POSSIBLE SCHISM

Evening Star, Issue 25699, 24 January 1946, Page 7

POSSIBLE SCHISM

BRITISH LABOUR PARTY POWERFUL GROUP HAS MOSCOW LEANINGS (From Our Correspondent.) . (By Air Mail.) LONDON, January 10. News which reaches oversea readers about the political situation here at Home must be a little puzzling, if not actually misleading. Things are not by any means what they seem and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that our own newspapers present an altogether false" impression of the trend of things. This applies to Opposition papers even to a greater extent perhaps than to the Government's own organs, for the latter, as might be expected, give more or less slavish support to the Labour Government. In the case of Unionist organs of public opinion I would not go so far as to

say' that teey are willing to wound but afraid to strike. The feeling by which they are animated is that the country at the General Election voted the Labour Party into power, and, that being so, the Labour Government should at any rate be given a fair trial. There is great impatience at the slow rate of demobilisation, the continuance of control arid the failure to build new houses. But on the bigger question of nationalisation the Government has not met with anything like the violent opposition that was expected. BACK TO COALITION? It follows that if there is to be disruption it will come from within the ranks of the Labour Party, and I reflect the opinion of a great many well-informed people in suggesting that this process of internal combustion may manifest itself very much earlier than most people imagine. Even one of Mr Attlee's own Cabinet colleagues agreed with me so recently as a few days ago that it was quite on the cards that we might see Labour overthrown in the course of the next few months and witness a reversion to Coalition government. ' In that case nothing is'more probable than that Churchill might come back into office once more. More than one circumstance might conduce to such a revolution. Probably the first would be the schism which already manifests itself in the Labour ranks. Half the party is solidly behind Mr Attlee and what may be termed the intellectuals of the party. But there is another group that is powerful, though not- as yet excessively vocal, which is inclined to look to Moscow for its principles, and would like to see legislative measures introduced more nearly aligned to those of the Soviet. WATCH INDIA. At present this group lacks a leader. It may find one perhaps, in some disgruntled Cabinet Minister who, having made a failure of things in his own department, may take his courage in both hands, provoke a quarrel with the Prime Minister, and go out into the desert with the intention of creating a solid Labour bloc against the Government intellectuals.. Such a man might be Mr Aneurin Bevan. Through his inability to get houses built he is the outstanding failure of the Treasury Bench. Always a firebrand, rejoicing even when in Opposition in guerrilla tactics, he is just the type for such a role. The pnlv question is whether he enjoys to a sufficient extent the respect even of those back-benchers who more than once have • already shown themselves defiant of the Government Whips. , ' That is not the only trouble that is pending. ; Watch India! There may be something tantamount to civil war in our great Eastern dependency before the summer is over. If that happens x it may precipitate the crisis.