Middle-Aged Party

A half century ago, under flickering gaslight in London's Memorial Hall, a group of cloth-capped proletarians and tweed-bearing intellectuals founded the organization that was soon called the British Labor Party. At the next general elections the party boasted two Members of Parliament: Keir Hardie, a Scottish miner, and Richard Bell, a railwayman. Both would have looked out of place at the party's 49th annual conference in Margate last week. Klieg lights poured down on Prime Minister Attlee, six Cabinet Ministers and hundreds of well-dressed Labor Members of Parliament. Among them: seven noble Lords, including a film magnate, and a few millionaires. They crowded the American bar of Margate's Grand Hotel.

Middle age had transformed many of the party's principles as well as its appearance. Keir Hardie, for example, had been an uncompromising pacifist. His cause was carried on at Margate by Hardie's son-in-law Emrys Hughes, who bitterly cried: "They have made a hell upon earth in Korea and they call it collective security." Other speakers acknowledged the old pacifist tradition, but the party's new attitude to war was clearly stated by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. Fresh from the New York Foreign Ministers' conference, Bevin urged collective security and alignment with the U.S.

Bevin began his speech in the quavering tones of a sick man. He paused to swallow a pill. Suddenly he cried: "No one here would stand more insults, more abuse, than I have from Molotov and Vishinsky." The conference roared its understanding. Bevin raised his hand high and yelled: "I do not believe the United States will ever be aggressors . . . I want to nail that lie. It is sent out by Russia to try to blind the people of the world, to throw mud . . ." The conference cheered.

Five years of power and responsibility had made Labor's leaders cautious on the once-beloved doctrine of nationalization. At Margate last week a proposal to nationalize the building industry made even the leftists of the Labor Party wince. Health Minister Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan said: "What you are really saying is 'let's nationalize every industry in Great Britain.'" Cried a voice: "Why not?"

Bevan, once as extreme an advocate of complete nationalization as the party had, wearily swept back his thatch of hair (a well-trimmed thatch these days to match his well-tailored suit). Said he: "In the ensuing dislocation there would not be many houses going up. Good heavens! Think of the price of compensation--even down to the jobbing builder in every village!"

The Bevan faction of the Labor Party, which has been pressing for an early election, was mildly rebuked by Prime Minister Attlee in his address to the conference. Attlee reaffirmed the government's determination to carry out Socialist policy with a "small but solid" majority. Polls taken throughout the country showed little change in popular opinion since the February election. Attlee had little hope of substantially increasing his majority and the Conservatives had little confidence that they could upset Labor. The word around Margate was that the election would be "soon, but not yet." Meanwhile, a middleaged, well-tailored Labor Party would proceed with caution.

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