BRITISH STUDENT MOTION CAUSES OPEN BREACH

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 4, 5 January 1940, Page 10

BRITISH STUDENT MOTION CAUSES OPEN BREACH

Mr. Arthur Greenwood Severs Connection With Organisation <Briti»h Official Wireless) (Received 4, 12.45 p.m.) RUGBY, Jan. 3 The conference of the University Labour Federation—an organisation based on students societies in United Kingdom universities with Labour sympathies, which has net infrequently found itself at variance with the official Labour Party policy—to-day passed a resolution which urges that the task of the Labour movement is to lead the working class in a determined straggle against what it describes as a war for profits and world domination, for which, it holds, ‘ Hitler, Fascism and British and French imperialism are equally responsible.” Mr. Arthur Greenwood, deputyleader of the Labour Party, has severed his connection with the organisation in protest against the resolution. Mr. Greenwood said: “The resolution is, in fact, a contradiction to the establishment and reaffirmed policy of organised Labour. It decreases the policy of the leaders of the Labour movement and the trade unions, and endangers the whole future of the Labour movement. As I am wholeheartedly in support of Labour’s policy, which is overwhelmingly supported by the rank and file, and as one on whom the censure of the federation executive has now fallen, I feel it necessary to resign the presidency of ♦he federation.” Mr Greenwood added: ‘‘The resolution is obviously inspired from Communist sources. It reveals, or professes, complete ignorance of the real issues behind the present struggle. It is out of sympathy with the aims of the Socialist movement the world over, and its purpose can only be interpreted as definitely disruptive. "I need only add that as one who hs s had the longest continuous association with the University Labour Federation, and as one who remembers the spirit which brought it into existence at the end of the last war at the instance of men who had fought in that war, I regret severing my connection with the organisation, which I had hoped would be the beacon of Socialism in the university world.’*