Foreign News: The Vegetarians Draw Blood

• Share

With the Labor Government scarcely five months old, Britain's impatient Tories stormed into Commons with a motion of censure. Enthusiastically, Labor picked up the club of its parliamentary majority and knocked the Tories down, 381 to 197 votes.

For an error in timing, little blame attached to Opposition Leader Winston Churchill. Young Tory leaders, anxious to drive home their point that demobilization, trade and housing were being neglected, forced him to premature action. Once in action, he roared like a toothless lion.

Unless Minister of Health Aneurin Bevin mended his ways, Churchill growled, "he would be as great a curse to this country in time of peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war." He called vegetarian Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade "a national disaster," cried that "these ethereal beings [vegetarians] do produce a very great volume of intellectual output with a minimum of working costs in fuel."

The fury of his assault left him wide open for counterblows. Prim Prime Minister Clement Attlee answered in the most effective political speech of his 23 years in the House. Smiled Attlee: "The burden of Mr. Churchill's remarks is this: 'Why, when you are elected to carry out a Socialist program, don't you carry out a Conservative program?'" Churchill sat quietly while the House cheered Attlee.