Word: abstainers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...M.R.P.,divided between those who, like Bidault, wanted to vote against Men des whatever the cost to France, and those who, like onetime Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, would vote for Western unity, announced that it would abstain...
Secondly, the statement in this article that I opposed the idea of a House-centered weekend is completely in error. I did, in fact, abstain from any vote which may have been taken in regard to the proposed weekend. It would seem that the distinction between abstention and opposition need not be clarified. Gerald A. Lewis, Chairman Dunster House Dance Committee
...Labor Party, too, was in a bit of a scrape. The Attlee moderates had solidly outvoted the Bevanite dissidents to approve German rearmament in the party caucus, but in the House of Commons, Labor's leaders had ordered their members to abstain on the issue rather than divide the party over it (TIME, Nov. 29). Seven Laborites defied the order, six to vote against the Paris agreements, one to vote defiantly for them (he quickly became known as the only member of the Labor Party "who had the courage of Mr. Attlee's convictions"). Nervously, the Attlee leadership...
Then, from his place on the back bench beside Bevan, Bevanite Richard Crossman briskly shattered Labor's show of unanimity. If some Laborites abstain, said Grossman bluntly, "the reason will not be any change of conviction, but the fact that if one wants to survive in our party to fight another day, one has to accept a majority decision, however unpleasant . . . Let us be clear what we are about...
...passionately oppose this agreement." On the front bench, Morrison jerked around to glare. Loyal Laborites jeered. That night Attlee decided to put party unity above his convictions. The order went out to every Laborite: if there was a division, abstain...