Foreign News: A Rude Word

Two years ago campaigning Socialists called Winston Churchill a warmonger, and it rankled. Last week campaigning Tories seized on the Berlin Conference as proof that the charge was false—and also showed that in Britain wishful thinking about Russian intentions is not confined to Bevanites. The keynoter was handsome Sir David Eccles who, as Tory Minister of Works, got himself knighted for his coronation arrangements. Cried Eccles: "If it wasn't for [Churchill], there wouldn't be any talk with the Russians. You can feel the old man prodding those Americans, 'Get on with it, get on with it.' Old he may be, but who cares? He's the only person who has kicked the Americans into the conference room—that's a rude word, I take it back—persuaded the Americans into the conference room."

But it was not so much Eccles' rude word as the Conservatives' record of providing better living and lower taxes that won by-elections for them last week in the port town of Harwich and in the dock and milling city of Hull in Yorkshire. In both they polled a higher percentage of the total vote than at the 1951 election. In Hull the gain was a solid 3.65%. In 27 by-elections since the general election in 1951 that returned them to power, the Tories have held all their own seats (15) and won one hitherto-safe Labor seat—the first time in 29 years that a government has taken a seat from the opposition in a by-election. The record, said London's Econ omist judiciously, "is something of a triumph" for Churchill's government.