Troubles Due for New British Gov't, Says Beer

"I don't know how either party can reconcile the promises of increasing welfare and the necessity for rearmament in the face of the latest economic crisis," said Samuel Beer, Associate Professor of Government, referring to the coming British elections. "Tories are in the same boat as Labor on this--for example where Labor is now promising 300,000 new houses, the Tories are promising to build 300,000. Whichever party wins will have a tough time if the dollar shortage continues."

This year's economic crisis is the worst since the war. Imports are already 47.5% ahead of 1950 and rearmament is cutting down exports. The third quarter dollar gap amounts to $638,000,000 and there are no new loans or Marshall money to relieve this. Beer doesn't think that the doom of economic catastrophe is inevitable. Rather, he figures on another American loan.

Professor Beer said he would probably vote Labor, if he were a Britisher, because of the economic crisis. "Labor unions has shown restraint under a labor government because it is their government. Naturally this would not follow under the Conservatives."

Aneurin Bevan's split with the Labor leadership over last years' budget would not make much of a difference, according to Beer. U. S. observers were upset by the fact that four Bevan men were recently elected to the Party's seven-man National Executive Committee at the Scarborough Conference, but Beer discounts this. "These seven seats only represent 770,000 people out of the 5,500,000 Labor Party members." He believes that the power shifts within the Executive Committee does not represent a rank-and-file shift away from the Attlee leadership. Despite the fact that Bevan's demand for less spending on rearmament and more on social welfare is tempting to workers, Bevan has succeeded in alienating many of the trade unions--even the radical mine workers have come out against him. According to Beer, "the only real chance for Bevan's left-wing group to gain power would be if Labor was to refuse wage increases to unions."

Churchill, if he won, would not be enough to offset the unions' inevitable demand for higher wages; Beer does not think he could unify-the country as he did during World War II. The Conservative leader has offered to take Laborites into his cabinet--if he is elected--but Beer figures that Labor "might want the Conservatives alone to take the blame for the rough winter coming up." More-over, this is an old Churchill tactic, and Beer doubts very much that Labor would join up, in any case. "Even in 1940 it took Munich and Hitler on the march to work up the British into a fighting mood."

When asked if a Tory victory could be compared to the conservative trend in the U. S. elections last year, Professor Beer said he doubted it, "because we did not follow the socialistic pattern that occurred in European countries right after the war. In fact our 1946 election was conservative, therefore it is not likely that a swing to the right would necessarily take place both here and in England at the same time."