LABOR LOOKS AHEAD

Time's London office last week sized up Labor's six-month record and its prospects for 1946:

The Labor Party is worried, uncertain of its future, still trying to learn the ways of power. The Tory Party is floundering, all but disintegrating; and it will disintegrate unless it finds a philosophy and a leadership virile enough to offset the inroads of its great defeat. These are the outstanding facts of Great Britain's political scene as deposed Prime Minister Winston Churchill begins his U.S. visit and Parliament readies for its second session under Labor leadership.

Behind these Party troubles are two great national troubles :

Politically, the new Labor Government must find an international formula to retrieve Britain's position as a world power. It is trying to find that formula in a world collectivism inspired and led by its own Labor statesmen (see INTERNATIONAL).

Economically, the new Government must cure a condition which amounts to nothing less than national bankruptcy -- Britain's price of victory. It is not often put so bluntly in Britain, but bankruptcy is the word for it.

The Newly Opposed. Outwardly Labor's position is not so bad. Four months of Parliamentary experience have largely obliterated the sense of Laborite inferiority manifest in Ram say Macdonald's day. Labor M.P.s have shown themselves good debaters; ad ministratively, Laborite ministers and their subordinates have proved gener ally no better and no worse than their old-school predecessors. But Labor, which thrived in opposition, has its worries :

P: Now Labor is the opposed ; it must take responsibility for all the enormous little burdens of life in postwar Britain. How many of the millions who swung to Labor last July will approve its discharge of those responsibilities?

P: As socialism develops, however slowly and moderately, many who voted anti-Tory rather than pro-Labor will turn away.

P: Many servicemen who reacted to military restraint by voting Labor will react against socialist restraints.

P:Above all, Government power and nationalization bring a great threat to the Party's mainstay, its trade-union membership.

Already the union rank & file are uneasily alive to the change which nationalization will progressively bring to them and their unions. It is as simple as this: the Government is their new boss, the unions are partners in the Government, so what good is a union?

Those old discontenteds, the miners and the dockers, are most openly worried now. When the docks and mines are nationalized, will the Government (our Government) call out troops to break a strike? Honest but sweating M.P.s must answer: yes, if necessary, because a strike in a socialized industry is in fact sabotage of the Government, and an act against the people.

Union membership has not noticeably fallen off yet, but union leaders worry about it and are doing their utmost to forestall it.

Strains & Trifles. The rank & file worries the leaders more than do the strains of power among themselves. These strains broke into the open last week with the resignation of the Board of Trade's disillusioned idealist. Ellis Smith, and many another all-out socialist shares his bitter belief that Labor is betraying socialism by going too slow. But that was to be expected; no important revolt is brewing or in prospect.

There is place-seeking, envy, dislike between individuals. Said Coventry's M.P., Maurice Adelman: "I would rather never have an office than indulge in some of the place-seeking that is going on." Labor's youngish "intellectuals" in the House would like to throw 74-year-old Lord Pethick-Lawrence out of the India Office, stubborn Jack Lawson out of the War Office. But these are inevitable trifles.

Labor leaders are already looking forward to the next general election five years away (barring disaster). Driven on by Herbert Morrison, Laborite M.P.s and Government officials, trade leaders are launching a great five-year education and membership recruiting program.

The New Opposers. The Tories must take a shorter view. It is the talk of London that Winston Churchill, to all effects, is out of the Party leadership. At most, says many a knowing Tory gossip, he will manage to hang on for a brief interim, then hand it over. To whom? There's the rub. The Tory Party today is virtually in the position most Americans thought the Democratic Party was in during Franklin Roosevelt's tenure.

Even in a quasi-socialist regime, a healthy opposition is essential to Britain's political health. So far Tory leadership has made only one post-election contribution to its own and Britain's health: a national re-education campaign similar in objective to Labor's but not nearly comparable in vigor.

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