UNITED FRONT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 34, 10 February 1937, Page 16

UNITED FRONT.

BRITISH RADICALS. CRIPPS, MAXTON, POLLITT. AGREES ON SPANISH ISSUE. (By G. S. COX and J. A. MULGAN.) (Special.—By Air Mall.) LONDON, January 24. Britain has seen this week a political move which may be an important step in the development of a United Front movement such as carried M. Blum to power in France and brought the Liberals, Socialists and Communists into office in Spain. Sir« Stafford Cripps, chairman of the Socialist League, Mr. James Maxton, head of the 1.L.P., and Mr. Harry Pollitt, leader of the Communist have agreed to join forces for a combined propaganda campaign. ' The Socialist League is a body of left wing Socialists inside the Labour party. Its object is to do propaganda for socialism, not merely for' the' more conservative ideals of the trades unions who form the bulk (and hold the purse strings) of the Labour movement. It was formed in 1932, when the I.L.P. —Independent Labour party —split away from the Labour movement in disgust at its mildness. The Communist party, the official representative of the Third International in Britain, left the Labour party soon after the war. For months it has been trying to coax the Labour party intent United . Front of all left wing and liberal movements to work for the defeat of the National Government. Cripps' Extreme Policies.

Sir Stafford Cripps has been a politician only for eight years, since he became Solicitor-General in the 1920 Labour Administration. Tall, bespectacled, neatly dressed, he is a prominent barrister, a specialist in company and eccleliastical law. He is wealthy, and owns a country house in Gloucestershire, where he raises fat cattle. Ever since 1931 he has been the enfant tetrible .of the', Labour movement. He made jan outspoken attack on the conservative influence of Buckingham Palace—in days before the Royal family became the centre of everyone's gossip. He talked of appropriating property without compensation. He said that J t would not be a bad tiling for the British workman if Germany defeated this country in another war. Every one of these utterances Transport Houst—tha seat of the Labour party chiefs—has repudiated. Now he is on tlfe point of being expelled from the party. For worse than the National Government, the trades union chiefs hate the Communists, and refuse to co-operate with them.

Sir Stafford Cripps is the youngest son of Lord Parmoor, also a famous ecclesiastical lawyer, and one of the first Labour Lords. Ee has three brothers, one a don at Oxford, the other a wealthy Liverpool shipowner, the third the chairman of a fashionable hairdresser's and perfumer's in Bond Street. Sir Stafford is a brilliant speaker, and an essentially sincere man. His socialism is his religion. But it is doubtful if he knows enough about the rough and ready sides to be more than the able lieutenant of a more broadly experienced man. Mr. Maxton, with his long black lock of hair, is in appearance the intellectual socialist of fiction. But he is more than that. ' A Scottish school teacher by origin, he is a fiery orator and a determined man. In the House of Commons he is very popular, but he, too, seems to lack the organising ability and the clear-sightedness to be a great leader. The British workers, just like the British middle and upper classes, distrust extraordinary-looking men. Ordinary enough in appearance is blunt, Lancashire J born Harry Pollitt, the self-educated mill hand, who leads the British Communists. He is in his early forties, looks completely uqjike a revolutionary, and lives in a quiet north London suburb with his wife and two young children. But he seems to lack the fire of leadership. Feeling' About Spain. Spain is the issue which has brought these three men and their parties together. It is surprising how wide and deep feeling about Spain is spread throughout the British working class. Th •}" follow the struggle from day to day with extraordinary thoroughness. Many of them dislike the way the British policy of lion-intervention is playing into General Franco's hands. And since the official Labour- party itself is in practice behind the Government —though it has dissociated itself from non-intervention in theory—these people are beginning to lend a more kindly ear to Communist propaganda. It is no longer unusual in a bus or train to see a man reading the "Daily Worker." Scores of young people from the middle class, as well as the working class, who a year ago would have joined the Labour party, are now Communists. Their influence remains small, but it is growing. That ii u fact no one watching the British scene to-day can afford to overlook. Goering and Mussolini. Meanwhile in Rome General Goering and Signor Mussolini have had long conversations, chiefly, it is certain, over the future of Spain. So far as they are concerned, there is to be only one future for Spain. The conversations were to decide the steps by which this can be achieved. There is very little likelihood of Germany and Italy withdrawing from the peninsula. They would not dare withdraw, for their prestige at home and abroad would suffer irremediably. And because they are making their people give up butter so as to have guns—and prestige—they cannot allow this to happen. Because of this the danger remains of the Spanish civil war spreading in time into a European conflict. If Germany and Italy were to withdraw, the Spanish Government would win in a few months. They declare with truth that they have won twice already—once in July," before General Franco got German and Italian 'planes to ferry his Moors across from Morocco, and again in December before he appealed to Herr Hitler for troops to replace the Moors mown down before Madrid. But when Germany and Italv go in further, the risk of France porting Madrid grows, and Europe w : ll have to face yet another crisis.