GREAT BRITAIN: Contracting Out

A disconsolate crowd of trade union leaders and Labor Party officials trailed out of the crucial debate at Britain's 92nd annual Trade Union Congress on the Isle of Man last week. "It's shattered everything we've built up these last 25 years," mourned one respected leader. "The fundamental honesty of the party's gone," gloomed another.

In one bumbling session, a thousand delegates committed British organized labor to advocacy of neutralism, to unilateral disarmament and to Britain's gradual retirement from existing alliances. Ludicrously enough, they had also voted support for a contradictory resolution endorsing Labor Leader Hugh Gaitskell's June policy statement, which...