Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, JULY 30, 1945 VOX POPULI

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 30 July 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, JULY 30, 1945 VOX POPULI

FOR a long time to come the British General Election will remain a favourite subject for dissection and detailed diagnosis. Commentators in many parts of the world have been busy seeking to explain a result that very few of them expected. Reactions range from undisguised jubilation to genuine misgivings; some opinion outside Britain sees cause for uneasiness and one of the wisest comments coming from within Britain is that the people themselves were rather amazed at what they had done and, given another election day this week, would vote very differently. That is not to say they would hand a mandate to the Conservatives but, knowing the extent of the landslide, many might be tempted to make Labour’s win less decisive. That it has a clear majority to carry through its programme is really one of the most satisfactory features of the result and the five key posts already Riled in the Cabinet are held by able men who have all had experience on the inside of Mr Churchill’s warwinning coalition, so they should be able fairly readily to pick up the threads. Mi* Bevin comes to the Foreign Office without any firsthand experience in the conduct of international affairs. He was not even in Parliament when Mr Churchill, recognising his outstanding ability, invited him to take over the portfolio of Labour in the National Government.

There seems to be universal agreement that the defeat of Mr Churchill's Administration has not now nor will in the future dim the lustre of his achievements as one of the greatest of all Prime Ministers and a national war leader whom history may place at the top of the list, above even Pitt. Political party barriers have never been able to hold him and it used to be said that he flitted from one side to the other with irresponsibility. The truth is that he has been too much of a genius to be governed by party politics ; he has always followed his star, often imperiously, whether in the ascendant or in decline, and will doubtless continue to do so. No one would ever dream of dubbing him a shell-back Tory, and since be accepted leadership of the Conservatives—which might have been a mistake—he has felt more affinity with the reforming elements than with the die-hards.

During the election campaign he stepped down from his lofty pedestal as a national figure to engage with characteristic vigour in the hurlyburly of the fight and lost caste through doing so. Moreover, some of the tactics used, whether his own or those of his advisers—notably Lord Beaverbrook—cost him support. While the temper of the people might have been misjudged to a certain extent Mr Churchill’s precaution in , sending Mr Attlee to San Francisco and taking him to Potsdam shows that an intuitive 'sense did not rule out the possibility of accidents happening and, placed alongside the other picturesque chapters in his long and chequered career, this latest accident is not incongruous. He has known the bitterness of defeat before, also the obloquy of talents being ignored by his own party when the nation was crying out for their full employment but has never bemoaned the swift changes of political fortune. Perhaps he might even be disposed to contest the truth of the dictum that there is no gratitude in politics and has always maintained that the will of the people must prevail. The impact of the election result on the leadership of Mr Churchill is much more serious than its impact on the Conservative Party. Can Britain or the world afford to have such a unique combination of talents relegated to comparative inactivity in policy moulding? Apart from that dne all-important aspect the advent of a strong yet moderate Labour Government' to power in Britain may not be a bad thing. The change has been maturing for years. Had the ordinary cycle of elections not been upset by the war we might well have witnessed something like what has happened back in 1940. Blame for *the years which the locust hath eaten” could be justly charged against the Baldwin Administration but not against Churchill, who. as a private member, was the one vibrant’ and persistent' voice warning of the terrible risks of appeasement at a time when the Labour Opposition counselled vigour in British foreign policy yet insisted on the minimum of defence expenditure. The bitter taste of those years in the mouths of the British people undoubtedly accounted for some of the vitriol in the polling booth pencils which scored out fhe names of Conservative candidates. Added to that was the natural swing of the political pendulum—whose oscillations are remarkably regular over a long term—the desire for a new domestic deal and a willingness to entrust the cards to a group who claimed to have the capacity to reshuffle them.

Britons at home and abroad, particularly servicemen, have seen a good deal of their opposite numbers among the Allied nations. It is no secret, for example, that the British Tommy has often chafed under the comparative opulence of the Ammcan serviceman and has wondered why his country should not be able to pay him as well for fighting. Air raids and evacuations have uncovered slum conditions that many of the people of Britain formerly scarcely knpw existed. In the agricultural communities, too. thrre has been a birring of social conscience and probably the biggest single factor accounting for the landslide is that the British middle class—often called the* backbone nf the nation—has voted Labour for the first time. It has not done so flamboyantly but expectantly. For six years the British people

have fought doggedly and worked very very hard and they knew why! they were fighting and toiling. They! seem to have had a pretty good idea: of what* they were voting for, too, j and this sharply-etched outlook of | realism places a heavy responsibility | on the new Government, which claims that it can deliver the goods.