INTER-ALLIED LABOUR CONFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 51, 29 August 1917, Page 7

INTER-ALLIED LABOUR CONFERENCE

THE SOCIALIST PROGRAMME

SOME REMARKABLE PROPOSALS.

(AUSTRAUAS-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) ■i LONDON, 28th August.

The Inter-Allied Labour Conference at Westminster to-day and to-morrow is arousing interest. It is' a noteworthy fact that the British Socialist Party and the Independent Labour Party will be represented by delegations out of all pro.■porfcion to their numbers and influence. The comparative weakness of the Socialists is well known in Britain, but Continental Socialists consider that the British Socialists are representative of Labour opinion' in Britain, believing that the majority of the Labour Party are reactionaries controlled by the Government. Hence there is a possibility that the French, Belgian, Italian, and Russian delegates will be mystified and misled. Some of the gacifist proposals are of an amazing character. For instance, four of the -amendments propose that the future of Alsace and Lorraine should be decided by a referendum of the people of .•the two provinces, on the ground that neither Germany nor France has a right to decide the question. . The British Socialist Party amendment proposes also that the peoples of India, Egypt, Ireland, and Algiers should .also l>e free to decide their own course.

A proposal relating ito war indemnities says that there is a common responsibility for the war, and therefore the proposal to throw the cost of reparation on one Power must be abandoned. Reparation must be from a common fund under international control. While there must be recompense for loss and damage to property, the administrators must also accord the working class an equal title to reparation. The pacifist proposals regarding the colonies say that the conference holds that the .peace of the world will not be preserved if one Great Power is debarred from colonial .rights. Here is a curious episode: A memorandum was prepared for the conference welcoming America's intervention on the ground that she has united the Old and Now Worlds in defence' ef the democracy. The Independent Labour delegates propose to delete these references to the United States.

The delegates include M. Thomas (French Minister for Munitions), M. Renaudel (editor of the Paris journal Humanite), M. Jean Longuet (Karl Marx's grandson), >M. van der Velde (Belgian), and M. Boussanoff (a Russian revolutionary exile).

The resolutions will be discussed privately, and only the results of the voting will be issued.