Victory For Attlee Seen

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27471, 4 October 1954, Page 11

Victory For Attlee Seen

LONDON, October 1. The Labour Party ended its fiftythird annual conference at Scarborough, Yorkshire, today, with Mr Attlee, its leader, emerging the victor from a power struggle with the fiery Left-winger, Mr Aneurin Bevan, and his adherents. The official Labour leaders entered the conference fearing defeat on the critical issue —their support for West German rearmament—which the Bevanites and some other sections of the party violently oppose. But the leaders departed with conference backing, for the official policies on Germany, and also South-east Asia, and with Mr Bevan in temporary eclipse after losing his long-held place ln ,th e party’s inner councils. Many Socialists think that Mr Attlee a nd his lieutenants have grounds for relief at the outcome of the conference. At one sweep it has removed the immediate and long-standing embarrassment of the Bevan-headed challenge in its inner councils and saved them feat” 3 humiliating foreign policy deThis year’s conference might as well have ended on Wednesday, for all the punch went out of it when German rearmament, the S.E.A.T.O. issue, and the Bevan emotional crisis had been disposed of. Today the leaders sidestepped widespread rank and file demands for cuts in the present two-year period of military conscription. The National Executive appealed for more tune to consider the issue and, without a vote* the conference agreed to remit various trade union and local Labour Party resolutions on the issue to the executive.