Macmillan To Face Parliament Today

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28182, 22 January 1957, Page 9

Macmillan To Face Parliament Today

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 21. Parliament will reassemble tomorrow with the new Prime Minister, Mr Macmillan, and his reorganised Government facing their biggest post-war task—rebuilding the national economy after the difficulties caused by the British-French intervention in Egypt. Mr Macmillan has less than three months tr make plans to repair the damage caused by the crisis. They will be disclosed in the nation’s Budget in April. Politicians feel the new Government’s lift may depend on its ability to stabilise the economy without loading harsh new impositions on the taxpayer. Some of the Labour Opposition think this an impossible task, but friends of Mr Macmillan are confident he will achieve it.

There is wide speculation that Mr Macmillan will make his biggest retrenchment in the nation’s defence bill, now running at the rate of about £1,500 million—more than a third of Britain’s total annual Budget. Some Conservative politicians say £350 million—a sum which would solve many of Britain’s* money worries—could be cut off the defence estimates without materially weakening the nation’s contribution to Western security. Touch Of Determination

Though there have been some detractors of Mr Macmillan (he has been called a ‘‘jaded Edwardian without a modern mind”) his appointment has been well received by the public and press in Britain. There has been a touch of determination about the announcements accompanying the formation of his Government and also in his television talk embracing the all-out drive for atomic power, Britain’s intention to draw economically nearer to Europe, the cutting of defence and possibly the end of the present system of conscription. No doubt some of these policies were nlanned in Sir Anthony Eden’s time, but in any event there is now an atmosphere of a sense of purpose much to be welcomed after the confusion, uncertainty, almost an air of lassitude that followed the Suez cease fire.

There is a loose parallel between Mr Macmillan’s position today and that of Sir Winston Churchill when he took over from Mr Chamberlain in 1940. Although of a different nature, Britain has many difficult and complex problems to face. She stands ready to listen to the voice of a fresh and. it is hoped, energetic and imaginative leadership.

Already from the constitution of his Government there is a feeling that Mr Macmillan—who, according to Randolph Churchill, could relax sufficiently from his Cabinet-making to read Trollope between appointments—has an eye particularly for foreign affairs and the country’s economy. He is expected to take the lead in trying to patch British-American relations.

Other key figures in the coming weeks will be Mr Peter Thorneycroft, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence, whose way for cutting defence expense has been aided, it is suggested, by the removal of the “belligerent” Viscount Hailsham from the Admiralty and the “tough” Mr Nigel Birch from the Air Ministry. Labour’s Role While the Conservatives, after the dramatic political switch of the last fortnight, will rally stoutly to Mi Macmillan, there is equally little doubt that Mr Gaitskell, Mr Bevan and other Labour leaders will be out for blood.

Mr Gaitskell will return to Westminister from a visit to the United States to find himself less popular in the country and ' r Bevan far higher in the general public esteem than at any time in his turbulent career. It may, it se.-ms, take Mr Gaitskell some time to live down what many still

regard as his right about turn over Suez, his misjudging of popular sentiment against Colonel Nasser and his personally disastrous television appearance and broadcast at the height of the crisis. It is now being said that Mr Gaitskell is an intellectual who never had the common touch while Mr Bevan, a man of the people, expresses what they think and feel. By and large, Parliament between now and the Easter recess looks like being in for a pretty vital period while new policies are being hammered out and old personalities hammer at one another.