Sense & Sound in Llcmdudno

Gold balances were down again last month, and Britain's trade gap was still widening. The cost of living inched higher, helped by a penny rise in bread prices. The 20,000 reservists called to the colors because of the Suez crisis were restive and kicking up trouble in Cyprus and Malta military camps, and barracks at home. Millions of Englishmen were disgruntled at the course of Suez. Tories themselves were grumbling about their leaders. "We want more Conservatism, more quickly," cried fire-breathing Conservative Peter Emery of Reading, "and more guts in leadership!"

In that unpropitious atmosphere, the leaders of Britain's government collected in the North Wales resort town of Llandudno last week to face up to 4,200 Conservative Party members in their annual conference.

Kiss & Rule. Leader after leader rose to explain what one protesting resolution called "the government's apparent inability to reverse trends resulting from Socialist maladministration" and to "use its strong majority to implement more forcibly its election promises." Minister of Housing and Local Government Duncan Sandys pledged that he would decontrol 10 million rent-controlled houses. Chan cellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan delivered a lengthy appeal for his plan to take Britain into a new European free-trade area (TIME, Oct. 15). But by far the most ringing response to the rank and file's complaints came from Lord Privy Seal R. A. Butler.

Just a year ago, ailing and deeply depressed by the death of his wife, and about to step down as Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Rab" had helped to make a tepid conference more tepid, and had lost his place in the leadership stakes to the debonair Macmillan. Now he bounced back with the kind of clear, practical talk that shaped the "New Toryism" with which the party won its way back to power in 1950. With wit and humor, Rab Butler apprised the party of the ever-changing path to office: "In the Middle Ages you bullied your way to power. In the classical age you bribed your way to power. And for the major portion of the 19th century, as readers of Pickwick Papers will recall, you kissed your way to power. Nowadays we are obliged to argue our way to power."

"Prosperity politics" is not enough, said Butler. The Tory appeal must rest on two "main and realistic principles": 1) "To wield the power of the state to balance the interests within it, producing a society in which rewards go to those who are successful in increasing the wealth of the whole, and so make it possible to help others who are in need"; and 2) "So to organize our international and defense policies as to hold our position in the world."

One problem the Tories under Anthony Eden have not solved is how to give voters a clear distinction between Conservative and Labor policies. "We must emphasize expansion rather than restriction," Butler said. "We have to surf-ride on the industrial revolution, developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, speeding the intelligent introduction of automation and extending facilities for technical and scientific training." Openly challenging the might of Britain's trade-union movement, he said: "We should use the authority of the state not to control and harry the individual but to curb the power of states which arise within the state, just as kings did with overmighty subjects of old." By the time he had finished, Conservatives were exchanging assurances that Rab Butler was back in the fray. "Now we don't need to worry about where to find our next Prime Minister," said one.

For the Back-Bench Boys. Later, appointed chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Associations, i.e., the Tory Party. Rab introduced Sir Anthony Eden. Delegates waited impatiently while the Prime Minister traveled through page after page of foolscap manuscript, to survey the domestic scene. But what about Suez?

A rumor had run through the hall that Britain had agreed to drop her demand for international controls of the canal, but Sir Anthony's comments were designed to set Tory hearts at rest on that matter. Warning against "hasty or optimistic judgment," he said that "wide differences of opinion" remain. Then, in a passage that pleased the bit-chomping "Suez Group" M.P.s, Eden concluded: "President Eisenhower at his press conference Thursday is reported to have said that you must have peace with justice or it is not peace. I agree with these words. That is why we have always said that with us force is the last resort--but it cannot be excluded."

Not since its last concourse of Welsh hymn singers had Llandudno resounded to such a chorus of glad cries as greeted Sir Anthony's pledge, largely rhetorical though it was. And then the Tories went home, their problems still unsettled but their discomfiture greatly eased.

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