A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE success of the Bevanites in the poll for membership of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party will much more than outweigh any good that might have come from the attempts to paper over the cracks in the party. The fact that the first three places have all gone to Bevanites and that Mr. Shinwell has been pushed off the committee altogether is sufficient notice to the country of the way the Labour Party is tending, and of the scorpions that may succeed whips if the Left Wing increases in power. The victory, of course, is in reality much less spec- tacular than it looks. If the Party Conference voted as a single body the Bevanites would be far down the list. Actually the local constituencies, commanding a little over 1,000,000 votes, choose seven members of the committee ; it is this section which has exalted Mr. Bevan and his friends ; the trade union section, commanding over 6,000,000 votes, elects 12 members ; none of them is a Bevanite ; nor are the five women members elected by the whole conference. The net result is that there are no more than four Bevanites on an executive committee of 27. Still, the victory they have achieved is notable, and I naturally turned to see what comment the next morning's Daily Herald had to make on it ; there, I thought, I shall find the official reaction. I did. There was not one word of comment. For every other London paper the election result was front-page news. The Daily Herald report, strictly factual, was on page 6.
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