Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/churchil/churchil.008

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                                                                                November 5, 1951

This Last Prize



     In an hour of gathering darkness and discouragement, the
people of Great Britain turned again to a leader who had served
them well before. The message, "Winston is back," flashed through
the world as it once flashed through the British fleet, carrying
with it a quickening reassurance and a leap of hope.

     If all had been well with Britain, Winston Churchill might
never have been called. It was not the fate of Britain's greatest
leader to serve his people in prosperity. Six years ago, in the
hour of his country's greatest triumph, his leadership had been
decisively dismissed. Grateful for victory, but nursing prewar
grievances against the Tories and the upper classes, a majority
of the British turned away from Churchill to the brave new world
of Socialism. Now that world, so hopefully launched, was
waterlogged and awash. But grievances and memories die hard in
class-torn Britain. Churchill, trying for office last year, was
narrowly defeated. Last week he was narrowly victorious.

     The Lord Warden. The crisis Britain faced had none of the
sharp, agonizing pain of Dunkirk. It was, rather, a dull ache
brought on by years of seeming hopelessness and actual attrition.
A new Churchillian call for blood, sweat, toil and tears might
not now find the same response as it had before, but for the
moment at least, there was reassurance in the old familiar,
dogged smile beneath the square black hat. There was an
encouraging echo of the good old days in the sight of Churchill
making the V sign from his big, black Humber, the red, blue &
gold flag of his honorary title, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports,
bravely flying from its fender, and the deep blue ribbon of
Conservatism decorating its hood.

     At 76, Churchill was not the man he had been ten years
before. His shoulders were rounder, his jowls hung looser beside
his bulldog jaws. But his step was still springy, and under his
beetling brows his eyes could still smolder and twinkle with
their old fire. During the last years of his eclipse, old friends
and enemies alike had noticed in Churchill's speech a tendency to
slur and meander, but in the heat of this latest campaign, with
victory once more within his grasp, the old leader gave no sign
of such deterioration.

     "Good old Winnie," "Good luck, sir," cried the crowds that
pressed in on him as Churchill, beaming broadly, smoking a huge
cigar and jauntily swinging a cane, called last week at
Buckingham Palace to submit his new cabinet to the King.

     Eight key members of his new cabinet were with him, and each
one drew a separate cheer as he came out. To his admirers, it was
another reassuring sign that Churchill had chosen as his aides
many of the same men who had served with him through the war, and
that he had made himself Minister of Defense as well as Prime
Minister -- a clear sign that he intended to take full charge.

     In a campaign restricted by both parties to generalities,
Churchill had promised his people nothing but leadership. By a
narrow margin, the British electorate decided to take up that
promise.

     Anything You Can Do. "I wish," said Lord Woolton, who had
organized the Tory campaign, "that the majority had been much
bigger. I believe it would have been, if the election had been
fought on the domestic issues and the financial issues facing the
country. Unfortunately, it has not been; it's been fought on the
cry of 'warmongering,' and that I believe is the most ungrateful
cry anybody could have raised against a great man to whom the
nation is vastly indebted."

     Crisis after crisis (Iran, the Suez Canal, the announcement
of a whacking new dollar deficit) had smitten the country just
before and during the campaign, but none had found more than a
hollow echo in the banalities of electioneering. They were too
much a fault of the times to provide political ammunition. The
necessity for rearmament was not an arguable point but a sober
fact, demanding some 1,300 million pounds of expenditure by the
voters in 1951-52, regardless of which party won.

     With winter just around the corner neither side offered much
of a solution for the worst fuel shortage since 1947, for the
inadequacies of transport, the scarcities of raw materials, a
foreign trade balance $340 million in the red and a cost-of-
living index rising weekly. Conservatism skirted the issues and
harped on Labor's mistakes, confidently asserting, "Anything you
can do, we can do better." Labor responded by screaming
"warmonger" at every Tory plea for strength.

     To refute this "cruel and ungrateful charge," in a speech at
Plymouth, Winston Churchill begged, with tears in his eyes, for a
chance to lead his country again to greatness and to peace. "It
is the last prize I seek to win," he said.

     The big fact of the Churchill victory was the closeness of
it. The election showed that Britain is still sharply divided.
The two great masses -- Tory and Labor -- held immovably to their
position in the 1950 election. The only movement in Britain's
electoral machinery was that of the Liberals. In some 500
constituencies where there was no Liberal candidate, the Liberal
voters were forced to choose between extremes they disliked or to
abstain from voting. Those who voted went Tory three times out of
five. The results:

                   Seats         Vote        Percent
Conservatives       321       13,721,346      48.0
Labor               294       13,945,263      48.7
Liberals              6          723,000       2.5
Communists            0           22,000        .1
Others                3          177,000      __.7__
                                             100.0

     Labor actually had a popular vote of 224,000 votes over the
Tories, but the big leads they ran up in their stronghold
constituencies were, in effect, wasted votes. The Tories have a
parliamentary majority of only 18, and a majority of 27 over
Labor, much too close for comfort.

     Solemn Choice. "The people have cast out a party they no
longer want," groused London's News Chronicle, "in favor of one
they do not trust. No one has any right to be pleased." To a
large extent, no one was. Labor didn't like defeat; Liberals
didn't like hard choices, and Conservatives didn't like their
small majority.

     The voting itself was quiet. The electorate took their time
about going to the polls. In London, tired housewives queued
patiently to do their daily shopping before going to vote. Near
Manchester, where autumnal hills and fields, gowned in the Labor
Party colors of red and yellow, were beginning to fade, a farm
wife was asked if hr husband had voted yet. "Nay, nay," she
answered, "he's ower thrang [too busy] yit, he's got his coos to
milk." But the voters turned out -- 82% of them, as compared with
51% in the last U.S. presidential election.

     What excitement there was came after the balloting. In
London on election night, crowds 15,000-strong thronged the
traditional gathering places, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly
Circus, to watch the returns posted on huge bulletin boards.
Balloon hawkers ("Red, a tanner, blue, a tanner") did a brisk
business in party symbols, while raucous students, their colleges
identifiable by the color of their scarves, greeted the election
results with boos and cheers. The crowd's mood was more festive
than partisan. Piccadilly's streetwalkers were out in three times
their usual force, and a cordon of policemen surrounded the
boarded-over statue of Eros to ward off the drunks who always
want to climb it on such occasions. At the Savoy, a gilded party
of 2,000 (including Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Merle Oberon and
Sharman Douglas) joined Press Lord Viscount Camrose of the Daily
Telegraph to sip champagne and watch a private bulletin board.

     As the tally was recorded, famous names were called in
victory or defeat.

     In Devonport, Randolph Churchill, Winston's only son, failed
to unseat Bevanite Michael Foote by 2,390 votes. But Churchill's
two sons-in-law, Duncan San____ (husband of Diana) and
Christopher ___ames (husband of Mary), won their Conservative
seats.

     Rebel Aneurin Bevan piled up a heavier than usual majority
in the Welsh constituency of Ebbw Vale. The two Ministers who
resigned with him, Harold Wilson and John Freeman, held their
seats. So did the rest of the small camp of Bevanites, including
Bevan's own wife, Jennie ________. Mr. & Mrs. Bevan are the only
man and wife team in the House of Commons.

     In Plymouth, John Jacob Astor, parachutist son of a famed
spitfire parliamentarian, Lady Astor, wrested his mother's old
Commons seat from Laborite Lucy Annie Middleton by 710 votes.
Brother William Waldorf Astor also got elected. Father, a
viscount, sits in the House of Lords.

     In Anglesey, Wales, Lady Megan Lloyd-George, left-leaning
Liberal daughter of a famed Liberal father, lost the
parliamentary seat she had held for 22 years. But her brother,
Gwilym Lloyd George, styling himself a Liberal Conservative, got
elected.

     In Colne Valley, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, right-leaning
Liberal daughter of another Prime Minister, Asquith, and a friend
for whom Churchill himself had campaigned, went down to defeat.

     When the election was announced in September, Tory leaders
had looked for a landslide. Early public opinion polls led them
to hope for a majority of 100 seats. As election day drew near,
the prophesied margin grew narrower. The first returns blasted
all hopes of a big victory. The Tories gained a few seats in
Labor's strongest bailiwicks, the cities, but the Laborites were
still well ahead at the end of the first day's counting. Next day
the Tories pulled up even and went out ahead in numbers of seats
won. But at the end of the tally, party Secretary Morgan Phillips
was able to look up from the nightmare of figures sprawled on his
desk at Labor's headquarters and announce with a sudden happy
smile: "Well, whatever's happened, we've secured the biggest vote
of any party in history." "We'll be back again in six months,"
said one of his henchmen. "Well, maybe not six, but anyway 18,"
said another.

     It was cold comfort. Late that night, the headquarters in
Transport House bore the unmistakable signs of defeat. Ticker
tape littered the floor. Torn scribble sheets covered with
outdated calculations were piled on desks. Campaign posters as
anachronistic as Christmas cards in July hung sheepishly on the
walls. A few party workers popped out for a beer, but most just
slumped, sucking stale cigarettes over milky cups of tea.

     Six Years of Work. At 5 o'clock Friday afternoon, Clement
Attlee went to Buckingham Palace to hand King George VI his
resignation as Prime Minister. His three-week, Truman-style tour
through the provinces had left him pale and exhausted. Three
nights before, he had made his last campaign speech in
Walthamstow and sat on the platform afterwards with head in hand,
too beaten to do more than stare in mild astonishment as a
rabble-rousing platform mate ranted about "millions in America
who can't afford to buy butter." Election night he went to a
local Socialist club to hear the returns. He sat with his back to
the board, seldom turning to watch it. Every now & then Mrs.
Attlee would glance at the results and pat her husband on the
shoulder as he sipped his tea. By Friday, he was almost dead on
his feet, but he still rallied enough energy to grin and wave at
a few lingering supporters. "I don't know how he does it," said a
sympathetic friend, "when he knows this is the end of six years
of hard work." Asked by reporters if the former Prime Minister
would make a statement, a government press officer at 10 Downing
Street replied, "Why should he? He's just plain Mr. Attlee now."

     Tired as he is, and much as his wife wants him to quit and
rest, plain Mr. Attlee has a big job looming ahead of him. Gone
is the party's evangelical zeal of 1945, when Socialists sang
Blake's great hymn, and meant it: "I will not cease from mental
fight,/ Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,/ Till we have built
Jerusalem/ In England's green and pleasant land."

     Postwar Britain proved a rocky soil for a Socialist
Jerusalem. The lower classes ate better, but the middle class was
leveled flat. Millions enjoyed better medical care (the Tories
had to learn that false teeth and free specs aren't jokes to
people grateful for them), but the government lived beyond its
means. Even the doctrinaires learned that nationalization cures
nothing. The best of Labor's leaders died (like Ernie Bevin),
wore themselves out (like Sir Stafford Cripps), or proved
inadequate for the highest tasks (like Herbert Morrison at the
Foreign Office). Clement Attlee, conscientious and Christian,
carried on -- not an imposing figure, but a decent one. He was
badgered by Tories in front of him, by crises and muddle around
him, and by Aneurin Bevan on his flank.

     What of Attlee now? He knows as well as any of his followers
that to keep the party together he must stay on as leader of His
Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Many a Laborite hopes and expects to
find the Tory government up to its neck in trouble before too
long. "They'll begin to get the blame for unavoidable
discomforts, the same as we did," said one. "A lot of people who
are expecting them to work miracles will be sadly disappointed.
Take that Glasgow woman on the BBC the other night. She planned
to buy a cooker, she said, but when the election was announced
she decided to wait till the Tories brought the prices down."

     If a new election threatened soon, Clement Attlee would be
badly needed to head his party's candidates. If, on the other
hand, the new government held on, he would be just as badly
needed to protect the party from Rebel Aneurin Bevan.

     And what of Bevan? As of now, Attlee securely holds the
party's reins. But many observers, including Lord Beaverbrook's
stoutly Tory Daily Express, saw in 53-year-old Nye Bevan the real
victor in this election. Despite his popularity in his own
constituency, his antics had undoubtedly scared many Liberals
into voting Tory. "He can claim," said the Daily Express, "to
have brought the Tories to office on terms they may well find
embarrassing and unprofitable. In opposition, his star will rise
still higher."

     What were the Tories' prospects of resisting the onslaughts
of Bevanism?

     Talk About Fun. "It is a pity," remarked Britain's Prime
Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in 1915, "that Winston hasn't a
better sense of proportion . . . I don't think that he will ever
climb to the top in English politics." If the prophecy was a poor
one, the charge was just. Young Churchill, a rough rider in Cuba
before Teddy Roosevelt ever got there, author, soldier, hero and
cabinet minister all before he reached the age of 40, never did
get the knack of seeing things from the narrow perspective of
lesser men. Where they saw despair, he saw hope; where they saw
surrender, he saw opportunity to attack. When in 1940 such
darkness as Britain had never known loomed over his country,
Winston looked at the future from his peculiar perspective and
dared to tell history and his people that this was "their finest
hour."

     Churchill's courage is as desperately needed by Britain
today as it was in 1940. He moves in an aura of historic destiny
at the very center of the stage, basking in the glow of great
events. "Talk about fun," he wrote home from Omdurman, where he
served with Kitchener in 1898, "where will you beat this? On
horseback at daybreak, within shot of an advancing army, seeing
everything and corresponding direct with headquarters!" The 76-
year-old Churchill of 1951 has changed amazingly little from that
galloping, youthful enthusiast. This old lion can still rouse the
sluggish and the faint of heart to follow a forlorn and glorious
hope.

     The Grand Scale. Such hardheaded competent Conservative
administration as Churchill's deputies, Eden, Butler, Maxwell
Fyfe and the rest, offered Britain would undoubtedly bolster her
tottering finances at home and strengthen her relations abroad.
Tory policy has long stressed the necessity of a sound economy
and a closer cooperation between Britain and the U.S. and Western
Europe. Churchill will give his aides every encouragement to put
such policies into practice, but his own contributions will be on
a far grander scale.

     Winston Churchill is Conservative in name only. His
unpredictable boldness so horrified diehard Conservatives like
Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain that for ten years
between 1929 and 1939 they never trusted him with a cabinet
position. Churchill has no patience with the fussy arithmetic of
economics or the meeching niceties of diplomatic negotiation. His
style is more the "parley at the summit," the face-to-face
bargaining of great leaders holding the destinies of millions in
easy command. In a disillusioned era which now regards Teheran,
Yalta and Potsdam as places where presumed friends made
regrettable decisions, such tactics may no longer be practicable,
but as long as Churchill is around to propose them, Anglo-
American affairs are sure to rise from the slump of wary boredom
into which they have fallen. Whatever their differences may be,
the U.S. likes Churchill, Churchill likes the U.S., and Britons
like a good show.

     "I've Seen Worse." Last week, in his capacity as Prime
Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, Winston Churchill
picked up the reins of government with a pitifully small
parliamentary majority to work with. His first effort to swell
that majority, by offering Liberal Leader Clement Davies a place
in the cabinet, failed. Davies refused the job and promised only
qualified support. But Churchill the man had won support before
where Churchill the politician had failed. "It is because things
have gone badly and worse is to come that I demand a vote of
confidence," he told Parliament in 1942. And he got the vote. If
anybody could do it again, Churchill was the man.

     "There lies before us now a difficult time, a hard time,"
Winston Churchill told a group of Britons in Abbey House last
week. "I have no hesitation in saying that I've seen worse and
had to face worse. But I do not doubt we shall come through
because we shall use not only our party forces but a growing
sense of the need to put Britain back in her place -- a need
which burns in the hearts of men far beyond these shores."

     The old lion was still a lion.