A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
MISS EL UNE 311A ION'S television programme on behalf of the Labour Party last week was very well received by the press and no doubt it was a good programme. Miss Burton exhibited a lot of old clothes and things. This had nothing to do with the decline of the jumble sale nor was Miss Burton playing charades. Old clothes, apparently, are now the very stuff of Politics. It is always irritating to be sold shoddy goods and Complaints about them should be encouraged. It may even be that a story about a particular pair of shoes wearing out after be few days is of great interest. But it does not seem to me to be very significant or even very political. Tea, on the ether hand, is obviously very political indeed. On the subject of tea and its rise in price the Labour Party was more united in the House of Commons on Monday than it has been for years. This seems to me to be an excellent thing. Socialist Commen- tarY, which Dr. Hill quoted in the House, may say that the Profits the tea companies are making do little more than offset the bad years of two or three years ago, that these profits are not the major factor in the rise in price and that there is a world shortage of tea. But Mr. Attlee must not worry about that. If he can unite the Labour Party on the question of tea, then he can' stop trying to unite it by his Left-wing pronouncements On Formosa. If tea can do this, then all of us, even a non-tea- drinker like myself, will be gfateful to it.
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