A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
R. BEVAN'S political broadcast last Saturday—his first—had been awaited with some curiosity. Would it be the torrential and provocative Nye of the
House of Commons ? Not at all. A different technique— of roaring as gently as any sucking dove—had evidently been studied. As a result the manner, and much of the matter, was good—possibly all the matter, from a party point of view. But too much forgetfulness, or ignorance, in listeners was assumed. Not everyone would realise, but some might, as the Minister of Labour dwelt on his party's housing record, that a Tory Government in the years befor:. the war was building 300,000 houses a year where Labour is building 200,000 in the face of a greater need ; or that the Girdwood Committee had reported that in the building industry it takes three men today to do the work that two did before the war. And when Mr. Bevan asserted twice, for the sake of emphasis, that there were 2} million unemployed (the actual figure was 2,159,000) in 1934, there was no one to whisper into the microphone that the fruit of the Labour Government of
1929-31 was 2,650,000. There was, however, someone by my own fireside who. when the Minister claimed that there was enough for everyone today, observed mildly and monosyllabically " Meat." A lot of little things get overlooked by party political broadcasters.
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