Cripps Cropped

While in France the once mighty Left opposition devoted its annual convention almost exclusively to family quarrels last week, the British Left was scarcely less ineffectual. Biggest issue at the Labor Party Congress at Southport was the expulsion of Sir Stafford Cripps, tall, thin, wealthy, inconsistent, indiscreet ''Red Squire" of Filkins, Labor's ablest parliamentary debater and leader of Labor's intellectual leftwing. Last January Sir Stafford proposed a Popular Front of Laborites, Communists, Liberals, anti-Chamberlain Conservatives, broke Party discipline when he sent out his proposals to Labor Party offices after Labor's executive committee rejected it. Said the London Daily Express: "The Socialist Party will be blowing out its brains if it expels Sir Stafford."

Promptly blowing Sir Stafford's brains out of the Party, the executive committee defended itself by attacking the Popular Front, largely quoting from Sir Stafford's own writing on the subject during the six years he too had been opposed. It forbade him to appear before the Southport Congress. His supporters began to backslide; two in the House of Commons backed down; another resigned from his paper; four were expelled before the Congress opened. But the Congress overruled the executive, let Sir Stafford speak. Soon the Red Squire joined the retreat at full stride, humbly asked for reinstatement for himself and his four allies, promised "to abide by the decisions of the conference on a Popular Front." It did no good. Congress reaffirmed his expulsion.

Internal harmony restored, Labor then jumped with ineffectual vigor on Prime Minister Chamberlain, damned his delay in concluding a defensive pact with Russia, denounced his policy in Palestine by a vote of 890-to-2. But it accepted conscription lying down. And although it began preparations for a general election, probably this autumn, observers noted with Sir Stafford gone it had no popular leader likely to lead Labor to a national victory, that no Labor Party Congress since its earliest days had attracted so little attention, that even a small conference of rebellious Conservatives like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden would have excited more discussion than the official gathering of a party that polled 8,000,000 votes only four years ago.

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