‘INTELLECTUAL CANDIDATES’

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28323, 8 July 1957, Page 3

‘INTELLECTUAL CANDIDATES’

Protest By Union Leader

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, July 5.

Too many intellectuals—lawyers, teachers, professional men—were being chosen as Labour candidates in preference to trade union nominees, Sir Thomas Williamson, chariman of the Trades Union- Congress and general secretary of'the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, complained at the mineworkers’ conference.

“We -demand adequate representation in the Commons,” he said. “Some of us have been very disturbed at recent Parliamentary selections. One time, the 800,000strong General and Municipal Workers had 17 Labour members of Parliament. Now they are reduced to three,” he said. “It just is not good enough. The time has come when something should be said on trade union participation in the Labour Party. The trade union movement is the broad base of the Labour Party. It sustains the party.

With 8,000,000 members, probably representing half the population, we demand and will continue to demand, that we have adequate representation in the Commons.” The “Manchester Guardian” Labour correspondent says that this is the first public protest by the unions on the recent tendency for local Labour Parties to nominate non-union representatives in constituencies where unions felt they had a prior right to select a Labour candidate.