Labor Confers

In London's Central Hall, Westminster, the organ played solemn music as the Labor delegates mustered for the Party's annual conference. Behind the platform hung an impressive banner proclaiming "A People's Peace." Crowds of young delegates, many of them in uniform, were eager to define policy and state where Labor stood. A general election, Britain's first in nine years, was in the offing. Labor thought it had a real chance to win.

In five days of vigorous debates the conference: 1) committed itself to a sweeping program to socialize land, banking, transportation, building, fuel, power; 2) demanded Dominion status for India, with immediate release of jailed Indian leaders. Tough talkers from the floor frequently overrode cautious advice from the platform.

But in one matter delegates walked warily. Uppermost in every mind was the thought that the previous wartime coalition Government had not survived the postwar election, that Prime Minister Winston Churchill's recent performance on Greece had probably weakened his following. In framing its policy on Greece, Labor tried to steer a tactful middle course between upholding the Coalition Government and disavowing Churchill. Its resolution demanded an agreement with ELAS, not an ultimatum.

Bevin Explains. Attentively the conference listened to influential, bull-necked Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labor: "The steps which have been taken in Greece are not the decisions of Mr. Churchill. They are the decisions of the Cabinet.. .. Russia undertook the main problem in Rumania. We undertook the main problem in Greece. . . . The British Government cannot abandon its position in the Mediterranean." Disregarding 20 trade-union resolutions denouncing Churchill outright, the conference passed a new one backing the Prime Minister but neatly shifting from Labor shoulders any public odium the Government might incur.

Then the conference proceeded to elect to the Party's powerful executive committee: Dr. Edith Summerskill, Labor's ablest, fightingest woman M.P.; leftish M.P. Aneurin Bevan, Churchill's bitterest Labor critic in Parliament.

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