Harmless Hats
No doubt about it: the men and women crammed into that inelegant pavilion under the Great Orme gave the strongest impression tOt merely of unity (that is easy enough for theme and even on the European issue it was clear enough from the beginning that the Govern- ment's policy would be heavily endorsed), "t also of a freshly urgent insistence on seeing the world through enlightened spectacles. This was striking enough, but more striking to me was the readiness of the journalists there to take Tories en masse at their new face value. This' it should be observed, is something of a change l. Even the Tory women's hats seemed to be simply hats, without their old mystic power to wound; and although the place blossomed with %hi' shirt-fronts after dusk, something that was solve: how offensive in the past seemed now to have gone out of Tory dinner-jackets. (This must some measure of the galloping embourgeoiseine of Britain.) If the party can sell itself as well to the electorate, its workers can go on owl their chickens as eupeptically as they were d°100. during the last day and a half at Llanddno, In the smoky hours after dinner the conversto tion everywhere turned monotonously back Mr. Gaitskell. 'How on earth will he get out of it?' was the question, and the echo that answered 'how?' seemed to me to have the raucously derisive note of Llandudno's large and disrespectful gulls.
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