The Politicians

The strongest single sentiment in Britain today is a vague and touching belief that the cold war might be ended if the U.S. and Russia could just be got to shake hands, like good sports, and talk things over. Malenkov, many articulate Britons argue, may not be such a bad chap at all; if only the stubborn Americans would listen to reason (preferably the voice of the BBC), a bright new age might dawn.

The vote-getting possibilities of this broad public conviction form an irresistible temptation to British politicians. Aneurin Bevan was the first to recognize them; Churchill, his mortal foe, tapped them in his famed Locarno speech in which he called for a "parley at the summit" (TIME, May 18). Yet it is a milder man than either who most sums up this strange new British brand of neo-neutralism in the cold war. His name is Clement Attlee.

Agree & Blast. At 70. colorless Clem Attlee is probably the most astute theorist-politician in Britain. He knows how to conquer by conceding, how to learn from the other fellow. Sensing the wide appeal of Churchill's demand for a Big Four conference, Attlee has made political capital by 1) agreeing with it, 2) blasting the Tory government for letting the U.S. State Department calm Sir Winston down. Last week Attlee was busy with an even cleverer move: to reunite the feuding Labor Party and cut "Nye" Bevan down to size by taking over the Bevanite program and making it his own.

Three thousand delegates representing 6,400,000 members of the Labor Party were gathering in Margate for their 52nd annual conference. "It may be that now and again somebody will say rather rough things," forecast black-browed Aneurin Bevan before descending on Margate with his Bevanly host. "[But] don't let anyone make any mistake . . . When we have had our row and made up our minds, this movement is going to be a solid, united movement."

Attlee agreed, with a smile. Then he presided over the customary meeting of the party's National Executive Committee, whose job it is to settle on the resolutions to be laid before the party conference. Instead of watering down the fierce anti-Americanism of the Bevanite proposals (as he has often done in the past). Attlee let them stand. The council adopted a foreign policy plank which recommended that: The Peking Communists should be recognized as "the effective" government of China and admitted to the U.N. (as the Tories also advocate), Nationalist Formosa should be "neutralized," German rearmament should be postponed until the West makes further effort at a four-power German settlement.

When the full conference met, Attlee turned back two Bevanite maneuvers to make the anti-U.S. attack-even blunter, then pushed through his own platform without trouble.

Jarring Sects. Far from forfeiting his leadership to Bevan, Attlee had proved he was still in command and had taken for his own the Bevanites'--and some of Churchill's--strongest appeal to the country. The two Socialists are still poles apart on domestic issues (e.g., further nationalization, of which the Bevanites make a fetish), and Bevan is still out to win over the party from the Attlee regime, any way he can. But Attlee has pushed the thunderous Welshman right off his own front porch.

"If the jarring sects of the Socialist Party are ever to reach any common basis of agreement," commented the conservative Daily Telegraph, "it must be on the basis of anti-Americanism. [The Labor leaders] have felt compelled to go farther than they may feel wise to avoid 'losing contact with the masses.' "

Yet, for all the grave wrath of the Telegraph, the fact is that Tory foreign policy differs from Labor's hardly at all in practice. Tory popularity has been slipping since it reached a high-water mark at the time of Churchill's Locarno speech, and many Conservatives believe the only way to recover is to outdo Labor by heading more decisively toward neutralism. Winston Churchill himself, relaxing in the sun on the Cote d'Azur, felt it necessary this week to proclaim that he is willing to go to Moscow, or almost anywhere the Communists care to mention--if only the Red leaders will sit down and bargain.

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