GREAT BRITAIN: Oh, Ramsay, Dear

• Share

(2 of 2)

"Bolshevism Run Mad," Bitterest in the fight was Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden who has "retired from the House of Commons," was not campaigning last week, but poured the bile and venom of his scorn gratuitously on the head of his former friend & colleague Arthur Henderson, late Foreign Secretary in the MacDonald Cabinet, now leader of the Labor Party.

Flaying Mr. Henderson's recently announced Labor platform (TIME, Oct. 19) as "the most fantastic and impractical ever," Slasher Snowden attacked & summarized it thus: "All derelict industries are to.be taken over by the state and the taxpayers are to shoulder the losses. Banks and financial houses are to be placed under national ownership and control. Your investments are to be ordered by some board, and your foreign investments are to be mobilized to finance this madcap policy. This is not Socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad."

Mild Mr. Henderson, who has no stomach for some of the "Bolshevism" which extremists in his Party have made him swallow, campaigned bleatingly last week, dazzled Burnley audiences with an account of how the League chose him (when British Foreign Secretary) as Chairman of the World Disarmament Conference that will meet next February (TIME, June i).

"I was appointed to that position in a personal capacity," said Mr. Henderson. He vowed he will not surrender the plum, added enticingly, "It rests with your electors of Burnley whether I shall preside as your representative."

Cut 6 Dried, In The City, London's "Wall Street," quiet confidence existed all week that the National Government of Prime Minister MacDonald will return to Parliament with a strong majority (perhaps 150) of Conservatives, "National Liberals" and "National Laborites."

The City's prediction was based on the fact that this year Labor candidates in 444 constituencies out of the entire 615 will have a straight fight against a single ("Nationalist") opponent who will receive all non-Labor and anti-Labor votes. Two years ago, when Labor, barely "won the election (TIME, June 10, 1929), one-third of all Labor candidates were victorious for no other reason than that each had two or more opponents who cut each other's throats. This year such throat- cutting has been reduced to a scientific minimum by broad agreement among all parties supporting the National Government not to run rival candidates (though they did this in a few cases).

So cut & dried seemed the probable result last week that Britons who hoped for a Labor victory were forced to paint a lurid picture: they saw the vast grey host of the unemployed, the discontented and Depression-ridden rising in a tidal wave of dumb resentment, sweeping "Uncle Arthur" Henderson on to glorious Victory and distasteful Bolshevism.