LABOUR PARTY AT MARGATE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25206, 10 June 1947, Page 7

LABOUR PARTY AT MARGATE

“ECONOMIST” REVIEWS CONFERENCE MORRISON’S APPEAL TO MIDDLE CLASS (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 9. “The one indisputable fact that emerged from the Labour Party proceedings at Margate is that there will be no General Election before the present Parliament runs out,” says the “Economist” in a review of the conference. “On this assumption, the Government is evidently preparing to use the next two or three years as a breathing space to consolidate its position rather than to push forward with any new schemes. The danger signals of administrative overstrain nave been observed.” The “Economist” notes that the party will make special efforts to gain support in the rural areas and to retain it in marginal areas, and adds: “It is in this sense that Mr Morrison’s speech to the conference, with its rediscovery of the ‘so-called middle class,’ was so pertinent. It is not perhaps so very remarkable that Mr Morrison should have spoken in this sense, since he has always had the sense to see the Labour Party, if it is to survive the test of public opinion at the next election, must ally itself with, and not alienate. the middle class. “What was particularly interesting was that his appeal to employers, managements, and ‘workers by brain’ to co-operate with the Government—his barely-disguised rebuke to the Shinwell school of thought—was so well received by the conference. What Mr Morrison did not say specifically, although he implied if. and Dr. Dalton was rather more specific, was that it is no use appealing to entrepreneurs to co-operate in the production drive while at the same time conducting a campaign against the profit motive.” The “Economist” also says: “Mr Morrison knows that the Labour Party faces an uphill task. The present indications are that it will be beaten at the General Election. That statement is based on evidence that the two major parties are now approximately equal in public esteem and on theprobability that the next two years will be a period of great economic difficulty. “The Labour Party’s chances of reversing the present probabilities depend more than anything else on the success they have in confronting the economic problems of the country and in convincing the middle vote that they are not an exclusive class party. But their attempts to have a coherent policy are obstructed at every turn by the jealous particularism of the unions. And there are very few members of the party who can bear to admit that there has never been, and is not now. a positive majority in th.e country for Socialism. “Only those of them who eannot control their tongues will make the mistake that Mr Shinwell, Dr. Dalton, and Mr Aneurin Bevan make of deliberately infuriating the middle class. But very few of them will be able to bring themselves actual! v to do anythink helnful for the middle class or for the private enterprise, profit-earn-ing system by which it earns its daily bread.”