LABOUR PARTY’S VIEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25717, 13 December 1944, Page 5

LABOUR PARTY’S VIEWS

DISCUSSION AT CONFERENCE LONDON, Dec. 11. The Labour Party conference adopted the executive’s report recommending continuance iri the Government for the purpose of winning the war, and then contesting a general' election on an independent programme. ; • / During the debate on the report, Dr Haden Guest, M.P.,- moved that the portion of the report on continuance of the coalition should be referred back. He said it should be made clear that the party had given definite notice to leave the coalition. Dr Guest said that in the debate on Greece Mr Churchill 'gave vent to feelings of abuse. His language and attitude of calculated prejudice and almost calculated misunderstanding were those of reaction. “It is an infamy that our. men should be used ,to bomb and bayonet the Greeks, who only a week ago were brothers with us,” he said. Mr Aneurin Bevan, M.P., said the executive should make it clear that it did not interpret its statement to mean that the party would remain in the coalition until Mr Churchill liked; to end it, but that it should be able to decide when the coalition should end in the light of developments in Parliament and elsewhere. Mr J. Walker, M.P., replying for the executive, said the executive intended that the party should continue in the Government until the war was won unless something very serious and fundamental cropped up. He was not there to defend Mr Churchill, but when he heard people .talking about Mr Churchill as landing his aid to the reactionaries of the Right he asked them to refer to Mr Churchill’s support of Marshal Tito and his overwhelming support of Moscow. Dr Guest’s amendment was heavily defeated.