It was Labour╒s turn last night to have a quarter of an hour on television. Mr. and Mrs. Attlee appeared together acting as host and hostess to Mr. Percy Cudlipp who used to edit the ╥Daily Herald╙ and is now a ╥News Chronicle╙ columnist.
The idea was good. The Attlees appeared as a nice relaxed suburban couple living in an Ideal Home. The fireplace was of rustic brick, the easy chairs were covered in cretonne, and Mr. Cudlipp╒s handsome head appeared against a curtain that looked as if it had been chosen by somebody from the Council of Industrial Design. There were books, flowers, and a pleasant watercolour over the fireplace. In fact, the set was a ╥mock up╙ of Cherry Tree Cottage, the Attlee╒s Buckinghamshire home.
It was not a very lively party. It had not yet warmed up. Most viewers, one imagines, were chiefly interested in Mrs. Attlee. She is a pretty woman and with her silver hair is photogenic enough to be a television professional. The producers of parlour games will have their eye on her after last night╒s performance.
NO CONTROVERSY
Mr. Attlee was exactly as one expected to find him. He sat back, smoked his pipe vigorously, talked quietly and looked confident. A nice, gentle person, the kind of neighbour from whom one can borrow a lawn mower. But a bit tedious. Only when he mentioned education did Mr. Attlee╒s voice become animated. One imagines that he neither won nor lost a single vote last night.
It would have been more interesting if he had pitched into Mr. Harold Macmillan for the pretensions he had advanced on television the previous evening. But the Labour idea seemed to be to avoid controversy, to woo as the Tories had done, the timorous, coy, and political floating voter with his middle-class dislike of robust argument.
Labour╒s first television broadcast was not however a slick professional job, such as the Tories had put on. Mr. Attlee did not use the ╥ad-men╒s╙ baby talk. It was natural speech but the kind of speech which comes naturally only to lifelong Fabians.
The broadcast began with Mrs. Attlee, who was dressed in a dark suit and rows of pearl, telling how she drives her husband from meeting to meeting.
Then Mr. Cudlipp, perhaps too early in the broadcast, put the $64,000 question: ╥Of the two great parties, which is going to work most effectively for peace?╙
Mr. Attlee, however, fumbled this one. Instead of answering ╥Labour of course,╙ he began. ╥There are certain factors common to any party,╙ and went on diffusely about the geographical, historical, and economic approaches with people with whom we did not and probably would never agree.
The next misty answer was concerned, with ╥Asianism,╙ which fortunately Mr. Attlee defined more simply as ╥Asiatic nationalism.╙ ╥The mass of the under-privileged,╙ said Mr. Attlee, now in his summer-school stride, ╥must be brought up in the scale of the standard of living. I think we are more likely than the other side to do that.╙
Mr. Cudlipp is an experienced broadcaster. He must have been in agony. Swiftly he brought the conversation back from the Colombo plan and the economic approach to peace for the four-Power talks and the Tories╒ tardiness in bringing them about. ╥Yes, they have been slow,╙ agreed Mr. Attlee.
It was a vote-winning question which Mr. Cudlipp now tried out ╤ on the length of National Service.
╥I think,╙ said Mr. Attlee, but without an air of conviction, ╥we could reduce that. You have atomic warfare and the hydrogen bomb and it seems to me now is the time when we could have a complete review.╙ The Tory attitude to conscripts, it seemed, was that now they had got them they wanted to keep them. Mr. Cudlipp suggested that the Tories were swayed too readily by the generals. ╥Well, maybe,╙ said Mr. Attlee, not wishing to be unkind.
