PARTY SPLIT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 7 January 1927, Page 6

PARTY SPLIT

BY NEW PROPAGANDA

LEADEES OPPOSED

LONDON, December 18.

Birth control propaganda has become a political problem in the Socialist Party. The new governing committee,.elected after the Margate conference,* are moat uncomfortably worried over the question. A small but resolute section of the committee are striving to get the question of birth control instruction for all married people taken up by the parfy as a political issue. They want an undertaking that in a future general election the Socialist Party will officially adopt birth cvntrel teaching as part of their platform. The present agitation arises out of the Margate conference. The then executive of the party reported that birth control was a matter for individual decision, and could not, for obvious reasons; be made a party cry. • This report, however, was referred back for further consideration, and now the question arises: What is the Socialist Party to do?.

Pressure on the- executive is coming from the local Socialist parties, particularly in London and the large cities, They want it to be a part of the subscribed Socialist doctrine that any married woman should be able to apply to the local medical officer of health for information on birth control. It is argued that information which is available to the woman who can afford to pay her own private doctor should be available to the workingclass woman free of all cost. .

Women are the principal advocates of the Socialist Party birth control policy, and they are carrying on an intensive programme in an endeavor to,."force the executive to their, opinions. The chief leader of the . Socialist. Party, from Mr. MacDoflald downwards, are out of patience with the movement. They realise, how. much harm ifould be done to the party among the electorate if Socialists were committed to birth control as a "platform." Still, the pressure on the party is so strong that a new decision on the matter is likely to be forced.