance as
"huntin', shootin', and fishin'." Shooting is bird-shooting--pheasant,
grouse, partridge. Fishing is for salmon or trout. As Britain's
sprawling industrialization has gobbled up land, the field sports
have become more and more the preserve of the rich or at least the
well-to-do. George Orwell once noted the dismay of British Communists
who learned that Lenin and other revolutionary leaders had enjoyed
shooting--shooting birds, that is--in Russia, a country teeming with
game. They thought it almost treasonable for the Little Father of
the masses to engage in a sport that in Britain was reserved for the
capitalists.

Fox-hunting, chiefly because of its close connection with the cult
of the horse, takes social precedence over shooting and fishing. But
here again we encounter a change. Death duties, taxes on land, and
income taxes have impoverished a large number of rural aristocrats
who formerly supported local hunts. Their places have been taken by
well-to-do farmers and professional men and women from near-by towns.
Some of the better-established hunts, such as the Quorn and the
Pytchley, try to maintain the old standards of exclusiveness.

The attention paid the cavalry regiments in the old Army, the
middle-class conviction that children must be taught to ride because it
is a social asset, the aristocratic atmosphere of fox-hunting and show
jumping are all expressions of the cult of the horse which flourishes
in one of the most heavily industrialized nations in the world. This,
too, may express an unconscious desire to return to the past and a
secure Britain. Here, too, we see the newly emerging middle class
sending its sons and daughters to riding schools where they will meet
the sons and daughters of the established middle class.

Golf and tennis are two games that Britain spread around the world.
Golf is every man's game in Scotland and a middle-class game in
England. I well remember my first trip to St. Andrews in 1939 and my
delight at watching a railroad worker solemnly unbutton his collar,
take off his coat, and play around one of the formidable courses
there in 89. The incongruity was made more marked by the foursomes of
expensively outfitted English and Americans who allowed the Scot to
play through.

Tennis in Britain, like tennis in America, retains aristocratic
overtones. But today it is a middle-class sport; membership at the
local tennis club is ranked below membership in the local yacht club or
the local hunt.

In both games British representatives in international competitions
are at a disadvantage because there is not in Britain the urgent drive
to develop players of international ability which exists in the United
States and Australia. British cricket and rugby football teams, on the
other hand, have enjoyed a number of brilliant successes in competition
with Commonwealth teams since the war, and English soccer football,
after some lean years, has begun to climb back to the top of the
international heap.

In this land of paradox which was the birthplace of the modern
"sporting" attitude, the original home of "the game for the game's
sake," we find that the most popular sport is soccer football played
for money mainly by professionals; that rugby football can be a
middle-class game in England and a working-class game one hundred miles
away in Wales; that cricket through the years has acquired the standing
not of a sport but of a religion among one important class in society;
and that shooting and fishing, two proletarian pastimes in both the
United States and the Soviet Union, are the domain of the wealthy, the
well-bred, and the middle class in Britain.


PUBS AND CLUBS

Long ago one of my bosses advised me to spend less time listening
to people in pubs. Had I taken his advice, which fortunately I did
not, I would be richer by many pounds but poorer in both friends and
information.

Although writers have contended otherwise, the public house is not a
unique British institution. Frenchmen gather in _estaminets_ to drink,
to argue, and to write interminable letters. Americans meet at bars and
taverns. The Spaniard patronizes his café. The unique aspect of the
British pub is its atmosphere.

The pub is a place where you can take your time. In city or country
it is a refuge. A man may enter, drink three or four pints of beer in
moody silence, and depart refreshed. Or he can come in, drink the same
amount of beer, debate the state of the nation and the world with other
drinkers and the barmaid, and play darts. Dart-playing, of course,
is a national sport, and there are enthusiasts who claim it has more
devotees than tennis or golf. Dart leagues flourish throughout the
country, to the delight of the publicans, who reap a rich harvest from
each match.

Pubs come in all shapes and sizes. Recently many of the old London pubs
have been modernized. Plastics and neon lights have taken the place
of huge glass walls engraved with advertisements for gin and beer and
old-fashioned glass-shaded electric lights. In their efforts to meet
the competition of television at home and milk bars or soda fountains
down the street, many pubs have adopted new and, to a purist,
disgusting attractions. The news that a pub in Cambridge intended to
sell ice cream convinced many serious thinkers that this _was_ the end
of the Empire. Similarly, a friend told me in shocked tones that when
he was served a pint of beer in a suburban pub the barmaid handed him
"a damned doily" to put under the glass. He informed her, he reported,
that he had given up spilling his drinks at the age of three and a half.

Despite the inroads of the milk bars and the trend toward bottled beer
bought in the pub and drunk before the television set, draught beer
is still the mainstay of British drinking. "Beer and beef have made
us what we are," said the Prince Regent. (His friend, the Duke of
Wellington, somewhat surprisingly, thought the Church of England was
responsible.)

English beer has a bad name in the United States. The GI invading the
country in 1942-5 found it weak, warm, and watery. During the war years
it was indeed both weak and watery. Today, however, it has regained its
old-time potency.

In addition to the standard beers and ales, the British brew small
quantities of special ales that, as the old saying goes, would blow
a soft hat through a cement ceiling. The Antelope, in Chelsea, had
managed to hoard some bottles of this liquid as late as the autumn of
1940. After two bottles apiece, three Americans walked home through
one of the worst nights of bombing exclaiming happily over the pretty
lights in the sky.

The merits of the brews in their respective countries are a favorite
topic for conversation between Britons and Americans. The tourist will
find that his host holds no high opinion of American beer, considering
it gassy, flavorless, and, as one drinker inelegantly described it, "as
weak as gnat's wee." The British are continually surprised by American
drinking habits. They consider that the GI who hastily swallows three
or four double whiskies is asking for trouble, and that the object of
a night's foray in the pub is not to get drunk but to drink enough to
encourage conversation and forget your troubles. Prohibition, gone
these many years, is still a black mark against Americans in the minds
of the pundits in the pubs. They regard it as a horrible aberration by
an otherwise intelligent people.

It should not be assumed that the British drink only beer. When they
are in funds or when the occasion calls for something stronger, they
will drink almost anything from what my charwoman once described as "a
nourishing drop of gin" to champagne. During the war they drank some
strange and weird mixtures and distillations that, if they did not kill
the drinker as did some Prohibition drams, at least made him wish he
were dead the next morning.

But the pub's importance, let me repeat, is due to its place as a
public forum as much as to its position as a public fountain. There
questions can be asked and answers given which the average Briton would
regard as impertinent if the conversation took place in his home or
his office. There interminable public arguments will probe the wisdom
of the government's policy on installment buying or Cyprus or, with
due gravity, will seek to establish the name of the winner of the
Cambridgeshire Handicap in 1931.

The atmosphere of discussion and reflection of the English pub thus
far has been proof against the juke box, the pinball machine, and the
television set. But the fight is a hard one. These counterattractions
to the bar are making their appearance in an increasing number of
pubs each year. At the same time, publicans are giving more thought
to the catering side of their business. The bar, which was the heart
of the pub, has become merely an adjunct to the "attractions" and the
restaurant.

The spread of restaurant eating is itself a novel change in British
habits. Until the Second World War the great majority of the working
class and the middle class ate their meals at home. Even today, in the
New Towns, the industrial worker prefers to return home for lunch.
But the shortage of servants, the difficulties of feeding a family on
the weekly rations, the need to get away from the drabness of chilly,
darkened homes during the war and immediate post-war years combined to
send millions of Britons out to eat.

This has changed the character of a large number of pubs. It has also
improved restaurant cooking, especially in the provinces. British
cooking is a standard music-hall joke, but the comedians are somewhat
behind the times. It has improved steadily since the war, largely
because the British had to learn how to cook in order to make their
meager rations palatable. The squeeze on the established middle class
forced the housewives of that group to study cookery. Dinners in that
circle are shorter and less formal than before the war, but the cooking
is vastly improved.

Décor in modern pubs varies from the overpoweringly new to the
self-consciously old. Tucked away in the back streets of the cities,
however, or nestling in the folds of the Cotswolds one can still see
the genuine article. There the political arguments flourish as they
have since Bonaparte was troubling the English. There on a Saturday
night you can still hear the real English songs--"Knees Up Mother
Brown" or "Uncle Tom Cobley and All."

A sense of calm pervades the rural bars. The countryman is a
long-lived, tough person. At the Monkey and Drum or the Red Dragon or
the Malakof (named for a half-forgotten action in the Crimean War) the
beer is set out for wiry ancients in their seventies and eighties,
masters of country crafts long forgotten by the rest of the population.
The sun stays late in the sky on a summer evening. From the open door
you can see it touching the orderly fields, the neat houses. It is
difficult, almost impossible in such surroundings to doubt that there
will always be an England. Yet this is precisely the England that is
and has been in continuous retreat for a century and a half before the
devouring march of industrialization.

The pub is the poor man's "club"--in the sense that it is a haven
for the tired worker and a center of discussion. The actual British
clubs are another singular institution. There are, of course, men's
and women's clubs throughout the West, but only in Britain have they
become an integral and important part of social life. Like the pubs,
they are changing with the times. But they still retain enough of their
distinctive flavor to mark them as a particularly British institution.

London's clubs are the most famous. But throughout the islands there
are other clubs--county clubs in provincial capitals, workingmen's
clubs that compete with the pubs. There are women's clubs, too, but the
club is mainly a masculine institution in a nation whose society is
still ordered for the well-being of the male.

"Do you mean to tell me that these Englishmen go to their clubs for a
drink after work and don't get home until dinnertime?" a young American
matron asked. She thought it was "scandalous." Her husband, poor devil,
came home from work promptly at six each night and sat down to an early
dinner with his wife and three small children. I suppose he enjoyed it.

London's clubs cater to all tastes. There are political clubs such as
the Carlton, the Conservatives' inner sanctum. There are service clubs:
the Cavalry or the Army and Navy. On St. James's Street are a number of
the oldest and best: White's, Boodle's, Brooks's, the Devonshire.

The same American matron asked me what a club offers. The answer is,
primarily, relaxation in a man's world. Like the pub, the club is a
place where a man can get away from his home, his job, his worries. If
he wishes, he can drink and eat while reading a newspaper. Or he can
stand at the bar exchanging gossip with other members. He can read, he
can play cards, he can play billiards. If he wants advice, there may
be an eminent Queen's Counsel, a Foreign Office official, a doctor, or
an editor across the luncheon table. There is the same atmosphere of
relaxed calm which marks the best pubs.

Because for centuries the clubs have been the refuges of the wealthy
or the aristocratic or the dominant political class they have exerted
considerable political influence. Feuds that have shaken great
political parties have begun before club bars and, years later, been
settled with an amicable little dinner party at the club. In politics,
domestic and foreign, the British put great faith in the "quiet
get-together" where an issue can be thrashed out in private without
regard for popular opinion.

During the worst days of the debate over the future of Trieste a
Foreign Office official remarked to me that "all these conferences"
complicated the situation. "There's nothing that couldn't be settled
in an hour's frank talk over a glass of sherry at White's," he said.
Foolish? Old-fashioned? Perhaps. But how much progress has been made
at full-dress international conferences where national leaders speak
not to one another but to popular opinion in their own and foreign
countries?

The clubs are centers in which opinion takes form. As the opinion of
many who are leaders in Britain's political and economic life, it is
important opinion. For instance, it was obvious in the clubs, long
before the failure of the Norwegian campaign brought it into the open,
that there was widespread dissatisfaction in the middle class over
Neville Chamberlain's direction of the war. Similarly, stories of the
aging Churchill's unwillingness to deal with the pressing domestic
economic problems of his government were first heard in the clubs.

The high cost of maintaining the standards of food, drink, and service
required by most members has hurt the clubs. There are in every such
institution a few staff mainstays whose remarks become part of club
lore. But the Wages and Catering Act has made it difficult to staff
clubs adequately.

The food in clubs is man's food. Its emphasis on beef, lamb, fish, and
cheese would upset a Mamaroneck matron. But some of the chefs are as
good as any in Britain, and the food can be accompanied by some of the
finest wines in the world.

Essentially, the club remains man's last refuge from the pressures of
his world. He can talk, he can listen, he can drink a second or even a
third cocktail without the slight sniff that betokens wifely censure.
The latest story about the Ruritanian Ambassadress or the government's
views on the situation in Upper Silesia will be retailed by members.
The taxes may be high, the world in a mess, the old order changing.
Here by the fire with his drink in his hand he is his own man. "Waiter,
two more of the same."




[Illustration]




XII. _Britain and the Future_

  _I will not cease from mental fight,
  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
  Till we have built Jerusalem
  In England's green and pleasant land._

  WILLIAM BLAKE

 _Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden
 age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and
 decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be
 disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present._

  THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

[Illustration]


Is the long story of British greatness nearly done? That is the
question we must ask ourselves as we survey the real Britain, the
changing Britain of today.

The question is a vital one for Americans. Our generation faces a
challenge that dwarfs those offered by Germany in 1917 or by Germany,
Japan, and Italy in 1941. Communist dominion stretches from the Elbe
to the Pacific, from the arctic to the jungles of Indochina. Nearly a
thousand million people serve tyrannical systems of government. Behind
the barbed wire and the empty-faced guards at the frontiers we can
hear the explosions of devastating weapons of war, we can discern the
ceaseless effort to achieve the world triumph of Communism.

To the leaders of all these millions, the United States is the enemy,
the people of America their principal obstacle in the march to world
power. As the most successful capitalist state, the United States is
now and will be in the future the principal target for the diplomatic
intrigues, the political subversion, and the economic competition of
the Communist bloc. The avenues of attack may be indirect, the means
may differ from place to place. But the enmity does not vary. America
is the enemy today, as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow.

Living at the apex of power and prosperity, it is easy for Americans
to be complacent, it is natural for them to fasten on hints of Russian
friendship. But it is folly to believe that the world situation is
improving because Nikita Khrushchev jests with correspondents in Moscow
or because a delegation of visiting farmers from the Ukraine is made up
of hearty extroverts. For the Communist challenge, as it has developed
since the death of Stalin, is as real as that which produced the cold
war of 1945-53. But because it is expressed in terms superficially less
belligerent than blockades and riots, violent speeches and editorials,
and overt instant and implacable opposition to Western policies,
the current challenge is far more insidious. Concepts and policies
developed to meet a purely military challenge will not suffice to
defeat it.

For a decade the United States has been busy "making" allies all over
the world. But you cannot "make" allies as you make Fords. You cannot
buy them as you buy bread at the baker's. Of course, in war, or at
war's approach, threatened nations will hurry for shelter under the
protecting wings of Uncle Sam. But we are facing a situation in which
every effort will be made to lure our friends away with protestations
of peaceful intent. Our real allies will be those who share common
interests and believe in the same principles of government and law.
Among these the British stand pre-eminent.

There was a wise old general commanding the United States Army in
Germany at the height of the cold war. At this time, early in 1951, no
one was sure what the next Russian move would be. Some of the general's
young officers were playing that engaging game of adding divisions of
various nationalities to assess Western strength. In the unbuttoned
atmosphere of after-dinner drinks they conjured up Italian army corps
and Greek and Turkish armored divisions. After ten minutes of this, the
idea that the Soviet Union might even think of a war seemed downright
foolish.

The general surveyed them with a wintry eye and then spoke. They were,
he said mildly, playing with shadows. If "it" came, the only people
to count on were the four divisions of British troops up on the left
flank. These are the only people on our side, he added, who think the
way we do and feel the way we do. These are the people who, in war or
in peace, in good times and bad, are going to stick.

This identity of broad political outlook is essential in American
assessments of Britain. It is more important in the long run than
concern over the power of the Trades Union Congress or competition for
overseas markets.

But, granting this identity of outlook and aims, we have the right to
ask ourselves if Britain remains a powerful and stable ally of the
United States in the leadership of the Western community. I believe
that the answer is in the affirmative, that with all her difficulties
and changes Britain will continue to play a leading role in the affairs
of the world, that she will not decline gradually into impotent
isolation.

Let us be quite clear about the future outline of British power. The
Empire is gone or going. The British know that. But the endurance, the
resolution, the intelligence that transformed a small island off the
coast of Europe into the greatest of modern empires is still there.
Beneath the complacency, the seeming indifference, it remains. The
best evidence is the series of social, economic, and political changes
that has transformed British life.

These changes, whatever individual Britons or Americans may think of
them, are not signs of complacency or indifference. They are rather
proofs that the society has not lost its dynamism, that its leaders
admit and understand their losses in political influence and economic
power and are determined to build a stronger society on the foundations
of the old.

Admittedly, the British make it difficult for their friends or their
enemies to discern the extent of change. They cling to the old
established forms. This is a characteristic that is almost universal
in mankind. When the first automobiles appeared, they were built to
resemble horse-drawn carriages. Men cling to the familiar in the
material and the mental. Think of our own devotion, in a period when
the nation has developed into a continental and world power, to a
Constitution drafted to suit the needs of a few millions living along
the eastern fringe of our country.

The changes in Britain have taken place behind a façade of what the
world expects from Britain. The Queen rides in her carriage at Royal
Ascot, the extremists of the Labor Party cry havoc and let slip the
dogs of political war, the Guards are on parade, and gentlemen with
derbies firm upon their heads walk down St. James's swinging their
rolled umbrellas. Literature, the stage, the movies, the appearance of
the visiting Englishman in every quarter of the globe has implanted a
false picture firmly in the popular mind.

"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun." They also play
cricket and drink tea to the exclusion of other entertainments, live on
estates or in tiny thatched cottages, say "by Jove" or "cor blimey."
Their society is stratified, their workers are idle, their enterprise
is negligible. Britain itself is a land of placid country villages, one
large city (London), squires and lords, cockney humorists and rustics
in patched corduroy.

This is Britain as many Americans think of it. It is also, as I have
mentioned earlier, the Britain to which many of its inhabitants return
in their daydreams. But it is not contemporary Britain.

The real Britain is a hurrying, clamorous, purposeful industrial
nation. Its people, with a sense of reality any nation might envy, are
carrying out major changes in the structure of the national economy and
in the organization of society. The Welfare State may be considered
a blessing or a curse, according to political taste, but the nation
that first conceived and established it cannot be thought deficient in
imagination or averse to change.

The human symbol of modern Britain is not John Bull with his
country-squire clothes or the languid, elegant young man of the
West End theater, but an energetic, quick-spoken man of thirty-five
or forty. He is "in" plastics or electronics or steel. He talks of
building bridges in India, selling trucks in Nigeria, or buying timber
in Russia. In the years since the war he has been forced to supplement
his education--he went to a small public school--with a great deal of
technical reading about his job. His home is neither an estate nor a
cottage but a small modern house. He wants a better house, a better
car in time. Indeed, he wants more of everything that is good in life.
He recognizes the need for change--and his own pre-eminence in the
economy of the nation is a sign of change. But by tradition he opposes
any change so rapid and revolutionary that it shakes the basis of his
society. Politically, he is on the left wing of the Conservative Party
or the right wing of the Labor Party. When in 1945 he left the Army
or the Navy or the Air Force his views were well to the left of their
present position. The thought that Britain's day is done has never
entered his head.

The moderation of his political outlook expresses an important trend in
British politics. This is the movement within both major parties toward
the moderate center and a reaffirmation of the national rather than the
party point of view. The antics of the extreme left and the extreme
right in British politics are entertaining and occasionally worrying.
But under present conditions neither group represents a dominant
doctrine, although in London, as in Washington, governments must make
gestures in the direction of their more extreme supporters.

This movement toward the center seems to express two deeply felt
national attitudes. One is that further experimentation in transforming
British society should be postponed until the changes that took
place in World War II and the decade that followed it have finished
their alteration of that society. There will be--indeed, there must
be--further alterations in the industrial economy, and these, of
course, will affect society. But I do not believe the British people
are now prepared for further sweeping, planned changes in their life
or would support such changes if they were to be proposed by either
political party.

The second attitude is a growing determination to face up to the
national danger. Successive governments have attempted to drive home
the lesson that Britain's economic peril is very real and that it is
not a transient matter; that exports and dollar balances and internal
consumption will be matters of great importance for years to come. As
the memories of pre-war Britain fade, and as a new generation that has
never experienced the national economic security of imperial Britain
gains power, awareness of the nation's real problems should take hold.
And because the British are a sensible people bountifully endowed
with courage and resource, they should be able to meet and defeat the
problems.

But at the moment the percentage of those who understand the national
position is too small. They must eternally contend against two
psychological factors in working-class opinion which we have already
encountered. One is the political lethargy of the new industrial
worker who, after centuries of shameful treatment, has emerged into
the sunlight of full employment, adequate housing, high wages, strong
industrial organization, political representation, amusements, clothes
and food that for decades have been out of the reach of Britain's
masses. This new working class has shown itself capable of great
self-sacrifice on behalf of its class interests and, let us never
forget, on behalf of its country in the last fifty years. But now,
having reached the home of its dreams, it has hung a "Do Not Disturb"
sign on the gate. Apparently it has done with sacrifice and realism.

To a certain extent this attitude is encouraged by the big national
newspapers. The emphasis on sport, crime, the royal family, and the
trivia of international affairs leaves inadequate space for the grim
realities of the long politico-economic struggle with Russia, and the
new working class remains uninformed about its real problems. A Prime
Minister or a Chancellor of the Exchequer may expound the realities of
the national position in a speech, but if people are not interested
enough to listen or to read, what good does it do?

Such a state of mind in an important section of the populace seriously
impedes national progress. When dollar contracts are lost because
of union squabbles there is something radically wrong with the
leadership exercised by the trade unions. Would the contracts be lost,
one wonders, if the union leaders had given their followers a clear
explanation of the importance of such contracts not only to one factory
in one industry but to the entire nation?

Admittedly, there are plenty of others in Britain who do not understand
the importance of the economic situation or the changes that have taken
place. But the attitude of a retired colonel in Bedford or a stout
matron in Wimbledon is not so important to the nation's welfare as that
of the members of the working class.

The second factor affecting the response of this class to the nation's
needs is the effect upon it of the economic depression of the years
between the two world wars. Again and again we have seen how the memory
of unemployment, of the dole, of endless empty days at labor exchanges,
of hungry children and women's stricken eyes has colored the thinking
of the working class. It is too ready to see the problems of the 1950's
in terms of its experiences of the 1930's. Consequently, it adopts
a partisan attitude toward political development and a reactionary
attitude toward industrial innovation.

There are those who argue that these attitudes will change as the
working class becomes more accustomed to its new condition of life and
place in the national pattern. This may prove true. But can Britain
afford to wait until the union leaders understand that each new machine
or industrial technique is not part of a calculated plan by the bosses
to return the workers to the conditions prevailing in South Wales in
1936?

This partisan approach to economic problems is as important a factor as
complacency and lethargy in obstructing adoption by the working class
of a national viewpoint toward the British economic predicament. The
British political system is a marvelously well-balanced one. But the
balance is disturbed now and has been for some years by the tendency of
organized labor to think almost exclusively in terms of its own rather
than national interests. Labor can with perfect justice retort that
when the middle class dominated British society it thought in terms of
its own interests, too. This is true, of course. The difference is that
the present national position is too precarious for blind partisanship.

Much is made in public speeches of the educational side of trade-union
work. It would seem that the great opportunity for the unions now is
in this field. Someone or some organization that enjoys the respect of
the workers must educate them out of their lethargy and out of their
memories of the past. The popular newspapers will not or cannot do
it--and, naturally, as largely capitalist, they would be suspected by
many of those most in need of such education. But the job must be done
if Britain is to benefit fully from the enterprise and ingenuity of her
designers and engineers.

Certainly the educational process would work both ways. A traveler in
Britain in the period 1953-6 would notice that in many cases there was
a difference between the TUC leaders' views about what the workers
thought and what the workers themselves thought. Many of the unions
have become too big. Contact between the leaders and the rank and file
is lost. The Communists take advantage of this.

Can the working class awaken to the necessities of Britain's position
and sublimate its agonizing memories and fierce hatreds in a national
economic effort? This is the big "if" in Britain's ability to meet the
economic challenge of today. I do not doubt that the working class will
respond again, as it has in the past, to a national emergency that is
as real, if less spectacular, than the one which faced the nation in
1940. This response, I believe, will develop as firmly, albeit more
slowly, under a Conservative government as under a Labor government
because it will be a development of the trend, already clearly evident,
in the new middle class to take a national rather than a class outlook
on Britain's problems. But the response must come soon.

We have seen how the present political alignment in Britain has
developed out of the political and economic circumstances of the years
since 1939. What of the future?

The Conservative government since the end of 1955 has been engaged in
a gigantic political gamble. It has instituted a series of economic
measures to restrict home spending. These measures are highly unpopular
with the new working class from whom the party has obtained surprising
support in recent elections. At the same time the Tory cabinet has not
provided as much relief from taxation as the old middle class, its
strongest supporters, demanded and expected after the electoral triumph
of May 1955. These are calculated political risks. The calculation is
that by the next general election, in 1959 or even 1960, the drive
to expand British exports will have succeeded in establishing a new
prosperity more firmly based than that of the boom years 1954 and 1955.

To attain this objective the Conservative government will have to
perform a feat of political tightrope-walking beyond the aspirations
of ordinary politics. The new prosperity can be achieved successfully,
from the political point of view, only if the measures taken to attain
it please the old middle class without offending Conservative voters in
the new middle class and the new industrial working class. This will
mean budgets in 1957 and 1958 that will relieve financial pressure
upon the first of these groups without alienating the other two, whose
interests are mutually antagonistic. It will mean that Britain's
defense commitments must be reduced and adjusted to the extent that the
savings will cut taxation of the old middle class but not to the extent
that the reduction of defense construction will affect the employment
of either the new middle class or the industrial working class.

This book was completed before the government's course was run. If
its policy succeeds, then Harold Macmillan must be accorded a place
in history not far below that of the greatest workers of political
miracles.

Had there been a general election in the winter of 1956-7, the Labor
Party would have won, although its majority would probably not have
been so large as its enthusiastic tacticians predicted. The party
should be able to appeal to the electorate at the next general election
with greater success than in 1955, providing certain conditions are met.

The big "if" facing the Labor Party concerns not abstruse questions
of socialist dogma but the oldest question in politics: the conflict
between two men. The men are Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party, and Aneurin Bevan.

Nye Bevan remains a major force in British politics. He is the only
prominent politician who is a force in himself, a personality around
which lesser men assemble. Like the young Winston Churchill, he
inspires either love or hate. Untrammeled by the discipline of the
party, he can rally the left wing of the Labor movement. Simultaneously
he can alienate the moderates of the party, the undecided voters,
and the tepid conservatives who had thought it might be time to let
labor "have a go." If the next general-election campaign finds Bevan
clamoring for the extension of nationalization in British industry,
beckoning his countrymen down untrodden social paths, lambasting
Britain's allies, and scoffing at her progress, then the Labor Party
will be defeated.

I have known Aneurin Bevan for many years. For the weal or woe of
Britain, he is a man born to storm and danger. A sudden war, a swift
and violent economic reverse would brighten his star. In a crisis his
confidence, whether that of a born leader or a born charlatan, would
attract the many.

Barring such catastrophes, a reasonable stability in government is to
be expected. The Conservative majority in the House of Commons after
the 1955 election probably was a little larger than is customary in a
nation so evenly divided politically. Despite the rancor aroused by
the Suez crisis, there seem to be reasonable grounds for predicting the
gradual disappearance of Tories of the old type and of the belligerent
Labor leaders surviving from the twenties. The development of a
national outlook by both parties seems probable.

Americans need not be concerned over the fission of the British
political system into a multi-party one capable of providing a
government but incapable of government. Stability means, of course,
that British governments will know their own minds. In the complex,
hair-trigger world of today this is an important factor. It is equally
important in charting the future course of Britain. Nations that know
where they want to go and how they want to go there are not verging on
political senility.

This political stability is vital to Britain in the years of transition
that lie ahead. For it is in British industry that the greatest changes
will take place.

Britain is moving in new directions, economically, politically, and
socially. The base of this movement is industrial--a revolution in
power. The world's most imaginative, extensive, and advanced program
for the production of electricity from nuclear power stations is under
way. This magnificent acceptance of the challenge of the nuclear age is
also an answer to one of the key questions of 1945: how could British
industry expand and British exports thrive if coal yearly became
scarcer and more expensive to mine? The answer is nuclear energy, 5,000
to 6,000 megawatts of it by 1965.

The program for constructing twenty nuclear power stations in Britain
and Northern Ireland is the most spectacular part of the power program.
As coal will be vital to the economy for years to come, more economic
and more efficient mining methods also are regarded as a matter of
national urgency.

Throughout the nation's industrial structure there is an air of purpose
and enthusiasm. Five huge new steel plants will be started in 1957. An
ambitious program of modernizing the railroads and the shipbuilding
industry is well under way. The new industries that have developed
since 1945 and old industries now delivering for the export markets
are pushing British goods throughout the world: radar, radioactive
isotopes, electronic equipment, sleek new jet aircraft, diesel engines,
plastics, detergents, atomic power stations. All are part of Britain's
response to the challenge of change.

To fulfill present hopes, production and productivity must rise,
management must grasp the changed position of Britain in the world.
From the courted, she has become the courter, competing for markets
with Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Such competition
existed in the past, but now, with the cushion of overseas investments
gone, such competition is a true national battle. There is plenty of
evidence that a portion at least of industrial management in Britain
fails to understand these conditions. Such complacency is as dangerous
to the export drive as the unwillingness or inability of the industrial
worker to grasp the export drive's importance to him, to his factory,
to his union, and to his country.

Due emphasis should be given to such failings. But we must not forget
that the British are a great mercantile people, eager and ingenious
traders ready, once they accept its importance, to go to any length of
enterprise to win a market. It is also wise to remember that, although
circumstances have made the British share of the dollar market the
criterion of success, the British do extremely well in a number of
important non-dollar markets.

The attitude of the industrial working class to wage increases is a
factor in the drive to boost the exports on which the nation lives.
The modernization of British industry to meet the requirements of
the nation's economic position, alterations in management and sales
practices, higher production and productivity will not suffice to win
export markets if the wage level in industry continues to rise. A
steady rise will price Britain out of her markets. Should this occur,
the question of whether organized labor is to take kindly to automation
will become academic. The country cannot live without those markets.

Early in September of 1956 when the world was worrying over the Suez
Canal, _The New York Times_ carried a news item from Brighton, the
English seashore resort, that surely was as important to Britain as
anything Premier Nasser or Sir Anthony Eden or Mr. Dulles might say.

The Trades Union Congress, the dispatch said, had rejected the
Conservative government's plea for restraint in pressing wage claims.
The final paragraphs of a resolution passed unanimously at the
eighty-eighth annual conference said that the TUC " ... asserts the
right of labor to bargain on equal terms with capital, and to use its
bargaining strength to protect the workers from the dislocations of an
unplanned economy.

"It rejects proposals to recover control by wage restraint, and by
using the nationalized industries as a drag-anchor for the drifting
national economy."

These phrases reveal the heart of the quarrel between the TUC and the
government. The Conservatives are belabored for not carrying out a
Socialist policy--i.e., a planned economy--but restraint on wages is
rejected.

The resolution represented a serious check in progress toward a
national understanding of the country's economic position. It ensured,
I believe, another round of wage demands by the unions, protracted
industrial disputes, and, eventually, higher costs for industry and
higher prices for foreign buyers.

The constant bickering between union and union, between unions and
employers, and between the TUC and the government should not divert
us from the qualities of the British industrial working class. It
is highly skilled, especially in the fields of electronics and the
other new industries now so important to the export trade. Its
gross production and productivity are rising. It is, once aroused,
intelligent and energetic. The nation is essentially homogeneous. There
is obviously a wide gap between worker and employer in Britain, but it
seems less wide when we compare it with the French worker's hostility
toward his boss.

But of course the industrial worker is only one unit of the industrial
system. Working with him are hundreds of thousands of engineers,
technicians, planners, and managers--men of high quality, imaginative,
daring, and resourceful. Together these two groups operate industries
that are rapidly recovering from the effects of the war and the
frantic post-war period in which all machines had to run at top speed,
regardless of repairs, if Britain was to make enough to live.

If Americans understand that in a smaller country industry will be
on a smaller scale than in the United States, they must concede that
the steel plants in Wales and the North, the hydroelectric power
system built in the fastnesses of the Scottish Highlands, the new
nuclear-energy power stations now nearing completion are impressive
industrial installations. British industry in the physical sense is not
a collection of obsolete or obsolescent factories and rundown mills;
new plants and factories are appearing with greater frequency every
year, and the emphasis is on the future.

A journey through the busy Midlands provides the proof. Everywhere one
sees new construction for industrial production. The rawboned red brick
factories, relics of Victorian England, are silent and empty; many have
been pulled down. The main problem for Britain is not the modernity of
her industrial system but the lack of modernity in the outlook of her
industrial workers.

The judgment may seem too harsh. It is manifestly unfair to place the
entire burden of progress toward a healthier economy on one element in
the economic situation. Certainly British capital in the past and to
some extent in the present has been singularly blind to the country's
new situation and unenterprising in seeking means of adjusting itself
to this situation. The price rings and monopolistic practices have
sustained inefficient factories and restricted industrial enterprise.

Nevertheless, it is my conclusion that today the industrial owner and
manager understands the nation's situation and the union leader does
not. The TUC has attained great influence in the realm. The industrial
worker has won living standards undreamed of a generation ago.
Nonetheless, there is a dangerous lack of tolerance in labor's approach
to management. This carries over into labor's approach to government.
It is a highly unrealistic attitude in which organized labor clamors
for the adoption by a Conservative government of a system of economic
planning which that government was elected to end.

As we have seen, thousands of the Tories' strongest supporters
are angry because they regard the government they elected as
pseudo-socialist.

This contest between labor and capital is involved and sharply
partisan. Viewed from the outside, it may seem an insurmountable
obstacle to British progress. But to accept that view is to ignore the
most important, the most enduring of all the country's resources: the
character of the British people.

From the time of Charles II on, visitors to Britain have been struck
by the way in which the character of the British people has allowed
them the widest latitude for internal differences, often carried to the
very edge of armed conflict, and has yet enabled them to maintain their
political stability.

There is a lesson in recent history. Imposing forces within the kingdom
reached a pitch of fanatic fury over the Ulster question shortly before
World War I. Great political leaders took their positions. The Army
was shaken by rumors of disaffection. Officers were ready to resign
their commissions rather than lead their troops into action against the
turbulent Ulstermen. The Germans and others watching from the Continent
concluded that the heart of the world empire was sick. Yet what was the
outcome? Finally aware of the magnitude of the challenge presented by
German aggression in Belgium, the country united instantly. The leaders
composed their differences. The Army closed its ranks. The officers
went away to fight and die at Mons and Le Cateau.

The lesson is that the British, because of their essential homogeneity,
can afford a higher pitch of internal argument than can other nations.
Indeed, the very fury of these arguments testifies to the vitality of
the nation. It means a country on the move, in contrast to the somber,
orderly, shabby dictatorship of Spain or the somnolent French Republic
where the great slogans of the past have been abandoned for the motto
"We couldn't care less."

Those who admire the British accept British character as one of the
strongest arguments for their nation's survival as a great power.
But before we go too far in endorsing this view we must note that
there are bad characteristics as well as good ones. We know that the
British society is changing. Is it not possible that in the process
of change some of the characteristics which made the nation great are
disappearing?

Mr. Geoffrey Gorer tells us that the British have become a law-abiding
nation dwelling in amity and honesty under British justice. In some
aspects of civil relationship this is true. Visitors to Britain
only a century ago were alarmed by the behavior of British mobs.
The cockneys of London pulled the mustaches of a visiting Hungarian
general and shouted rude remarks at their Queen and her Prince Consort.
From medieval times the British working classes have been long on
independence and short on respect. The uprising of the _Jacquerie_ in
French history is balanced in British annals by the dim, powerful, and
compelling figures of Wat Tyler and John Ball.

Has all this changed so much? Have the turbulent, violent British
really become a nation of sober householders indifferent to their
rights or to those at home or abroad who threaten them? Superficially
the answer may be yes. Basically it is no. The present strife between
organized labor and the employers is only a contemporary version of
a struggle which has gone on throughout its history and which is
world-wide. It is when this struggle is submerged that it is dangerous.
Despite all the damage it is doing now to the British economy,
dissension in the House of Commons and in the boardrooms of industries
is preferable to wild plots laid in cellars.

When we consider the heat with which these debates are conducted we
must also take notice of one sign of British stability: partisan
passions, either in industrial conflict or in political warfare,
never reach the point where the patriotism of the other party is
impugned. The Conservatives do not label the Socialists as the party of
treason. The patriotism of Hugh Gaitskell is not questioned by Harold
Macmillan. Ultimately we come round to the realization that, despite
the bitterness of debate, the central stability of the state remains.

Much of this stability may result from the existence of the monarchy
at the summit of British affairs. All public evidence indicates that
the Crown is nearly powerless in modern Britain, yet it represents an
authority older and higher than any other element in the realm. It may
be the balance wheel, spinning brightly through the ages, that insures
stability.

"At the heart to the British Empire there is one institution,"
Winston Churchill wrote twenty years ago, "among the most ancient and
venerable, which, so far from falling into desuetude or decay, has
breasted the torrent of events, and even derived new vigor from the
stresses. Unshaken by the earthquakes, unweakened by the dissolvent
tides, though all be drifting the Royal and Imperial Monarchy of
Britain stands firm."

It can be argued that the excessive interest of the British people
in the monarchy and the expense and labor involved in its upkeep are
characteristics ill suited to Britain in her present position. This
interest reflects the national tendency to dwell fondly on the past,
to revere institutions for their historical connections rather than
for their efficiency or usefulness under modern conditions. Serious
criticism of this well-defined trait comes not only from Americans but
from Australians, Canadians, and other inhabitants of newer nations. We
look forward, they say, and the British look back.

There is some justice in the criticism, but perhaps the error is not
so grave as we may think. Obviously, it is impossible for a people
living in a country that has known some sort of civilization from
Roman times not to be impressed by their past. A tendency in the same
direction marks contemporary American society. Just as we are struck
by the Londoner's interest in Roman relics dug up in the heart of his
city, so European visitors note that an increasing number of Americans
are turning to their own past. All over the East the fortresses of the
French and Indian and Revolutionary wars are being reconstructed and
opened to tourists. National attention is given to attempts in the Far
West to re-create for a day or a week the atmosphere of a frontier that
passed less than a century ago. Half-forgotten battles and generals
of the Civil War are rescued for posterity by the careful labor of
scholarly biographers and military writers. This does not mean,
however, that the United States is looking back in the field of science
or invention.

Similarly, British preservation of old castles or folkways is not a
sign that the nation has turned its back on the twentieth century. The
boldness with which the British accepted the challenge of the nuclear
era in industrial energy is a better guide to their temper than their
respect for the past. What is damaging is not reverence for the past of
Nelson or Gladstone, but the tendency of some of the middle class to
mourn the recent past, the dear dead days before the war when servants
were plentiful, taxes relatively low, and "a man could run his own
business." These mourners are temporarily important because their
resistance to needed change infects others. But the life whose end they
bewail has been disappearing in Britain for half a century, and the
generation now rising to power will not be plagued by these memories to
the same extent. To those who matured in war and post-war austerity,
modern Britain is a prosperous land.

The trappings of British society are much older than our own. But
their interest in maintaining an unchanged façade should not mislead
Americans into believing the British are returning to the hand
loom. Reverence for the past is often advanced as one reason for
the lethargic attitude of Britons toward the present. Certainly an
awareness of history, its trials and triumphs, gives an individual
or a people a somewhat skeptical attitude about the importance of
current history. But in Britain those who know and care least about
the nation's great past are the ones most indifferent to the challenge
of the present. They are the industrial working class, and their
indifference results from other influences.

Talking to the planners, technicians, factory bosses, communications
experts, salesmen, and senior civil servants, one finds less
complacency and more enterprise than in most European countries. In
fact, it sometimes seems to the outsider that British society is a
little too self-critical, too contentious. Obviously, it must change to
meet the altered world, but self-criticism pushed to the maximum can
ultimately crush ambition.

If we turn to modern British writing, we find sociologists, economists,
anthropologists, and politicians pouring forth a steady stream of books
analyzing the nation's social, economic, and political problems. One
of the great men of the modern Labor Party, Herbert Morrison, thought
it well worth while to devote his time to the writing of _Government
and Parliament_. The intellectual leaders of Britain have turned
increasingly to a minute assessment of their nation and what is right
and wrong about it.

This preoccupation with the state of the realm is healthy. The
complacency that was once the most disliked characteristic of the
traveling Briton is vanishing. The British are putting themselves under
the microscope. Nothing but good can come of it.

We hear from the British themselves confessions of inadequacy to meet
the modern world and flaming criticisms of aspects of their society. As
a nation they are fond of feeling sorry for themselves; indeed, someone
has said that they are never happier than when they think all is lost.
Such British statements should not be taken as representing the whole
truth. The reforming element is very strong in the British character.
Without its presence, the social reforms of this century could not have
been accomplished.

Anyone who frequents political, business, and journalistic circles in
Britain will hear more about mistakes and failures than about success.
(The most notable exception to this enjoyment of gloom is the popular
press, which since the war has made a specialty of boosting British
achievements.) Similarly, any discussion of British character with
Britons is sure to find them concentrating on negative rather than
positive traits. Perhaps this is because they are so sure of their
positive characteristics. In any case, the latter constitute a major
share of the national insurance against decline.

Over the years the British trait that has impressed me most is
toughness of mind. This may surprise Americans who tend to regard
the British as overpolite or diffident or sentimental--aspects of
the national character which are evident at times and which hide the
essential toughness underneath.

Although they bewail a decline in the standards of courtesy since the
war, the British are a polite race in the ordinary business of living.
From the "'kew" of the bus conductor or the salesgirl to the "And
now, sir, if you would kindly sign here" of the bank clerk they pad
social intercourse with small courtesies. However, when an Englishman,
especially an upper-class Englishman, desires to be rude he makes the
late Mr. Vishinsky sound like a curate. But it is an English axiom that
a gentleman is never unintentionally rude.

With some notable exceptions, the British are seldom loudly assertive.
They will listen at great length to the opinions of others and,
seemingly, are reluctant to put forward their own. This does not mean
they agree, although foreigners in contact with British diplomats have
often assumed this mistakenly. The British are always willing to see
both sides of a question. But they are seldom ready to accept without
prolonged and often violent argument any point of view other than their
own.

They are a sentimental people but not an emotional one. Failure to
distinguish this difference leads individuals and nations to misjudge
the British.

Sentimentalists they are. Their eyes will glisten with tears as they
listen to some elderly soprano with a voice long rusted by gin sing the
music-hall songs of half a century ago. As Somerset Maugham has pointed
out, they revere age. The present Conservative government and the Labor
front bench are unusual in that they contain a large percentage of
"young men"--that is, men in their fifties. Sir Winston Churchill did
not truly win the affection of his countrymen until he was well into
his seventies, when the old fierce antagonism of the working class was
replaced with a grudging admiration for "the Old Man."

On his eightieth birthday the leaders of all the political parties in
the House of Commons joined in a tribute that milked the tear ducts
of the nation. When, six months later, Sir Winston retired as Prime
Minister there was another outbreak of bathos. But when two months
after that a new House of Commons was sworn under the leadership of Sir
Anthony Eden, some of the young Conservative Members of Parliament who
owed their offices and, in a wider sense, their lives to Sir Winston
pushed ahead of him in the jostling throng making for the Speaker's
bench. It was left to Clement Attlee, his dry, thoughtful foe in so
many political battles, to lead Sir Winston up ahead of his eager
juniors. Sentiment, yes; emotion, no.

For many reasons the British as a people are anxious to find formulas
that will guide them out of international crises, to avoid the final
arbitration of war. The appeasement of Neville Chamberlain and his
associates in the late thirties was in keeping with this historically
developed tendency. One has only to read what Pitt endured from
Napoleon to preserve peace, or the sound, sensible reasons that Charles
James Fox offered against the continuation of the war with the First
Empire, to understand that this island people goes to war only with the
utmost reluctance.

One reason is that in 1800, in 1939, and in the middle of the twentieth
century the British have lived by trade. Wars, large or small, hurt
trade. Prolonged hostility toward a foreign nation--Franco's Spain,
Lenin's Russia, or Mao's China--reduces Britain's share in a market or
cuts off raw materials needed for production at home. In this respect
we cannot judge Britain by the continental standards of China or Russia
or the United States. This is an island power.

Because they are polite, because they are easily moved to sentimental
tears--Sir Winston Churchill and Hugh Gaitskell, who otherwise have few
traits in common, both cry easily--because they are diffident, because
they will twist and turn in their efforts to avoid war (although at
times, for reasons of policy, they will present the impression of being
very ready for war), the British have given the outside world a false
idea of their character. Beneath all this is toughness of mind.

I recall landing in England in April of 1939. It was then obvious
to almost everyone in Europe that war was on the way. On the way to
London I talked to a fellow passenger, a man in his late twenties
who had three small children and who lived in London. "The next time
Hitler goes for anyone, we'll go for him," he said casually, almost
apologetically. He conceded that the war would be long, that Britain
would take some hard knocks, that going into the Navy and leaving his
wife and children would be tedious. But he had made up his mind that
there was no other course. The thing had to be done.

After the war--and, indeed, during it--many Americans ridiculed the
British reaction to the war. They found exaggerated the stories of the
cockney who said: "'arf a mo', Adolph" while he lit his pipe, the women
who shouted "God bless you" to Winston Churchill when he visited the
smoking ruins of their homes. This was a serious error. In those days,
the most critical that had ever come upon them, the British acted in a
manner which made one proud to be a member of the same species.

But that was a decade and a half ago, and the circumstances were
extraordinary. Nations change--compare the heroic France of Verdun
with the indulgent, faithless France of 1940. Have war and sacrifice,
austerity and prolonged crisis weakened Britain's mental toughness? I
think not.

The prolonged conflict between employers and employed and among
the great trade unions is the most serious friction within British
society. Its critical effect upon Britain's present and future has
been emphasized. I do not believe, however, that in the long run the
men on both sides who hold their opinions so stoutly will be unable to
compromise their difficulties in the face of the continuing national
emergency. In the twenties and thirties such great convulsions
in industrial relations as the General Strike were harmful but
not catastrophic. The British economy was buttressed by overseas
investments and by the possession of established export markets
throughout the world. That situation no longer exists. Anything
approaching the severity of a General Strike could break Britain. In
the end, I believe, the extremists of both sides will realize this
and will find in themselves the mental toughness--for it takes a hard
mind to accept an armistice short of final victory in exchange for
the promise of future benefits--to compose their differences and move
toward a national rather than a partisan solution.

Of course, Britain's difficulties are not confined to the home front.
But I have consciously emphasized the importance of her internal
problems because they reflect the nation's present position in the
world and help to determine how Britain will act abroad.

Just as the last decade has seen drastic changes in industrial
direction in Britain, so the coming decade will witness changes equally
great in the development of Britain's international position. Britain
cannot, and would not if she could, build a new empire. But it is
evident that the country intends to replace the monolithic concept of
power with a horizontal concept. We will see, I am confident, a steady
growth of Britain's ties with Europe and the establishment of Britain
as a link between the Commonwealth nations and Europe.

The British have fertile political imaginations. They are adroit
in discussion and debate. After years of uncertainty a number of
politicians of great influence are moving toward closer association
with Europe. At the moment the Grand Design (a rather grandiose title
for the British to use) is endorsed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan,
Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, Defense Minister Duncan Sandys,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft, and President of the
Board of Trade Sir David Eccles. Given a change in government, I think
we can assume that the idea would be supported, although enthusiasm
would be somewhat less great, by the leaders of the Labor Party.

What is the Grand Design? It is the concept of a Europe cooperating
in fields of economy and politico-military strategy. It goes beyond
the Europe of Western European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty
Alliance and thinks in terms of a general confederation into which
the Scandinavian and Mediterranean nations would be drawn. Existing
organizations such as the Organization for European Economic
Co-operation would be expanded to include new members. At the top
would be a General Assembly elected by the parliaments of each member
nation. There would be a general pooling of military research and
development.

The establishment of such an association of European states is at
least ten years in the future. The British do not think it should be
hurried. Careful, rather pragmatic, they advocate methodical progress
in which new international organizations could be tested against actual
conditions. Those that work will survive. Those that do not will
disappear.

Is the Grand Design a new name for a third force to be interposed
between the Sino-Russian bloc in the East and the United States in
the West? The British say emphatically not. They see it as a method
of strengthening the Atlantic Alliance by uniting Europe. Naturally,
they believe their flair for diplomacy and politics, their industrial
strength, and, not least, Europe's distaste for German leadership will
give them an important role in the new Europe. Obviously, that role, as
spokesman for both a united Europe and a global Commonwealth, will be
more suitable and, above all, more practical in the world of 1960 than
the obsolete concept of Empire.

The development of British action toward the accomplishment of the
Grand Design will be accompanied by the gradual transformation of
what is left of the Empire into the Commonwealth. Ghana, established
as an independent member of the Commonwealth in March 1957, will be
followed by Singapore, Malaya, Nigeria, Rhodesia, and many more. Since
1945 Britain has given self-government and independence to well over
500,000,000 souls (at the same time the Soviet Union was enslaving
100,000,000) and the process is not over. Certainly there have been
shortcomings and failures--Cyprus is one. But it seems to me that a
people prepared on one hand to abdicate power and turn that power over
to others and at the same time ready to conceive and develop a new plan
for Europe is showing an elasticity and toughness of mind the rest of
the world might envy. We are not attending the birth of a new British
Empire but watching the advent of a new position for Britain in the
world--one less spectacularly powerful than the old, but important
nonetheless. The speed of its development is inextricably connected
with an expanding and prosperous economy at home.

Bravery is associated with tough-mindedness. But bravery is not the
exclusive possession of any nation. The British are a courageous
people, certainly. As certain classes are apt to combine courage with
the national habit of understatement, the bravery of the British has an
attraction not evident in the somewhat self-conscious heroism of the
Prussians. Of course, it can be argued that the apparent unwillingness
of the British to exploit the fact that Pilot Officer Z brought
his plane back from Berlin on one engine or that Sergeant Major Y
killed thirty Germans before his morning tea is a form of national
advertisement more subtle and sure than that obtained by battalions of
public-relations officers.

Although they revere regimental traditions, the British seldom express
their reverence openly. In war they are able to maintain an attitude
of humorous objectivity. During the fighting on the retreat to Dunkirk
I encountered two Guards officers roaring with laughter. They had
learned, they said, that the popular newspapers in London had reported
that the nickname of the Commander in Chief, General the Viscount Gort,
was "Tiger." "My dear chap," said one, "in the Brigade [of Guards]
we've always called him 'Fat Boy.'"

Coupled with tough-mindedness is another positive characteristic:
love of justice. This may be disputed by the Irish, the Indians, the
Cypriotes. But it is true that in all the great international crises in
which Britain has been involved, from the War of Independence onward,
there has been a strong, sometimes violent opposition to the course
that the government of the day pursued. Beginning with Burke, the
Americans, the Irish, the Indians, the Cypriotes have had defenders in
the House of Commons, on political platforms, and in the press.

This is not the result of partisan politics, although naturally that
helps. Englishmen did not assail the Black and Tans in Ireland because
of love for Irishmen. Indian independence did not find a redoubtable
champion in Earl Mountbatten because of his particular fondness for
Indians. The impulse was the belief that justice or, to put it better,
right must be done.

It is because a large section of the nation believes this implicitly
that the British over the years have been able to make those gestures
of conciliation and surrenders of power which will ever adorn her
history: the settlement with the Boers after the South African war, the
withdrawal from India, the treaty with Ireland.

The British people suffered greatly during both world wars. Yet any
ferocious outbreak of hatred against "the Huns" was promptly answered
by leaders who even in the midst of war understood that the right they
were fighting to preserve must be preserved at home as well as abroad.

It was this belief in justice, a justice that served all, incorruptible
and austere, which enabled a comparative handful of Britons to rule
the Indian subcontinent for so long. It was this belief in justice,
interpreted in terms of social evolution, which moved the reformers of
the present century in the direction of the Welfare State. The British
concept of justice is inseparably bound to the strong reformist element
within the British people. As long as that element flourishes, as it
does today, we can expect that British society will continue to change
and develop.

Tough-mindedness, a quiet form of bravery, a love of justice; what else
is there? One characteristic I have noted earlier: a living belief in
the democratic process. The British know the world too well to believe
that this delicate and complex system of government can immediately
be imposed upon any people. They themselves, as they will admit, have
trouble making it work. But neither fascism nor communism has ever made
headway. Any political expert can provide long and involved reasons
for this. I prefer the obvious one: the British believe in democracy,
they believe in people. Long ago, as a young man entering politics,
Winston Churchill, grandson of a Duke of Marlborough, product of Harrow
and a fashionable Hussar regiment, adopted as his own a motto of his
father's. It was simply: "Trust the People."

The actual practice of democracy over a long period of years can be
successful only if it is accompanied by a wide measure of tolerance.
Despite all their vicissitudes, this virtue the British preserve in
full measure. The British disliked Senator McCarthy because they
thought he was intolerant; they were themselves slightly intolerant,
or at least ill-informed, about the causes that inflated the Senator.
In their own nation the British tolerate almost any sort of political
behavior as long as it is conducted within the framework of the law.
Communists, fascists, isolationists, internationalists all may speak
their pieces and make as much noise as they wish. There will always be
a policeman on hand to quell a disturbance.

Toleration of the public exposition of political beliefs that aim at
the overthrow of the established parliamentary government implies
a stout belief in the supremacy of democracy over other forms of
government. Even in their unbuttoned moments, British politicians will
seldom agree to the thesis, lately put about by many eminent men, that
complete suffrage prevents a government from acting with decision in an
emergency.

Early in 1951 I talked late one night with a British diplomat about the
rearmament of Germany. He was a man of wide experience, aristocratic
bearing, and austere manner. During our conversation I suggested that
the British, who had suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans in
two world wars, would be most reluctant to agree to the rearmament of
their foes and that the ensuing political situation would be made to
order for the extremists of the Labor Party.

"I don't think so," he replied. "Our people fumble and get lost at
times, but they come back on the right track. They'll argue it out in
their minds or in the pubs. They'll reject extreme measures. The Labor
Party and the great mass of its followers will be with the government.
The people, you know, are wiser than anyone thinks they are."

Tolerance is coupled with kindness. British kindness is apt to be
abstract, impersonal. There is the gruff, unspoken kindness of the
members of the working class to one another in times of death. The
wealthy wearer of the Old School Tie will go to great lengths to succor
a friend fallen on evil days. He will also do his best to provide for
an old employee or to rehabilitate an old soldier, once under his
command, who is in trouble with the police. This is part of the sense
of responsibility inculcated by the public school. Even in the Welfare
State it persists. "I've got to drive out into Essex this afternoon," a
friend said, "and see what I can do for a sergeant that served with me.
Bloody fool can't hold onto a farthing and makes a pest of himself with
the local authorities. Damn good sergeant, though."

I remembered another sergeant in Germany. He was a man who had felt
the war deeply, losing a brother, a wife, and a daughter to German
bombs. When it was all over and the British Army rested on its arms
in northern Germany he installed his men in the best billets the
neighboring village could provide. The Germans were left to shift for
themselves in the barns and outbuildings. Within a week, he told me,
the situation was reversed. The Germans were back in their homes.
The soldiers were sleeping in the barns. I told a German about it
afterward. "Yes," he said, "the British would do that. We wouldn't, not
after a long war. They are a decent people."

It is upon such characteristics, a basic, stubborn toughness of mind,
bravery, tolerance, a belief in democracy, kindness, decency, that
British hopes for the future rest.

Any objective study of Britain must accept that, although there has
been a decline in power at home and abroad, the national economy
has recovered remarkably and the physical basis of the economy has
improved. Far from being decadent, idle, and unambitious, the nation
as a whole is pulsing with life. The energy may be diffused into paths
that fail to contribute directly to the general betterment of the
nation. But it is there, and the possession of the important national
characteristics mentioned above promises that eventually this energy
will be directed to the national good.

In the end we return to our starting-point. Although there is a
cleavage between the working class and the middle class, it is not deep
enough to smash the essential unity of the people. No great gulfs of
geography, race, or religion separate them. The differences between
employer and employed are serious. But there is no basic difference,
nurtured by the hatred of a century and a half, as there is between
revolutionary France and conservative France. The constant change in
the character of the classes, the steady movement of individuals and
groups up the economic and social ladders insures that this will never
develop. From the outside the society seems stratified. On the inside
one sees, hears, feels ceaseless movement of a flexible society.

The long contest with Russia has induced Americans to follow Napoleon's
advice and think about big battalions. But national power and influence
should not be measured solely in terms of material strength. By that
standard the England of the first Elizabeth and the Dutch Republic of
the seventeenth century would have been blotted out by the might of
Spain just as our own struggling colonies would have been overcome by
the weight of England. The character of a people counts.

So it is with Britain. The ability of the British people to survive
cannot be measured only in terms of steel production. The presence of
grave economic and social problems should not be accepted as proof
that they cannot be solved by people of imagination and ability. The
existence of external class differences should not blind observers to
the basic unity of political thought.

It is natural that in their present position Britons are far more aware
of the ties that bind them to the United States, ties that include
a common language, much common history, dangers shared, and enemies
overcome, than the people of the United States are aware of the ties
that bind them to Britain. But Americans must guard against the easy
assumption that, because Britain is weaker than she was half a century
ago, because she has changed rapidly and will change further, Britain
and the British are "through."

It is often said in Washington that the leading politicians of the
Republican and Democratic parties and the chief permanent officials of
the Treasury, State Department, and other departments did not recognize
the extent to which Britain had been weakened by World War II. It is
hard to understand why this should have been so. The sacrifice in blood
was written large on a hundred battlefields. The cost in treasure was
clearly outlined in the financial position of the United Kingdom in
1945.

Americans should not fear political differences between the United
States and the United Kingdom on foreign policies. As long as
the British are worth their salt as allies they will think, and
occasionally act, independently. What would be dangerous to the future
of the alliance in a period of crisis would be the growth in Britain
of a belief that Britain's problems, internal or international, can be
blamed on the United States. A similar belief about Britain existed
in France in 1940. Verdun occupied the position in French minds that
the Battle of Britain does today in some British minds, that of a
great heroic national effort that exhausted the nation and left it
prey to the post-war appetite of its supposed friend and ally. If this
concept were to be accepted by any sizable proportion of the British
people, then the alliance would be in danger. The possibility that this
will happen is slight. The British retain confidence in themselves,
undaunted by the changes in the world.

The United States can help sustain this confidence. It is difficult to
see why the political, industrial, and social accomplishments of the
British since 1945 are so casually ignored in the United States and why
Americans accept so readily the idea that Britain's day is done.

Certainly many Americans criticized the establishment of the Welfare
State. Certainly ignorance led many to confuse socialism in Britain
with communism in the Soviet Union. Certainly the achievement of power
by the great trade unions has alienated those Americans who still decry
the powerful position of organized labor in the modern democratic state.

But it is folly to expect that even our closest friends and truest
allies can develop economically and politically along paths similar
to those trod by the people of the United States. It is time that we
looked on the positive side of Britain's life since the end of World
War II. We must remember that this is a going concern. The new nuclear
power stations rising throughout Britain are part of the general
Western community which we lead. British advances in the sciences or
in any other field of human endeavor should not be thought of as the
activities of a rival but as the triumphs of an ally that has in the
past given incontrovertible proof of her steadfastness in adversity,
her willingness to do and dare at the side of the United States.

There they are, fifty millions of them. Kindly, energetic, ambitious,
and, too often, happily complacent in peace; most resolute, courageous,
and tough-minded in the storms that have beaten about their islands
since the dawn of the Christian era.

What is at stake in the relationship between the two nations is
something far greater than whether we approve of Aneurin Bevan or the
British approved of Senator McCarthy. The union of the English-speaking
peoples is the one tried and tested alliance in a shaky world. Three
times within living memory its sons have rallied to defeat or forestall
the ambitions of conquerors. To understand Britain, to share with her
the great tasks that lie before the Western community is much more than
a salute by Americans to common political thought, a common tongue, or
common memories. It is the easiest and most certain method by which we
in our time can preserve the freedom of man which has been building in
all the years since King and barons rode to Runnymede.




_INDEX_


    Air Force, 239-40

    Albert, Prince Consort, 19-20, 27, 30

    Alexander, Field Marshal Earl, 235

    Amery, Julian, 55, 183

    Anglo-American relations, 47-8, 109, 159-86;
      tensions, 66, 163-76

    Anne, Queen, 45

    Anson, Sir William, 17, 18

    armed forces, 84-6, 238-44;
      Air Force, 239-40;
      Army, 238-9;
      Navy, 239

    Army, 238-9

    Atomic Energy Authority, 214

    Attlee, Clement, 36, 58, 77, 78, 87, 88, 108, 113, 152, 235, 280


    Bagehot, Walter, 22, 28, 97-8

    Baldwin, Stanley, 55, 74, 95, 152

    Beaverbrook, Lord (William Maxwell Aitken), 20, 30, 31, 54, 85, 140;
      influence of, 224-5

    Bevan, Aneurin, 18, 19, 61, 84-9 _passim_, 121, 152;
      anti-Americanism, 47, 81, 109, 176;
      opposition to hydrogen bomb, 48;
      leader of opposition within Labor Party, 72, 73, 78-80, 269;
      supporters, 82-3

    Bevin, Ernest, 62, 77, 80, 108, 143;
      opposition to communism, 109

    Boyle, Sir Edward, 55

    Bradlaugh, Charles, 30

    British Empire, 91, 107

    British Productivity Council, 196

    Brogan, D.W., 164

    Butler, R.A., 18-19, 49, 52, 54, 58, 59, 74


    Cabinet, 43-6

    Castle, Mrs. Barbara, 84

    Chamberlain, Neville, 17, 35, 37, 63, 74, 95, 152, 166, 259, 280

    Charles II, 25, 44

    Charles, Prince, 15

    China (Communist), 79, 184;
      British attitude toward, 149-50

    Churchill, Sir Winston, 17, 18, 37, 51, 52, 59, 76, 80, 82, 95, 113-14,
    133, 152, 200, 235, 239, 252, 259, 279, 285-6;
      party peacemaker, 35;
      skill in debate, 40;
      on monarchy, 276

    clubs, 257-9

    Commons, House of, 38-43, 46

    Commonwealth, 29, 91, 107, 137-41, 283

    Communist Party in Britain, 35, 49, 142-4, 146, 147, 164, 179, 180;
      in labor unions, 72, 82, 83-4, 109, 200, 208-15

    Connor, William, 202, 227

    Conservative Party, 50-69

    conurbation, 6, 7

    Cooke, Alistair, 222

    Cripps, Sir Stafford, 77, 95, 107, 113

    Crossman, R.H.S., 84


    Delmer, Sefton, 226, 228

    Dilke, Sir Charles, 30

    Dulles, John Foster, 170-1;
      British attitude toward, 47, 48, 155, 167, 172


    Eccles, Sir David, 282

    Eden, Sir Anthony, 18, 20, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 65, 133, 143,
    171-2, 183, 224, 280

    Edward VII, 27

    Egypt, 54, 55, 61, 66, 88, 143, 151, 155, 156, 168, 183, 184

    Eisenhower, Dwight D., 37, 41, 60, 80, 183

    Elizabeth II, 13-33, 114, 251, 252

    Elizabeth, Queen Mother, 22, 27

    European Defense Community, 171


    Foot, Michael, 56, 84-5

    Forrest, William, 228

    Foulkes, Frank, 213

    France, British attitude toward, 150-1

    Franks, Sir Oliver, 85

    Freedman, Max, 222

    Fyfe, Sir David Maxwell, 52


    Gaitskell, Hugh, 18, 20, 36, 49, 56, 73, 77-8, 80, 87, 89, 235, 280;
      opposed by Bevan, 88, 269

    George I, 45

    George IV, 25

    George V, 16, 19, 25

    George VI, 16, 17

    Germany, British attitude toward, 151-3

    Gorer, Geoffrey, 275

    Gort, General the Viscount, 284

    Grand Design, The, 282-3

    Griffiths, James, 18, 49


    Halifax, Earl of, 17

    Harding, Gilbert, 107

    Hardy, Keir, 36

    Horner, Arthur, 210

    Howard, Ebenezer, 116


    India, 36, 96, 105-7, 170

    Italy, British attitude toward, 153-4


    Jacobson, Sydney, 202


    King, Cecil, 226

    Korean war, economic influence of, 192-3


    labor unions, 200-13, 215, 266-7;
      communist influence in, 208-13, 215

    Lancaster, Osbert, 225, 226

    Laski, Harold, 97, 113

    Lloyd, Selwyn, 52, 282

    Lloyd George, David, 19, 56

    Lords, House of, 39, 42-3, 44


    MacLeod, Iain, 52, 130

    Macmillan, Harold, 18, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 65, 89,
    155, 269, 282

    Margaret, Princess, 15, 22, 26

    Massingham, Hugh, 223

    Maulding, Reginald, 52, 130

    McCarthy, Joseph, 60, 164-6, 167, 286

    McCarthyism, 36, 163-4

    McKenzie, Robert T., 59

    McNeil, Hector, 62

    Middle East, 155;
      British influence in, 156-7

    Miller, Webb, 218

    monarchy, 13-33, 133, 276;
      power of, 16, 22;
      influence of, 21, 37;
      finances of, 26-8, 30-1

    Montgomery, Field Marshal the Viscount, 46

    Morrison, Herbert, 36, 51, 77, 87, 88, 89, 278;
      opposition to communism, 143

    Mosley, Sir Oswald, 35

    Mountbatten, Earl, 21, 31, 134, 285

    Muggeridge, Malcolm, 147


    Nasser, Abdel, 54, 155, 156

    National Health Service Act, 102-5

    nationalization, 97-101, 102, 104-5, 107

    Navy, 239

    Nehru, Shri Jawaharlal, 106, 166, 235

    New Towns, 116-18, 121, 122, 124, 125

    newspapers, 77-81, 218-30;
      _Daily Express_, 31, 219, 225-6;
      _Daily Herald_, 31, 87, 125;
      _Daily Mirror_, 31, 87, 125, 202, 210, 219, 220, 226-7;
      _Daily Telegraph_, 163, 219;
      _Evening Standard_, 31;
      _Manchester Guardian_, 163, 218-19, 220, 222-3;
      _New Statesman and Nation_, 31-2, 84, 85;
      _Sunday Express_, 15, 20, 31;
      _Times_, 19, 130, 163, 183, 218, 220-2;
      _Tribune_, 56, 84-5, 89

    Norwich, Viscount (Alfred Duff Cooper), 152


    Odger, George, 30

    Orwell, George, 252


    Parliament, 37-43, 45;
      Commons, 38-43, 46;
      Lords, 39, 42-3, 44

    Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 19-20, 21-8 _passim_, 31

    Plumb, J.H., 45

    public schools, 81-4, 230-7

    pubs, 254-7


    Reynolds, Quentin, 8

    Roosevelt, Franklin D., 37, 82, 174


    Salisbury, Marquess of, 18, 44, 49, 54, 58, 59, 134

    Sandys, Duncan, 282

    Scott, Richard, 223

    Shinwell, Emanuel, 77

    Smith, Walter Bedell, 172

    Soviet Union, British attitude toward, 143-8

    sports, 87-9, 244-54

    sterling area, 138

    Strachey, Lytton, 20

    Strang, Lord, 232


    Thorneycroft, Peter, 282

    Townsend, Peter, 26

    Trades Union Congress, 55, 73, 88, 143, 196;
      power of, 71-2, 86-7, 200-2;
      communist opposition, 83, 143, 212

    Truman, Harry S., 25, 37


    Victoria, Queen, 20, 25, 27, 30


    Waithman, Robert, 229

    Watson, Sam, 200, 210

    Wavell, Field Marshal Earl, 108, 152

    Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 73

    Welfare State, 101-2, 104, 105, 107, 118, 123, 264, 285, 289

    Williams, Francis, 227

    Wilson, Harold, 49

    Windsor, Duchess of, 15, 31

    Windsor, Duke of, 20

    Woolton, Lord (Frederick William Marquis), 52, 53


    Zilliacus, Konni, 84




A NOTE ON THE TYPE


_The text of this book was set on the Linotype in a face called_ TIMES
ROMAN, _designed by_ STANLEY MORISON _for_ The Times (_London_), _and
first introduced by that newspaper in the middle nineteen thirties_.

_Among typographers and designers of the twentieth century, Stanley
Morison has been a strong forming influence, as typographical adviser
to the English Monotype Corporation, as a director of two distinguished
English publishing houses, and as a writer of sensibility, erudition,
and keen practical sense._

_In 1930 Morison wrote: "Type design moves at the pace of the most
conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realises that,
for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good that only very
few recognise its novelty. If readers do not notice the consummate
reticence and rare discipline of a new type, it is probably a good
letter." It is now generally recognized that in the creation of_ Times
Roman _Morison successfully met the qualifications of this theoretical
doctrine_.

_Composed, printed, and bound by_ H. WOLFF, _New York. Paper
manufactured by_ S.D. WARREN CO., _Boston_.

[Illustration]




A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Drew Middleton _was born in New York City in 1913. After being
graduated from Syracuse University, he went into newspaper work, and in
1938 became a foreign correspondent. Since then he has been chief of_
The New York Times _bureaus in England, Russia, and Germany. In 1940,
during the Battle of Britain, he was in London covering the operations
of the Royal Air Force, and he later sent his dispatches from Supreme
Headquarters of the AEF. In the decade since the war, Mr. Middleton's
reporting and interpreting of the Cold War struggle between East and
West have earned him a wide and respectful audience both here and
abroad. His earlier books include_ The Struggle for Germany (_1949_)
_and_ The Defense of Western Europe (_1952_).



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