ATTACK MADE ON CHURCHILL

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23740, 11 September 1942, Page 5

ATTACK MADE ON CHURCHILL

“ POLICIES DEEPLY DISTRUSTED” SPEECH BY INDEPENDENT LABOUR MEMBER (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON. Sept. 9. “If Mr Churchill will indulge in those turgid, wordy, dull, prosaic new chapters of his book he must expect something like what happened yesterday,” said Mr Aneurin Bevan (Independent Labour), in the House of Commons, referring to the collapse of the debate following the Prime Minister’s review of the war. , “If Stalingrad falls and the Russians are driven beyond the Urals, the working class of Britain will be asking why. It will be no use Mr Churchill telling us that military considerations made it impossible to prevent this because, unfortunately, the British people have more confidence in the military sagacity of Marshal Voroshilov and Marshal Timoshenko than in Mr Churchill, and the Russian generals have declared that a second front is a practical military proposition. “Mr Churchill's continuation of office is a major national disaster. He is no longer able to summon the spirit of the British people because he represents policies which they deeply distrust. “At the end of three years of war, all that the mobilisation of the Empire’s resources can do is to preoccupy about 150,000 Germans and Italians in Egypt. The Germans could have been beaten in 1942 and the reason why they have not is that the Government has not the guts to do it. “We are going to face the winter with a most acute coal shortage. Our war production might suffer grievously and the suffering which will arise from the coal shortage will be due to Mr Churchill’s absolute ignorance of the elementary facts of industrial life. “Mr Churchill invited about 50 to 60 representatives of the press to meet him the day before the House of Commons met in secret session on shipping and told them everything. The House of Commons was told the following day. “Mr Churchill is a member of the House of Commons and if he has anything to say he should say it here, not at secret meetings with the press; but he did far more, because at that meeting he railed against representatives of the press for giving his critics so much space in the newspapers. , “I say that this amounts to political intimidation without precedent in the history of Britain, and it is evidence of the increasing paranoia of Mr Churchill’s psychology, for which the docility of the House of Commons is, responsible,”