It was announced on Friday that at a meeting of
the Executive of the Labour Party held on Thursday it had been decided that they should recommend the Annual Conference, which meets at Leicester next February, to eliminate from the constitution the pledge which has hitherto been exacted from the Labour Members. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, by way of explanation, states that the abolition of the pledge will tend to remove certain alleged objections which a great many people are making as reasons why the Osborne decision
should not be upset. They had come to the conclusion, how- ever, quite apart from the Osborne decision. Labour Members in the future "will be in a position similar to Members of the Liberal and Conservative Parties." We cannot now discuss the exact significance of this announcement, but we note that it is alleged that freeing the Labour Members from any pledge will make it easier for the Labour Party to induce the Govern- ment to admit the reversal of the Osborne judgment, and is indeed part of a bargain with the Ministry. The Daly Graphic of Friday, discussing the new move, makes a very shrewd comment "If the proposal made yesterday by the Executive is endorsed by the general body, as of course it will be, Members of Parlia- ment who owe their salaries to the Labour Party will no longer be required to sign a pledge. They will be quite free to vote according to their consciences—and to lose their salaries if their
consciences should happen to guide them in an opposite direction to that taken by the party. That is all that is meant by the new pronouncement, and anybody who is inclined to attach any other meaning to it will do well to reflect that the men who have now anade this nominal change to please their Liberal allies are the same men who less than twelve months ago were devoting their energies to ousting Mr. Burt and Mr. Fenwiek from Parliament because they refused to sign the Labour pledge, and who on the same ground succeeded in getting rid of Mr. Richard Bell. It will be amusing to see how many Liberals will allow themselves to be deceived by this new move of the very astute leaders of the Labour Party."
Previous page
