Tory Traumas

In the week following Harold Macmillian's retirement, Lord Home was everyone's second choice. While R. A. B. Butler and Lord Hailsham split bitterly in quest of the Prime Ministership, Home waited patiently for a deadlock, hoping for the appointment as a compromise candidate. Both the deadlock and the appointment came, but the compromise was only illusory. In seeking to resolve the Butler-Hailsham conflict with Home, unflappable Mac inadvertently produced nothing short of a party revolt.

After holding out for a full day, both the losers reluctantly accepted posts in the new cabinet. Hailsham in his old job as Minister for Science and Butler as Foreign Secretary. More important, two of the party's progressive leaders were so incensed at the selection that they refused to remain in the government. The loss of Iain Macleod, co-chairman of the Tory Party, and of Health Minister Enoch Powell is a scar that no amount of verbal veneer can conceal.

Besides splitting the party, the process of selection seemed to verify the Laborite charge that Conservatives really are anachronistic Tory gentlemen. Unlike their Labor opponents, who elect their leaders, the Tories have no formal method of selection: Instead, senior ministers take delicate soundings within the party to arrive at the "proper consensus." It must have rankled Rab Butler that the "consensus" decided on the aristocratic Home while a nation-wide Gallup poll found Butler to be as strong a Prime Ministerial candidate as Labor's Harold Wilson.

As party leader, Lord Home, now the commoner Sir Alec Douglass-Home, must restore party unity and erase the Tory image of effete aristocrats trying to preserve as much of the present as possible. To do this Sir Alec has retained Reginald Maudling as Chancellor of the Exchequer and appointed Edward Heath Secretary of State for Industry, Trade, and Regional Development. The youth and energy of these men will supposedly demonstrate that modern conservatism is the party's keynote. But the absence of Macleod and Powell will cast doubt on the progressive bent of the Conservatives until a solid performance can prove otherwise. The Tory dilemma is lack of time; most observers feel that Home will call for an election in June.

But even if Home is able to unify his party and recast its image, the Conservatives will have a rough go of it in next year's election. For the first time in twelve years, Labor will go to the polls unhampered by intra-party strife. Since he took over the leadership after Hugh Gaitskell's death, Harold Wilson has maneuvered to unite a party bitterly split on the question of succession. Last month, at the Labor convention in Scarborough, he succeeded. His keynote address was exuberantly acclaimed by delegates, and his persistent rival, Deputy Leader George Brown, gave a now-is-the-time-for-all-good-men-to-come-to-the-aid-of-the-party speech on Wilson's behalf.

Moreover, as The Economist has noted, Wilson has been busily remaking Labor's image by "exchanging the old cloth cap for a new white coat." Hoping to effect socialism through science, he has abandoned plans to nationalize older utilities in order to concentrate on new industries created by scientific technology. A scientific revival, he feels, can provide the answers to the social, economic, and industrial problems of the sixties.

In contrast to this broad program, past Conservative policies seem a bit pallid. Christine Keeler is a symbol of Tory difficulties that are more than skin deep. After an impressive electoral mandate in 1959, Macmillan's government immediately began to stumble. His policy of independence for British possessions in Africa alienated rightist members of his party. Then the U-2 debacle obliterated his hopes for a British inspired Soviet-American detente, and the election of John F. Kennedy encouraged the press to portray him as the walrus-like vestige of a less-enlightened age. Finally, within the last year, the Tories have been embarrassed by the Skybolt fudge and DeGaulle's rebuff of England's application for entrance into the Common Market.

Prestige Renovation

Labor's strategy will be to play up these failures and decry foreign policy as the means of renovating Britain's prestige. Defense and foreign policy have been almost totally absent from their campaign verbiage, which emphasizes the need for rejuvenation at home. Tory strategists, however, believe the British voter is deeply concerned with prestige from military power and success in foreign affairs and will respond to the leadership of ex-Foreign Secretary Home.

Ironically, for all their emphasis on foreign affairs, the Tories may be saved by the recent economic upsurge, which could be the palliative necessary to prevent a wide-spread voter revolt. But statistics are hardly encouraging. A recent Daily Telegraph Gallup poll reported that Labor led the Conservatives by 9 1/2 percentage points. And the disastrous Tory record in by-elections was continued last week when they absorbed a surprisingly large defeat at Luton. As an industrial town with full employment and considerable prosperity, Luton typifies more than a hundred constituencies which the Tories win to retain power. For the past month, the Conservatives have been more concerned with personalities than policies. But it probably does not matter. Beleagued by energetic Laborites and bedeviled by party disunity, the Tories, after more than a decade in power, face defeat in 1964.