Chubby Orator

Potbellied and dripping, the new chairman of the Tory Party rose from Bright on's chill October sea last week and fired new hope in a Tory Party gathered for its annual conference and glumly reflecting on a dozen by-election setbacks since Suez. Chubby, puckish Viscount Hailsham, 50, only three weeks in office, delighted the delegates with his handshaking zeal, astounded them as he splashed into the ocean for early morning dips, moved them with shamelessly orotund oratory. "Britain is still recognizably a lion among nations," he roared. "I do not believe that we have been spared in a generation from so many and great dangers to go down now in a welter of little men and mean measures."

Happy Memories. "The end of the Conservative Party" said Hailsham roundly, "is not merely the preservation of political institutions, though we are devoted to them, or an economic system of free enterprise, though we believe in it.

The end of the Conservative Party is the conservation of that deposit of faith, that living experience which came here with Columba and Augustine 14 centuries ago, and expressed itself in a living society, a nation nurtured in honor, compassion and love, dedicated to endless adventure in the pursuit pf liberty under law."

The speaker's hunched stoop punctuated by the backthrust of head, the sense that great statements might be made without pomposity or apology, the rolling periods, all inevitably evoked memories of Conservatism's greatest living orator, Winston Churchill. Cheers grew even louder when Hailsham hauled round and delivered a slashing attack on Labor's unionists' "spending spree" "demands without programs and restraint" as trade the greatest threats in the fight against inflation, thundered: "I believe they would drive the qualified, the young and the vigorous to migrate, and leave the aged at home deprived of their savings by a depreciated currency to meditate at leisure upon the loss of British freedom and greatness."

Bit of Offal. When the conference chair man rang a bell to signal the end of his speech, Hailsham ebulliently seized it, crying: "Ring it much more loudly! Let it ring for victory!" As 4,000 Tories came to their feet cheering, he slowed it to a solemn pace, saying: "Toll it solemnly.

and let us say to the Labor Party, seek not to inquire for whom the bell tolls."

Then, swinging it high over his head, he shouted: "It tolls for thee!" The Tories laughed and shouted approval.

For Britain's ruling Conservatives the overriding issue clearly continued to be the control of the country's climbing inflation. Prime Minister Macmillan, recalling "how eagerly we queued for a bit of off-ration offal" during "six years of Socialist restriction," proclaimed that the difference was that Conservatives believed the state was made for man and not man for the state.

The emergency boost of the bank rate had brought Tories to their lowest ebb in national polls (though the pound steadied last week -- see BUSINESS). Macmillan, impressive in the House of Commons, has proved conspicuously unable to make the austere Tory program convincing to the public. Eloquent Viscount Hailsham, the Tories told themselves as they left Brighton, was just what the party needed.

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