URGENT NECESSITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26627, 25 November 1947, Page 5

URGENT NECESSITY

CLOSER RELATIONSHIP CABINET AND LABOUR PARTY OUTCOME OF MR DALTON'S RESIGNATION . N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 24. * The Leftist weekly, the Tribune, which was formerly edited by the Minister of Health, Mr Aneurin Bevan, suggests in this week’s issue that the resignation of Mr Hugh Dalton makes it urgently necessary for the Labour Party to consider relationship between what it calls the “Big Four of the Cabinet” and the Labour movement generally. Claiming that Mr Dalton’s resignation leaves the central control of policy in the hands of Mr Attlee, Mr Ernest Devin, Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr Herbert Morrison, the Tribune says: “Two of these four were at first opposed to the challenge of the 1945 election, and Sir Stafford Cripps at the time was not in the inner counsels of the party.

“The idea of a new coalition can be ruled out, but how far is a conception of coalition policies or an appeal on national unity lines absolutely excluded from the minds of the big four? No definite answer can be given to that question, and so long as it stays unresolved there will be mystification in the party, and the chance of remobilising the spirit of 1945 will not be great. “ Labour's plan must have a fitting instrument to put it through, ’ continues the Tribune. _ ‘ That fitting instrument is not provided in the mere concentration of ever greater power in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of men. Power should be more widely spread among those who can bring fresh inspiration in tne direction of policy,” it concludes.