LABOURS HOPES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 55, 7 March 1939, Page 9

LABOURS HOPES.

DISUNITED PARTY?

Chances At British Election Believed Scant.

CRIPPS* "POPULAR FRONT."

LONDON, March 3.

While Mr. Chamberlain's prospects at a general election are improving, the Labour party's are deteriorating. Many Government supporters continue to urge an immediate election, but Mr. Chamberlain still prefers the autumn. The by-elections show that Labour has not made the slightest headway, but the real anxiety is Sir Stafford Cripps' "Popular Front" campaign. It is daily gaining thousands of Labour adherents. This threatens gravely to split the whole movement. It is evident that if Labour men were to say in public what they are saying privately, the split would already be a fait accompli. There is a prospect that the Cripps campaign may ultimately reduce, and even break, the industrialists' domination, because if the Labour intellectuals, besides the Liberals' so-called progressive elements, rally to Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain could easily return to the old two-party, Tory and Radical, politics. Cripps Supported. The Transport and General Workers' Union, at a meeting, resolved as follows:—"It is our profound belief that the Cripps (Popular Front) memorandum could be made the basis of an immediate combined advance of all progressive parties throughout the country, with the object of overthrowing the pro-Fascist Chamberlain Government."

j "The Observer" thinks that the dismissal of Sir Stafford Cripps from the Labour party has completely demoralised it. Though its leaders profess to treat the differences as being of no account, it says they know that the party's morale is suffering. Conscription Issue. All of this contributes greatly to weaken Labour's standing in the country, and stifles all efforts to achieve a solid front in readiness for the general election. Labour's only hope at a general election is the prospect of voluntary national service failing. Labour believes that it might thus be able to manoeuvre the Government to conscription, in which event it would become a conscription election. However, the Government has persistently declared that there will be no conscription in peacetime. French Labour Disunity. The Lille correspondent of "The Times" says that French trade unions are split on international affairs, particularly the Munich agreement and Spain.

A bitter struggle is going on, he savs, for predominance between the moderates, who abhor political trade unionism, |and the Communists, who want equal representation with the moderates.