London

on the World Today

SOME bold politicians here this spring are offering two-to-one odds that Churchill will dissolve Parliament and call new national elections before the end of the year. By no means all observers agree with this conclusion; but the premises on which it is based are valid and deserve being stated.

To begin with, it is pointed out, Churchill needs a larger majority in the House of Commons to sustain him in power. The last elections, in 1951, provided him with a small majority, which hovers around the middle teens when the Liberal Party fraction votes with the Labor Opposition.

The possibility of the Tory Government’s being forced from power not by public disfavor but by an accident of virus distribution became a practical concern last winter when ninety members of Parliament were out of action with flu at one time. Since in these years of small parliamentary majorities the two big parties keep their sick lists as closely secret as the nation’s atomic information, the Prime Minister must have had some anxious moments.

A further inducement to the Prime Minister to try to improve his position is implicit in the fact that the legislature and the executive in Britain draw on the same people. Some fifty of Churchill’s M.P.s must not only be within running distance of the House of Commons in order to vote as legislators; they must also hold down full-time jobs as ministerial executives.

The past winter emphasized the strain this situation can cause. In February when North Sea floods, John Foster Dulles, and an unusual number of difficult domestic problems hit Britain at the same time as did the flu, about half the work of the whole cabinet fell on the shoulders of the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. Sir David’s successful handling of all these tasks raised him from a hitherto inconspicuous minister to a position of eminence, and some papers have said he maychallenge Anthony Eden’s succession to Churchill’s position.

But he was pushed to the limit. A conscientious man who insists on keeping appointments, he attended a luncheon with American correspondents, his eyes sunken with sleeplessness, his hands trembling with nervous exhaustion. It was clearly a cost Churchill would not like his cabinet ministers to have to pay too often.

The winter’s toll

A winter of political warnings like these is nowbeing followed by a spring that appears more favorable to the Tories than any they have heretofore enjoyed. The change of season is favorable, in the first place, simply because it is a change of season. The past winter counted as the worst in memory by almost every possible measure. Average daily temperatures were the lowest on record, hours of sunshine the fewest. Vagaries were more numerous and their pitch more extreme than ever.

In December, the most implacable fog in recollection caused the deaths of 3000 people in five days. In January, hailstorms and snow caused high livestock casualties. In February, a highly magnetic full moon coincided with extraordinary gales to whip the North Sea 10 to 20 feet higher and wilder than it ordinarily gets, and 307 people died in a single weekend of floods and shipping disasters.

The floods made 32,000 people homeless and drenched 150,000 acres of the world’s most productive farmlands in salt water, sterilizing them for perhaps years to come. Though all the human destruction was done in a single night, material damage continued for a week as a result of the abrasive action of the tides against sea walls and towns. The disaster was called by the weather people the worst since the North Sea last invaded England in 1703.

The Coronation

Throughout the long winter and early spring the people have watched the preparations for the coronation with rising excitement. The main thoroughfares of London are now solidly bordered with bleachers. Under cobwebs of steel scaffolding a whole new section is being built in Westminster Abbey — the elaborate robing rooms where the Queen will arrive for the ceremony and her retinue will form.

Street decorations, which were beginning to be mounted in March, revealed a departure of some interest: where all past ornamentation of royal occasions has clearly drawn its inspiration from the unknown and ancient designer of playing cards as improved upon by Sir John Tenniel, this coronation clearly evinces the influence of Walt Disney. The large but delicately traced royal crowns that will hang from what appear to be dew-pearled threads of gossamer and will form canopies over some streets seem to have been taken directly from Cinderella or some other of Disney’s major films.

The palace has gone to great lengths to make this more of a popular occasion than past coronations. It is an interesting commentary on the adaptability of the royal institution to changing times that though not all peers will be able to get into the Abbey to witness the ceremony - they have had to draw lots for places — all national trade union leaders and their wives will be invited.

To develop the sense of participation, the palace has abandoned the practice of distributing invitations to places along the parade route as it chooses; instead, each organization that can claim to be national, from the Boy Scouts to the trade unions, will be handed a block of places to distribute as it sees fit. The palace has been undeterred by criticism that this is a concession to collectivism and is, in fact, the way theatre tickets are distributed in Moscow.

Elizabeth I of Scotland

Even the frictions that have inevitably developed around the preparations have served to heighten anticipation. The most serious has been the Government’s insistence that the new Queen be crowned as Queen Elizabeth II of Scotland and England. Since the first Queen of that name was not Queen of Scotland - in fact, she is remembered north of the border as the executioner of Mary Queen of Scots — the present monarch is in strict legality Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland, though second of the name in England.

The Scots have expressed their protest at this sin of nomenclature in the most emphatic fashion, by depositing explosives in mailboxes freshly painted with the “E II R” and blowing them up. At the same time they make it clear that their affection for the person of the new Queen is unimpaired.

Something has been done towards regulating another wider discontent — over what to do with the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh. The Duke has become intensely popular; yet the authorities have continued to behave as if he were an extra thumb which fits nowhere in the glove of royal tradition. Except as “ husband,” his formal relation to the throne has not yet been established (he has not been entitled “Prince Consort,” as was Queen Victoria’s husband); nor has his function in the coronation been determined.

Britain’s most widely read newspaper, the tabloid Daily Mirror, polled its readers on the question and found that over 99 per cent wanted Philip to take part in the ceremonies. The authorities have somewhat appeased feeling by announcing that he will be permitted to ride in the coach with the Queen in the processions before and after the ceremony.

The death of Queen Mary, which was long expected, will be mourned for a limited period but it will not affect the plans to make this coronation season a festive one. The Government has granted an amnesty to all wartime deserters from the armed services (10,000 are still at large), an increase in food rations for coronation week, and official permission to villages that have always done it in the past to kill and roast an ox for the great day.

This last concession brought some embarrassment: after clamoring for and winning this privilege, the villages in question discovered that all the elders who knew how to roast a whole ox had died off. They were thus forced to the humiliation of advertising in the London papers for professional chefs. All these preparations have produced an atmosphere similar to that in a small girl’s home the morning before her afternoon birthday celebration.

Inevitably, the party in power gains from the festive spirit, for it is its cabinet ministers who are daily announcing new coronation plans, and lauding the Queen (a subtle form of praising all Britons) in cornerstonelaying speeches.

It is probably also inevitable that the party in power should be tempted to make outright political capital out of its fortunate position in this favorable moment — as happened when a local Tory Party branch issued a leaflet with the crowned Queen’s portrait on the cover. And it is an indication of how serious the Opposition considers this political advantage that Labor politicians not only protested locally against this trivial misdemeanor but carried their protest to the floor of the House of Commons and forced the offending leaflet to be withdrawn.

However, all Labor’s protests cannot alter the fact that the coronation is causing a renaissance of patriotism and national unity from which the party that is fortunate enough to be in power at this moment benefits.

More sausages and eggs

To the list of favoring circumstances must be added a spate of domestic improvements and an appreciably improved foreign position. The easings of austerity include the end of candy and eggs rationing, and the “decontrolling” of breakfast sausages.

Laborites point out that some of these improvements are illusory; that in fact financial measures by the Tories have so reduced the purchasing power of the lower classes that there is an excess of goods that can be taken off ration for the middle classes to buy. This certainly seems to be true in the case of meat, rations of which more and more workers are failing to buy. The relevant political fact is, however, that there are more middleclass people in Britain — or people who consider themselves middle-class - than there are lower-class people; which means that more voters are pleased than displeased by the turn of events.

Eden and the Sudan

In the realm of foreign affairs, the Tories have displeased the upper extremity of the social scale for the sake of pleasing the broad middle majority. The act which did this was Secretary Eden’s agreement with General Naguib of Egypt to grant the Sudan its independence. The agreement, however explained, certainly means the shedding of another parcel of empire by Britain, and it means that in the long run Egypt, may take over the abandoned Sudan.

To the majority of people it has long been clear that frictions with Egypt constitute the greatest single commitment abroad that Britain has, and that sooner or later Britain was going to be forced to leave both the Sudan and Suez. Since the agreement with Naguib has perceptibly eased relations with Egypt, allowing Britain already to reduce her swollen garrison at Suez, the satisfaction of the majority of the people easily outweighs the anger of the high Tory imperialists.

Moreover, Eden has given the impression of standing up to the new American Administration. This is a great asset, for President Eisenhower’s first acts of foreign policy — the “unleashing” of the Chinese Nationalists, the near-repudiation of Yalta, and so on — have had a universally bad press in London, What really happened during Dulles’s visit in February is not clear, but since the new Secretary of State prefaced his trip with threats of cutting off aid and ended it with expressions of optimism, the Tory foreign secretary is given credit, rightly or wrongly, for causing him to “imitate the Month of March in coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb.”

New embarrassments for Labor

While events conspire to improve the prospects for the Tories, their Labor opponents find themselves in more confused disarray than usual. In great part, Churchill brought about their new embarrassments by an initiative that confirms his political genius. The internecine dispute in the Labor Party between the leftwing Bevanites and the right, wing of the party seemed ended in the early winter when Bevan admitted defeat and rejoined the orthodox Labor leadership.

At that point, however, Churchill casually tossed a monkey wrench into the works by offering a knighthood to Lincoln Evans, a right-wing trade union leader. Mr. Evans accepted. The left-wing Bevanites, in their weekly magazine Tribune, bitterly criticized the union leader for accepting a feudal title from a Tory Government. Offended, all the union leaders — most of whom are more conservative than the average Tory — banded together and counterattacked.

The Bevanite quarrel is thus revived, but whereas formerly the quarrel was one of issues (the degree of rearmament Britain could stand), it now became one of personalities. Like all feuds that have gone on too long, its origins were forgotten and it became meaningless bad temper.

It was all the more curious because the originator of the fight, Aneurin Bevan himself, not only took no personal part in it — a circumstance that in no way spared him from being attacked and blamed - but has even been out of the country on a visit to India during most of it. The public’s view was no doubt summed up by the Timed: “The Labor Party seems resolved to deprive itself of the confidence of the electorate.”

These are the reasons why many sober observers in Britain expect Churchill to dissolve Parliament and call new elections for autumn. The compelling force of their argument is not merely the fact that the situation is favorable but that it is probably going to prove temporary.

The improvements in Britain’s dollar crisis are not essential ones, so a return of that nightmare is widely expected. The coronation fervor will probably not outlive the year of its celebration. The disappearance of real issues in the internecine quarrel in the Labor Party causes most people to expect that the quarrel will in time be settled and Labor will regain its composure. Thus, Churchill can hardly expect to find his position at or near this peak again.

Against the forecast of new elections are several arguments. First, cabinet ministers get into the grooves of their longer-term plans and are reluctant to interrupt them before they have to. Second, the British people are tired of elections and may resent Churchill’s calling a new one unscasonally for reasons of mere partisan strategy.

Finally, by the British constitution, only one individual has the right to decide to call new elections — the prime minister. He need consult no one, not even his fellow ministers or party leaders. Since Churchill has never been overcomniunicative or prone to accept the advice of others, and since in his advancing years he isolates himself even more than usual, his decisions are as impossible to predict as English weather.