The Art of the Practical

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Division of Labor? With the mandate he now has, Macmillan is not likely to feel timid about making whatever changes he wants in his new Cabinet (see box). But the most sweeping political changes produced by last week's election are likely to be in the Labor Party. For Labor, Macmillan's triumph was a defeat so harsh and decisive that it posed a real question as to whether the party could survive in its present form. Hard as Hugh Gaitskell had fought to moderate the dated dogmas of socialism, the Labor Party had not been able to shake off the unpopular name of nationalization, the unhappy memory of postwar austerity or the unforgiving fetters of narrow trade union interests.

"We still represent nearly half the nation," cried Gaitskell doggedly after the election. "We shall attack again and again until we win." This was brave talk, but if Hugh Gaitskell continued to pursue his policy of moderation, he would run a real risk of driving Labor's doctrinaire left wing into secession from the party. Already Aneurin Bevan. onetime leader of the Labor left wing, was ominously proclaiming: "We lost because our policy measured up too closely to Macmillan's. Now there will be some changes." What Bevan did not seem to appreciate was that if the changes consisted of a return to that oldtime socialist religion, Labor's chances of winning any British election in the foreseeable future would plummet still further.

The Mountaineer. For Washington, Macmillan's victory was unalloyed good news; U.S. officials had not been looking forward to bickering with Nye Bevan, Labor's candidate for Foreign Secretary, over recognition of Red China or Central European disengagement. And they found no cause for dismay in the fact that Macmillan's eyes were evidently fixed as intently as ever on the summit. ("He's a bug on it," said one British official.) Optimistically, Washington took the view that now Dwight Eisenhower was assured of a strong partner within the Atlantic alliance to help carry through his effort to relax East-West tensions.

For Britain the decisive election verdict ended, for all practical purposes, the threat of renationalization of the steel industry, and opened the way for a new flow of capital into the United Kingdom, already the No. 1 country in Europe for U.S. investment. The Tory sweep also cleared the decks for the economic expansion that will have to come if Britain, whose strength derives from trade, is to regain from Germany its place as the world's second trading nation. Next spring's budget is apt to include a modest income-tax cut and other fiscal relaxations that will enable businessmen to boost output.