A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
The skilful arrangement which set Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan running in double harness at the Labour Conference at Margate evidently worked well. Each, in different vein, commended the Executive's policy and got it carried by acclamation. Of course, as members of the sane Cabinet they must in public at any rate sing the same song, and neither of them need have felt any difficulty about that at Margate. But the crack in the Labour Party is not to be papered over quite as easily as that. There may not be a Morrison faction— the Lord President carries the bulk of the party with him, but with no close personal allegiance—but there exists quite definitely a Bevan faction. To the Minister of Health gravi- tate most of the malcontents of the Left, many of them associated in one way or another with Tribune, which Mr. Bevan used to edit and which is now (lapsed from a weekly to a fortnightly) conducted by Mr. Bevan's wife, Miss Jennie Lee, and Mr. Michael Foot, who has aspirations as a political pamphleteer, with Mr. Ian Mikardo as a member of the editorial Board. Plenty of other names could be mentioned, the degree of adhesion varying in different cases. They represent a force the Prime Minister can never ignore. The elevation of Mr. Mikardo as a member of the Executive instead of so proved and able a Minister as Mr. Noel-Baker has an obvious significance. But Bevin has a stronger hold on ..the Labour movement as a whole than Bevan, and Bevin is with Attlee all the time.
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