Leftward the Course

Symptoms of Britain's shift to the left, as registered in last week's conferences of the Labor and Communist Parties:

> The Labor Party's young rank & file nearly broke the Party's wartime political truce with the Conservatives. For the truce: 1,275,000. Against: 1,209,000.

> The Labor Party voted unanimously for a post-war planned economy with nationalization of Britain's basic industries and services, including natural resources, transport and farm land. Keynoter for this resolution was keen, slender Economist Harold Laski. Said he: "We seek to end a system in which the many are the slaves of the few. We seek to end a system which makes ordinary men and women not ends in themselves, but means to the ends of others. We seek in this war, after victory, not a return to the Old World, but quite precisely the building of a new world. . . .

"Mr. Churchill has agreed that this is a people's war. We mean to win it, but we want from him a pledge that a people's war will issue in a people's peace."

> The Communist Party's membership had jumped from 20,000 to 53,000 since Jan. 1.

> Stocky, chubby-faced Communist General Secretary Harry Pollitt, one-time cotton-miller and boiler maker, laid down the Party line. Said he: "Open the Second Front. Increase production. Strengthen the Anglo-Soviet alliance. . . . The trade union official who said 'Let the strike continue was not helping the workers. Strikes in this situation are ... helping the Fascists to build the gallows and dig the sandpits in which they execute the cream of the working class whenever they conquer a country."

By subordinating everything--including strikes--to Maximum-Aid-To-Russia, the Communists had lost many members in Britain's mining communities, where the fight for better working conditions continued urgent. But the Communists' cause had been taken up, for practical reasons, by a large part of the British public and press, and the Party was riding the wave.

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