BRITISH LABOUR POLICY

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25742, 2 March 1949, Page 5

BRITISH LABOUR POLICY

ELECTION PROGRAMME DISCUSSED LEADERS CONFER ON ISLE OF WIGHT (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, February 28. A conference of Cabinet and other Ministers, led by Mr Attlee, and members of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, was held at Shanklin, Isle of Wight, to consider the policy on which Labour’s election programme will be based. The Lord President of the Council (Mr Herbert Morrison) described Shanklin as “a wonderful week-end of comradeship,” and, with the news of the South Hammersmith by-election victory, there was evidently a feeling of great confidence about the outcome of the General Election. It is fairly widely supposed that Mr Morrison has convinced the party’s leaders that they should go to the country with a five-year plan of moderate Socialist expansion, with consolidation and development of the industries already nationalised. Mr Morgan Phillips, the party secretary, went so far as to declare that Labour would lose only nine seats. The conference was, of course, private, but at its conclusion Mr Morrison gave a press conference. He said he could reveal nothing about decisions on what would or would not go into the policy statement, for the reason that no decisions had yet been taken, and that it would be premature to give any indications of -concrete propositions still under consideration. His committee will now again present the draft policy to the national executive, and -it is hoped that the programme will be issued on March 31 and distributed to the constituencies for branches of the Labour Party to deal with it before the Whitsun conference. The document will be debated at the conference, and then become the basis of the programme on which Mr Attlee will go to the country. On the other hand, the week-end was one of introspection for the Conservatives and Conservative-minded newspapers. There seems to be renewed insista nee that the party must do something to establish firmly in the public mind the fact that the Conservatives have an attractive alternative policy to Labour. There also seems sonae acceptance of the idea that manv people still assume, in the words of the “Observer.” that the . Conservatives represent the interests of wealth anH privileges. “The great masses of the poorer voters continue to look noon Labour as ‘our uarty.’ ” said the “Observer,” in a leading article, “and to believe that Labour, even though some ’of its actions may nnt be popular, is far m n xe likelv than Toryism to look after the welfare of the common man.”