Mr. Christopher Mayhew, on whom so embarrassing a floodlight has
been turned in the past week, is not only one of the Labour Party's intellectuals but one of its (fairly numerous) men of means. Aged thirty-three, and unmarried, he is the son of Sir Basil Mayhew, a director of J. J. Colman and of Reckitt and Colman. He was educated at the Prime Minister's old school, Haileybury, and Christ Church, and has impressed the House of Commons with both his ability and his discretion ; no Minister more often wards off an awkward supplementary with the decisive " That is another ques- tion." A great many people will be sorry that he should be in any trouble at all, and it is clear that the speech in which one unfortunate sentence occurred was as a whole an able performance, which consti- tuted an effective contribution to the United Nations Economic and Social Council where it was made. When the Soviet delegate accuses Britain, like other Western European countries, of becoming a mere dependency of the United States there is a strong temptation to go a little beyond the facts and say " So far from that, we are pretty well on our own feet already." Mr. Mayhew said little more, and he was apparently not referring to Marshall Aid.
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