PERSONALITIES OF MINISTERS WILL AFFECT BRITISH POLLS

Wanganui Chronicle, 14 December 1949, Page 5

PERSONALITIES OF MINISTERS WILL AFFECT BRITISH POLLS

By Alan W. Mitchell, (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.) LONDON, November 25. —One of the many interesting “imponderables” that will effect the voting when the time arrives for Britain’s next General Election centres round the personalities of the leading political figures. Personalities are inseparable from politics, as cartoonists are well aware; and in Britain where prominent people are more remote from the average citizen they are in New Zealand, the impression they make through the newspapers or the radio builds up an important background in the mind of the voter. Leaving politics and political programmes aside, there is little doubt that the swing to Labour in 1945 was influenced to a considerable extent by the nation becoming “tired” of leading Conservative figures. The general, and to a certain extent, sub-conscious antipathy towards men like Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Lord Simon, Lord Templewood (formerly Sir Samuel Hoare), Mr. Brendan Bracken, Mr. Duncan Sandys, was by no means an unimportant factor in the piling up of votes for Labour.

Now after four and a-half years, with the nation confronted with a new set of circumstances, «yid with the names and personalities of many Conservatives over-shadowed by the glare of publicity upon the Labour Cabinet, much of this antipathy has abated or is not harboured by thousands of “new” voters. Apart from Mr. Winston Churchill, Lord Woolton, Mr. Anthony Eden, and Mr. R. A. Butler, few Conservatives are well-known to a wide section of the public which takes little more than a passing interest in politics.

On the other hand the various members of the Labour Cabinet have, during the past few years, been consistently in the public mind and the effect they have had upon it has not always been fortunate. While their popularity with Socialists in general has not abated, some of them have not only enraged Conservatives but also angered that important section of the British electorate described vaguely as the “floating vote” or the “middle class.” This section is important for while it is generally estimated that the block votes for Labour and Conservatives are more or less equal, it is also agreed that a swing to left or right by those who have no particular party allegiance decides the political colour of new governments. Moderates, as they are called, in the Labour Party are fully aware of this fact and Mr. Herbert Morrison in particular has been assiduously courting the favour of the “middle class”, vote for the past year or two. Yet every word that Mr. Morrison has spoken to sooth and woo this section, men like Mr. Aneurin Bevan, Mr. Emmanuel Shinwell, and Dr. Hugh Dalton have uttered two or more to ruffle and irritate it. They have, in the words of Mr. Ness Edwards, another moderate, been “spitting” on Saturday and seeking co.-operation on Monday. The right wing press never allows this “immoderate” section of the Labour Party to forget their references to people other than the working class as “vermin” who are not worth a “tinker’s cuss;” and it will be a long time before Mr. Shinwell is allowed to forget his preference for “good old fish and chips” at the Lord Mayor’s banquet and his castigations of the City.

The effect of this “spitting” is diffuse. While it makes Mr. Clement Attlee, Mr Ernest Bevin, Mr Morrison and other moderates uncomfortable, it produces something approaching apoplexy among true blue Conservatives when the names of Mr. Bevan and Mr. Shinwell are mentioned. It causes many of the “floaters”

to have second thoughts when they consider that Mr. Bevan, strongly tipped as a future leader of the Labour Party and possible Prime Minister, apparently delights in rubbing salt into class distinctions. It delights many rank and file Socialists who evidently feel that the more the Conservatives, the top-hatted Tory capitalists so beloved of left-wing cartoonists, hate Mr. Bevan the better Socialist he must be.

Thus while Mr. Bevan and Mr. Shinwell are anathema to Conservatives and anti-Socialists—Mr. Churchill has declared of Mr. Bevan “He is our worst enemy”—both men have become increasingly popular with Socialists generally. Evidently these two men believe that fermenting class hatreds is worthwhile if it leads to a dominating position within their own party. Whether this fact, or mutual antipathy, is the reason it is becoming increasingly apparent that personal animosities smoulder among some Labour leaders. For instance The Observer stated this week that Mr. Bevin has come into bitter conflict with Mr. Bevan during these last 12 months. One feels that Mr. Bevan has only to advocate an early election for Mr. Bevin at. once to suggest a postponement until June. Sue}? is the happy atmosphere that now prevails in the Cabinet.” During the past few weeks not only have Mr. Bevan and Mr. Shinwell been reflected in an unfavourable light in the right-wing newspapers, Mr. Bevan for his apparent differences of opinion with leading members of his party over the date of the General Election and his renewed castigations of the British Press (“the most prostituted in the world” as he once called it), and Mr. Shinwell for his fish and chips episode; but several other members of the Cabinet have been fairly roughly treated. Mr. Attlee was generally criticised for his statement on the economic cuts, Sir Stafford Cripps, after devaluation, is no longer regarded as the same courageous and honest figure that he was 12 months ago, Mr. John Strachey’s resignation had been called for as a result of the failure —some 'call it “scandal”—of the ground nuts scheme, Mr. Bevin has lost the support of the Conservatives for foreign policy; and there has been a growing spate of criticism that the Government leaders are not giving the nation the lead it needs in these days of economic crisis.

The effect is to create, in the minds of those people who may be swinging in their opinions as to which way they will vote next year, a general and perhaps ill-defined feeling of antipathy towards the Labour leaders similar to that which existed for prominent Con--o.id eq} Suiinp saAiißAjes war and war years. How deeply rooted it may have become is one of the many interesting imponderables of the present political situation. While it is likely that leading Labour personalities have lost favour with the British public, it is doubtful, however, whether any Conservative Leaders other than Mr. Churchill, have gained greatly in public prestige since 1945. The violent feelings roused by Mr. Churchill’s “Gestapo” broadcasts during the 1945 campaign have now dissipated, indeed it is being suggested that with the introduction of payment for information against those who break currency regulations he was not altogether inaccurate. As the war years recede his figure during those years of peril towers more than ever like a Colossus. But the stature in the public mind of his immediate associates at the present time is difficult to estimate.

An important point in their favour, however, is that they do not “spit” at the middle class.