LABOUR LEADERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1940, Page 6

LABOUR LEADERS

TO THE AID OF BRITAIN

NEW MEMBERS OF CABINET

BEVIN AND MORRISON

The Labour Party's additions to Britain's revised Cabinet —Mr.. Ernest Bevin and Mr. Herbert Morrison—appointed as Secretaries of Labour and Supply, are men ..who have done tremendous things for, British Labour. Both have won nationwide reputations, wrote the London correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor" recently. Mr. Bevin stands to the British public as one of the staunchest, most levelheaded, and most resolute leaders of the trade unions. His career is typical of so many other British trade union leaders during the past halfcentury. . ■ Mr. Bevin grew up on a farm at Winsford, in Somerset. From there he moved to Bristol where he worked as van driver and took a keen interest in locai trade unionism. He became <a paid official in the Dockers' Union and rose in office until in 1922, when this union was transformed into the Great Transport and General Workers' Union, Mr. Bevin was appointed general secretary. ' ; Mr. Bevin's work in trade unionism and Labour generally received recognition when he was elected president of the General Council of the Trade Union Congress for the year 1937. His masterly skill .in negotiation and r a genius for reaching the heart of a problem through masses of bewildering detail showed themselves in his presentation of the dockers' case in the famous Shaw inquiry of 1920. This won him title of "Dockers' K.C." WORKED FOR NATION. But Mr. Bevin 'not only has given of his services and talent to his own trade union and to the whole Labour movement, but also to the national life of Britain. His experience with labour in various industries has enabled him to speak authoritatively. In the wider national field he has served on many committees of inquiry dealing with reconstruction, adult education, and on courts of arbitration. Mr. Bevin was a member of the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry as well as of the British Government Industrial Commission to the United States: In 1926. Mr. Bevin has great powers of leadership, constructive ability, and is skilful as a negotiator as well as being j a good orator. A man of strong character and firm conviction, he always has shown himself a determined fighter. Often he has had to fight alone, but •his individualism always has been subservient to democratic principles so that he always has remained true to majority decisions even though violently opposed to them in earlier discussion. Such individualism, combined with the energy and speed with which he works, results in getting things done, but naturally also leads to criticism that he is "in too much of a hurry.'" Mr. Bevin has been an outspoken critic of the Chamberlain Government, condemning what he calls its "obstruction, lack of drive, absence of imagination, arid kind of complaicency." Arid today there is a strong feeling that Mr. Bevin can. perform important services not simply in trade unionism or Labour but in the National Government. TRIBUTE TO MR. MORRISON. "Herbert Morrison has shown what he can do in ruling a great city. In the future he will show what he can do in ruling a great country." This high tribute paid by a leader of the Labour Party indicates both the great work which Mr. Morrison already has done as chairman of the London County Council and also the hopes centred in him as a national leader. Mr. Morrison hails from Hoxton, a poor East London district, son of a London "bobby" and housemaid. All the early education he received was at elementary school which he soon had to leave to become a grocer's as-, sistant, telephone operator, arid then secretary of London's first Labour Party at a salary of £1 a week. This was the first rung on the political ladder, and he has continued to climb ever since. In 1920, he became Mayor of Hackney, member of Parliament in 1923, Transport Minister in Ramsay Mac Donald's second Administration, and, in 1934, first Socialist leader of the London County Council. Mr. Morrison's work on this great local administrative body has been marked by persistent courage and constructive achievement. What his predecessors had failed to achieve through lack of initiative and unity among themselves, he boldly carried through. A leading example of this was the decision to rebuild: Waterloo Bridge, which had ■ been crumbling for years but concerning which no action^ had been taken. Outstanding on the social side are also his large-scale attack upon some of London's worst slums through the rebuilding on large areas in poorer districts and establishment of a "green belt" of parks, playing fields, and open spaces around the metropolis. LONDON'S TRANSPORT. In the administrative field, the unification of London's diverse transport services under «public ownership is an outstanding achicvcrr.cr.t due to his initiative. j Mr. Morrison is a great admirer of the Fabian Socialist ideas of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and his achievements in local affairs resulted mainly from application of their theories. He is a great worker, in fact, it might be said that he works where he lives. As shop assistant in his early days he "lived in" and since the outbreak of the war he has lived mainly at County Hall, London County Council headquarters. His faith in democratic ideals, aided by outstanding ability, has enabled him "always to leave a job biggerl than he found it." He knows how to enlist the enthusiasm of experts and is spectacular in action if not in statement. His energy and drive are such that he can get things done. Without such energy he would himself have been unable to occupy-such outstanding positions as a front-bench Parliamen-1 tarian, London County Council leader, and secretary of the London Labour Party, as well as being a prolific public speaker and writer. Frank and outspoken, his utterances on the war have not lacked force and insight. "If we are fighting only to end the Nazi threat to our future, we shall fall in the mire," he recently declared. "Roots of Nazism are not all to be found in ... Prussian temperament. Roots of war lie deep in our present way of living and we have the chance to dig some of them out." STRENGTH AT THE POLLS. As a debater and propagandist, he showed his strength at the last London County Council election when a ; large section of the Press and speakers ! like then Prime Minister Baldwin i exerted all efforts to defeat Labour lin the metropolis.

Mr. Morrison's reply was a careful marshalling of facts and a new programme, not promises. One of the finest tributes paid to him was that of the late Lord Haldane who declared Mr. Morrison "has a cool head. In a crisis, he knows his own mind. His administration is competent, clean, and effective. He won't let us down."

Mr. Morrison's views on Hitlerism are as determined as those on social and economic questions and there is little doubt but that his' energy and drive are qualities which many in the nation as well as in the Labour Party consider valuable assets in winning the present war.