challenge that dwarfs those offered by Germany in 1917 or by Germany,
Japan, and Italy in 1941. Communist dominion stretches from the Elbe
to the Pacific, from the arctic to the jungles of Indochina. Nearly a
thousand million people serve tyrannical systems of government. Behind
the barbed wire and the empty-faced guards at the frontiers we can
hear the explosions of devastating weapons of war, we can discern the
ceaseless effort to achieve the world triumph of Communism.
To the leaders of all these millions, the United States is the enemy,
the people of America their principal obstacle in the march to world
power. As the most successful capitalist state, the United States is
now and will be in the future the principal target for the diplomatic
intrigues, the political subversion, and the economic competition of
the Communist bloc. The avenues of attack may be indirect, the means
may differ from place to place. But the enmity does not vary. America
is the enemy today, as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow.
Living at the apex of power and prosperity, it is easy for Americans
to be complacent, it is natural for them to fasten on hints of Russian
friendship. But it is folly to believe that the world situation is
improving because Nikita Khrushchev jests with correspondents in Moscow
or because a delegation of visiting farmers from the Ukraine is made up
of hearty extroverts. For the Communist challenge, as it has developed
since the death of Stalin, is as real as that which produced the cold
war of 1945-53. But because it is expressed in terms superficially less
belligerent than blockades and riots, violent speeches and editorials,
and overt instant and implacable opposition to Western policies,
the current challenge is far more insidious. Concepts and policies
developed to meet a purely military challenge will not suffice to
defeat it.
For a decade the United States has been busy "making" allies all over
the world. But you cannot "make" allies as you make Fords. You cannot
buy them as you buy bread at the baker's. Of course, in war, or at
war's approach, threatened nations will hurry for shelter under the
protecting wings of Uncle Sam. But we are facing a situation in which
every effort will be made to lure our friends away with protestations
of peaceful intent. Our real allies will be those who share common
interests and believe in the same principles of government and law.
Among these the British stand pre-eminent.
There was a wise old general commanding the United States Army in
Germany at the height of the cold war. At this time, early in 1951, no
one was sure what the next Russian move would be. Some of the general's
young officers were playing that engaging game of adding divisions of
various nationalities to assess Western strength. In the unbuttoned
atmosphere of after-dinner drinks they conjured up Italian army corps
and Greek and Turkish armored divisions. After ten minutes of this, the
idea that the Soviet Union might even think of a war seemed downright
foolish.
The general surveyed them with a wintry eye and then spoke. They were,
he said mildly, playing with shadows. If "it" came, the only people
to count on were the four divisions of British troops up on the left
flank. These are the only people on our side, he added, who think the
way we do and feel the way we do. These are the people who, in war or
in peace, in good times and bad, are going to stick.
This identity of broad political outlook is essential in American
assessments of Britain. It is more important in the long run than
concern over the power of the Trades Union Congress or competition for
overseas markets.
But, granting this identity of outlook and aims, we have the right to
ask ourselves if Britain remains a powerful and stable ally of the
United States in the leadership of the Western community. I believe
that the answer is in the affirmative, that with all her difficulties
and changes Britain will continue to play a leading role in the affairs
of the world, that she will not decline gradually into impotent
isolation.
Let us be quite clear about the future outline of British power. The
Empire is gone or going. The British know that. But the endurance, the
resolution, the intelligence that transformed a small island off the
coast of Europe into the greatest of modern empires is still there.
Beneath the complacency, the seeming indifference, it remains. The
best evidence is the series of social, economic, and political changes
that has transformed British life.
These changes, whatever individual Britons or Americans may think of
them, are not signs of complacency or indifference. They are rather
proofs that the society has not lost its dynamism, that its leaders
admit and understand their losses in political influence and economic
power and are determined to build a stronger society on the foundations
of the old.
Admittedly, the British make it difficult for their friends or their
enemies to discern the extent of change. They cling to the old
established forms. This is a characteristic that is almost universal
in mankind. When the first automobiles appeared, they were built to
resemble horse-drawn carriages. Men cling to the familiar in the
material and the mental. Think of our own devotion, in a period when
the nation has developed into a continental and world power, to a
Constitution drafted to suit the needs of a few millions living along
the eastern fringe of our country.
The changes in Britain have taken place behind a façade of what the
world expects from Britain. The Queen rides in her carriage at Royal
Ascot, the extremists of the Labor Party cry havoc and let slip the
dogs of political war, the Guards are on parade, and gentlemen with
derbies firm upon their heads walk down St. James's swinging their
rolled umbrellas. Literature, the stage, the movies, the appearance of
the visiting Englishman in every quarter of the globe has implanted a
false picture firmly in the popular mind.
"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun." They also play
cricket and drink tea to the exclusion of other entertainments, live on
estates or in tiny thatched cottages, say "by Jove" or "cor blimey."
Their society is stratified, their workers are idle, their enterprise
is negligible. Britain itself is a land of placid country villages, one
large city (London), squires and lords, cockney humorists and rustics
in patched corduroy.
This is Britain as many Americans think of it. It is also, as I have
mentioned earlier, the Britain to which many of its inhabitants return
in their daydreams. But it is not contemporary Britain.
The real Britain is a hurrying, clamorous, purposeful industrial
nation. Its people, with a sense of reality any nation might envy, are
carrying out major changes in the structure of the national economy and
in the organization of society. The Welfare State may be considered
a blessing or a curse, according to political taste, but the nation
that first conceived and established it cannot be thought deficient in
imagination or averse to change.
The human symbol of modern Britain is not John Bull with his
country-squire clothes or the languid, elegant young man of the
West End theater, but an energetic, quick-spoken man of thirty-five
or forty. He is "in" plastics or electronics or steel. He talks of
building bridges in India, selling trucks in Nigeria, or buying timber
in Russia. In the years since the war he has been forced to supplement
his education--he went to a small public school--with a great deal of
technical reading about his job. His home is neither an estate nor a
cottage but a small modern house. He wants a better house, a better
car in time. Indeed, he wants more of everything that is good in life.
He recognizes the need for change--and his own pre-eminence in the
economy of the nation is a sign of change. But by tradition he opposes
any change so rapid and revolutionary that it shakes the basis of his
society. Politically, he is on the left wing of the Conservative Party
or the right wing of the Labor Party. When in 1945 he left the Army
or the Navy or the Air Force his views were well to the left of their
present position. The thought that Britain's day is done has never
entered his head.
The moderation of his political outlook expresses an important trend in
British politics. This is the movement within both major parties toward
the moderate center and a reaffirmation of the national rather than the
party point of view. The antics of the extreme left and the extreme
right in British politics are entertaining and occasionally worrying.
But under present conditions neither group represents a dominant
doctrine, although in London, as in Washington, governments must make
gestures in the direction of their more extreme supporters.
This movement toward the center seems to express two deeply felt
national attitudes. One is that further experimentation in transforming
British society should be postponed until the changes that took
place in World War II and the decade that followed it have finished
their alteration of that society. There will be--indeed, there must
be--further alterations in the industrial economy, and these, of
course, will affect society. But I do not believe the British people
are now prepared for further sweeping, planned changes in their life
or would support such changes if they were to be proposed by either
political party.
The second attitude is a growing determination to face up to the
national danger. Successive governments have attempted to drive home
the lesson that Britain's economic peril is very real and that it is
not a transient matter; that exports and dollar balances and internal
consumption will be matters of great importance for years to come. As
the memories of pre-war Britain fade, and as a new generation that has
never experienced the national economic security of imperial Britain
gains power, awareness of the nation's real problems should take hold.
And because the British are a sensible people bountifully endowed
with courage and resource, they should be able to meet and defeat the
problems.
But at the moment the percentage of those who understand the national
position is too small. They must eternally contend against two
psychological factors in working-class opinion which we have already
encountered. One is the political lethargy of the new industrial
worker who, after centuries of shameful treatment, has emerged into
the sunlight of full employment, adequate housing, high wages, strong
industrial organization, political representation, amusements, clothes
and food that for decades have been out of the reach of Britain's
masses. This new working class has shown itself capable of great
self-sacrifice on behalf of its class interests and, let us never
forget, on behalf of its country in the last fifty years. But now,
having reached the home of its dreams, it has hung a "Do Not Disturb"
sign on the gate. Apparently it has done with sacrifice and realism.
To a certain extent this attitude is encouraged by the big national
newspapers. The emphasis on sport, crime, the royal family, and the
trivia of international affairs leaves inadequate space for the grim
realities of the long politico-economic struggle with Russia, and the
new working class remains uninformed about its real problems. A Prime
Minister or a Chancellor of the Exchequer may expound the realities of
the national position in a speech, but if people are not interested
enough to listen or to read, what good does it do?
Such a state of mind in an important section of the populace seriously
impedes national progress. When dollar contracts are lost because
of union squabbles there is something radically wrong with the
leadership exercised by the trade unions. Would the contracts be lost,
one wonders, if the union leaders had given their followers a clear
explanation of the importance of such contracts not only to one factory
in one industry but to the entire nation?
Admittedly, there are plenty of others in Britain who do not understand
the importance of the economic situation or the changes that have taken
place. But the attitude of a retired colonel in Bedford or a stout
matron in Wimbledon is not so important to the nation's welfare as that
of the members of the working class.
The second factor affecting the response of this class to the nation's
needs is the effect upon it of the economic depression of the years
between the two world wars. Again and again we have seen how the memory
of unemployment, of the dole, of endless empty days at labor exchanges,
of hungry children and women's stricken eyes has colored the thinking
of the working class. It is too ready to see the problems of the 1950's
in terms of its experiences of the 1930's. Consequently, it adopts
a partisan attitude toward political development and a reactionary
attitude toward industrial innovation.
There are those who argue that these attitudes will change as the
working class becomes more accustomed to its new condition of life and
place in the national pattern. This may prove true. But can Britain
afford to wait until the union leaders understand that each new machine
or industrial technique is not part of a calculated plan by the bosses
to return the workers to the conditions prevailing in South Wales in
1936?
This partisan approach to economic problems is as important a factor as
complacency and lethargy in obstructing adoption by the working class
of a national viewpoint toward the British economic predicament. The
British political system is a marvelously well-balanced one. But the
balance is disturbed now and has been for some years by the tendency of
organized labor to think almost exclusively in terms of its own rather
than national interests. Labor can with perfect justice retort that
when the middle class dominated British society it thought in terms of
its own interests, too. This is true, of course. The difference is that
the present national position is too precarious for blind partisanship.
Much is made in public speeches of the educational side of trade-union
work. It would seem that the great opportunity for the unions now is
in this field. Someone or some organization that enjoys the respect of
the workers must educate them out of their lethargy and out of their
memories of the past. The popular newspapers will not or cannot do
it--and, naturally, as largely capitalist, they would be suspected by
many of those most in need of such education. But the job must be done
if Britain is to benefit fully from the enterprise and ingenuity of her
designers and engineers.
Certainly the educational process would work both ways. A traveler in
Britain in the period 1953-6 would notice that in many cases there was
a difference between the TUC leaders' views about what the workers
thought and what the workers themselves thought. Many of the unions
have become too big. Contact between the leaders and the rank and file
is lost. The Communists take advantage of this.
Can the working class awaken to the necessities of Britain's position
and sublimate its agonizing memories and fierce hatreds in a national
economic effort? This is the big "if" in Britain's ability to meet the
economic challenge of today. I do not doubt that the working class will
respond again, as it has in the past, to a national emergency that is
as real, if less spectacular, than the one which faced the nation in
1940. This response, I believe, will develop as firmly, albeit more
slowly, under a Conservative government as under a Labor government
because it will be a development of the trend, already clearly evident,
in the new middle class to take a national rather than a class outlook
on Britain's problems. But the response must come soon.
We have seen how the present political alignment in Britain has
developed out of the political and economic circumstances of the years
since 1939. What of the future?
The Conservative government since the end of 1955 has been engaged in
a gigantic political gamble. It has instituted a series of economic
measures to restrict home spending. These measures are highly unpopular
with the new working class from whom the party has obtained surprising
support in recent elections. At the same time the Tory cabinet has not
provided as much relief from taxation as the old middle class, its
strongest supporters, demanded and expected after the electoral triumph
of May 1955. These are calculated political risks. The calculation is
that by the next general election, in 1959 or even 1960, the drive
to expand British exports will have succeeded in establishing a new
prosperity more firmly based than that of the boom years 1954 and 1955.
To attain this objective the Conservative government will have to
perform a feat of political tightrope-walking beyond the aspirations
of ordinary politics. The new prosperity can be achieved successfully,
from the political point of view, only if the measures taken to attain
it please the old middle class without offending Conservative voters in
the new middle class and the new industrial working class. This will
mean budgets in 1957 and 1958 that will relieve financial pressure
upon the first of these groups without alienating the other two, whose
interests are mutually antagonistic. It will mean that Britain's
defense commitments must be reduced and adjusted to the extent that the
savings will cut taxation of the old middle class but not to the extent
that the reduction of defense construction will affect the employment
of either the new middle class or the industrial working class.
This book was completed before the government's course was run. If
its policy succeeds, then Harold Macmillan must be accorded a place
in history not far below that of the greatest workers of political
miracles.
Had there been a general election in the winter of 1956-7, the Labor
Party would have won, although its majority would probably not have
been so large as its enthusiastic tacticians predicted. The party
should be able to appeal to the electorate at the next general election
with greater success than in 1955, providing certain conditions are met.
The big "if" facing the Labor Party concerns not abstruse questions
of socialist dogma but the oldest question in politics: the conflict
between two men. The men are Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party, and Aneurin Bevan.
Nye Bevan remains a major force in British politics. He is the only
prominent politician who is a force in himself, a personality around
which lesser men assemble. Like the young Winston Churchill, he
inspires either love or hate. Untrammeled by the discipline of the
party, he can rally the left wing of the Labor movement. Simultaneously
he can alienate the moderates of the party, the undecided voters,
and the tepid conservatives who had thought it might be time to let
labor "have a go." If the next general-election campaign finds Bevan
clamoring for the extension of nationalization in British industry,
beckoning his countrymen down untrodden social paths, lambasting
Britain's allies, and scoffing at her progress, then the Labor Party
will be defeated.
I have known Aneurin Bevan for many years. For the weal or woe of
Britain, he is a man born to storm and danger. A sudden war, a swift
and violent economic reverse would brighten his star. In a crisis his
confidence, whether that of a born leader or a born charlatan, would
attract the many.
Barring such catastrophes, a reasonable stability in government is to
be expected. The Conservative majority in the House of Commons after
the 1955 election probably was a little larger than is customary in a
nation so evenly divided politically. Despite the rancor aroused by
the Suez crisis, there seem to be reasonable grounds for predicting the
gradual disappearance of Tories of the old type and of the belligerent
Labor leaders surviving from the twenties. The development of a
national outlook by both parties seems probable.
Americans need not be concerned over the fission of the British
political system into a multi-party one capable of providing a
government but incapable of government. Stability means, of course,
that British governments will know their own minds. In the complex,
hair-trigger world of today this is an important factor. It is equally
important in charting the future course of Britain. Nations that know
where they want to go and how they want to go there are not verging on
political senility.
This political stability is vital to Britain in the years of transition
that lie ahead. For it is in British industry that the greatest changes
will take place.
Britain is moving in new directions, economically, politically, and
socially. The base of this movement is industrial--a revolution in
power. The world's most imaginative, extensive, and advanced program
for the production of electricity from nuclear power stations is under
way. This magnificent acceptance of the challenge of the nuclear age is
also an answer to one of the key questions of 1945: how could British
industry expand and British exports thrive if coal yearly became
scarcer and more expensive to mine? The answer is nuclear energy, 5,000
to 6,000 megawatts of it by 1965.
The program for constructing twenty nuclear power stations in Britain
and Northern Ireland is the most spectacular part of the power program.
As coal will be vital to the economy for years to come, more economic
and more efficient mining methods also are regarded as a matter of
national urgency.
Throughout the nation's industrial structure there is an air of purpose
and enthusiasm. Five huge new steel plants will be started in 1957. An
ambitious program of modernizing the railroads and the shipbuilding
industry is well under way. The new industries that have developed
since 1945 and old industries now delivering for the export markets
are pushing British goods throughout the world: radar, radioactive
isotopes, electronic equipment, sleek new jet aircraft, diesel engines,
plastics, detergents, atomic power stations. All are part of Britain's
response to the challenge of change.
To fulfill present hopes, production and productivity must rise,
management must grasp the changed position of Britain in the world.
From the courted, she has become the courter, competing for markets
with Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Such competition
existed in the past, but now, with the cushion of overseas investments
gone, such competition is a true national battle. There is plenty of
evidence that a portion at least of industrial management in Britain
fails to understand these conditions. Such complacency is as dangerous
to the export drive as the unwillingness or inability of the industrial
worker to grasp the export drive's importance to him, to his factory,
to his union, and to his country.
Due emphasis should be given to such failings. But we must not forget
that the British are a great mercantile people, eager and ingenious
traders ready, once they accept its importance, to go to any length of
enterprise to win a market. It is also wise to remember that, although
circumstances have made the British share of the dollar market the
criterion of success, the British do extremely well in a number of
important non-dollar markets.
The attitude of the industrial working class to wage increases is a
factor in the drive to boost the exports on which the nation lives.
The modernization of British industry to meet the requirements of
the nation's economic position, alterations in management and sales
practices, higher production and productivity will not suffice to win
export markets if the wage level in industry continues to rise. A
steady rise will price Britain out of her markets. Should this occur,
the question of whether organized labor is to take kindly to automation
will become academic. The country cannot live without those markets.
Early in September of 1956 when the world was worrying over the Suez
Canal, _The New York Times_ carried a news item from Brighton, the
English seashore resort, that surely was as important to Britain as
anything Premier Nasser or Sir Anthony Eden or Mr. Dulles might say.