The Voice of Labour Again
The resolutions discussed at the Easter conferences of organisations within the Labour movement boded ill for Sir Stafford Cripps, the Labour Party and, for that matter, Great Britain generally. Making all due allowance for the hot sunshine, the holiday spirit, and that peculiar form of insanity which causes annual conferences to pass nonsensical resolutions, the output from Blackpool and Weston- Super-Mare last week-end was formidable indeed. The fact that the Budget is profoundly hated by the man in the workshop and his wife in the co-operative store could not have been made plainer. The Co-operative Party conference wanted to remove the purchase tax on all necessities and to lower the cost of living by Government action—which must mean the raising of subsidies, since the Govern- ment cannot make the people produce more at lower cost by Act of Parliament. The annual delegate meeting of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers said much the same thing, but rather more angrily. To the I.L.P. the Budget was the betrayal of the working-class electors. There was an isolated recognition of the fact that economies in distribution, like any other reduction in cost, might help to lower prices, but in general the conferences did not consider it their business to show how the feat of having a cake and eating it was to be performed. The Chancellor's unexceptionable thesis that State services must be paid for may have been accepted in the House of Commons and—with a very wry face—at Transport House, but it has a very long way to go before it has penetrated the consciousness of the average Labour voter. The rank and file does not like it. That is not what it voted for. It voted for higher wages, more social services, shorter hours, lower taxes for the workers, and a quart out of every pint pot for each man, woman and child.
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