SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 9

SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS

LAST ADDRESS AT UNITED

FRONT MEETING

(Received October 9, 9.30 a.m.)

LONDON, October 8.

Sir Stafford Cripps, who is to address a United Front meeting tonight, has given the Labour Party executive a definite assurance that it will be the last meeting of the type at which he will speak.

Sir Stafford Cripps, M.P., was chairman of the Socialist League which was associated with the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party in a campaign for a United Front by the parties of the Left in Britain. The Labour Party, however, declined to approve the United Front, and took steps to end the affiliation of the Socialist League on the ground of its link with the Communists. Consequently the Socialist League recently decided to dissolve, while protesting against the action of the Labour Party. Sir Stafford Cripps, who became SolicitorGeneral in the Labour Administration of 1930, is the youngest son of Lord Parmoor, the Labour peer, and an eminent barrister. He was ordered by the Labour Party last April to leave the Socialist League or resign. Twice iu recent weeks he has been at odds with the Labour Party on new counts. The first occasion was when, on September 5, he threatened to withhold his support from Labour's new campaign if the party proceeded with its "victimisation of his friends," announcing that Mr. William Mellor, a prominent supporter of the unity movement, had been refused Labour endorsement as a Parliamentary candidate for selection at Stockport, and again, on September 16, in leaving the Labour Crusade Week when it was Under way. This time he was accompanied by Professor Harold Laski and Mr. G. -t. Strauss, M.P., and took action because of the "high-handed action of the national executive of the Labour Party in stating that it does not consider Mr. William Mellor, twice candidate at Enfield, Middlesex, and for nearly five years editor of the "Daily Herald," would make a suitable candidate on behalf of the party."