Support for Sir Stafford Cripps The Labour Party Executive may
already be regretting its expulsion of Sir Stafford Cripps ; though no admission of regret can be expected from Transport House. Sir Stafford has been given a vote of complete confidence by his own constituency in Bristol; several members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have criticised the high-handedness of the Executive; and one great Trade Union, the South Wales Miners' Federation, already irritated by the exclusion of its President, Mr. Arthur Homer, from the General Council of the T.U.C., supports the demand that Sir Stafford be allowed to state his case before the Whitsun Conference of the Labour Party. Sir Stafford's greatest strength, however, is that he has voiced the desires of thousands, inside and outside the Labour Party, who are dismayed by the ineffectiveness of the present Opposition, and see no prospect of its forming an alternative Government; to this must be added the sympathy he has earned by his work for the Labour Party, respect for his character and his patent, if indiscreet, sincerity, and the sense that he is one of the few men capable of bringing new and young life into the Labour movement. There is also the feeling that if the Executive had been content to wait for the verdict of the Whitsun Conference, Sir Stafford's appeal might have been turned to good instead of harm.
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