Its membership is impressive. The unions have a total membership of 9,461,000, of which 8,088,000 are affiliated with the TUC--this in a population of just over 50,000,000. The TUC's power is equally impressive. It is recognized by the government as the principal channel for consultation between the ministries and organized labor on matters affecting the interests of employees generally. This power is not unchallenged. One of the disruptive situations in the Labor movement today is the restlessness of a number of constituency labor parties under the authority of the TUC. The constituency labor parties are the local organizations in the parliamentary constituencies or divisions. A number of them are and have been well to the left of the official leadership of the party. In them Aneurin Bevan finds his chief support for the rebellion he has waged intermittently against the leadership during the last five years. Another source of anxiety to the TUC is the unwillingness of some unions--mostly those infiltrated by the Communists--to follow its instructions in industrial disputes. The TUC leaders with whom I have talked regard the strike weapon as the hydrogen bomb in labor's armory. They oppose its indiscriminate use. But in a large number of cases they have been unable to prevent its use. The labor movement represents generally the industrial urban working class in Britain. But it is no longer an industrial urban working-class party. The modern movement relies on other sections of the population for both leaders and votes. Just as there are working-class districts that vote Tory in election after election, so are there middle-class groups who vote Labor. Horny-handed sons of toil still rank among the party's leading politicians, but the post-war years have seen a steady increase in two other types. One is the union officer, whose acquaintance with physical labor is often somewhat limited. The other is the product of a middle-class home, a public-school education, and an important job in the wartime civil service. Hugh Gaitskell, the present leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, is a notable example of this second group. The party still includes intellectuals treading circumspectly in the footprints left by the sainted Sydney and Beatrice Webb. The intellectuals, perhaps in search of protective coloring, often assume a manner more rough-hewn than the latest recruit from the coal face. Incidentally, it was my impression that the defeat of 1955 shook the intellectuals a good deal more than the practical politicians. They departed, as is their custom, into long, gloomy analyses of the reasons for the defeat. They, too, may have been out of touch with the people.