Word: nye
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sanity and even some order were restored. A moment later, onetime Bevanite John Strachey claimed the floor to introduce a compromise resolution urging re-establishment of the old rule that Laborites must promise to vote with the party except on "matters of conscience," e.g., pacifism. Still quivering, Clem and Nye were both persuaded to accept the motion. Labor's rift was thus papered over for the time being-but the crack was still there...
When it came, the Labor Party's pent-up quarrel broke into open mutiny. In the vote on Labor's own pallid motion (combining censure of Churchill with approval of rearmament), Nye Bevan and 39 of his followers stayed stolidly in their seats. Next came the vote on the government's motion approving the Churchill program. Attlee and the bulk of Labor stayed in their seats, abstaining but not voting against. But 40 Bevanites and another 15 Laborites, most of them pacifists, filed into the lobby in open defiance of party orders, to record Noes ("Nyes...
...matters of party regularity, jerkily jumped to his feet, left the House without a word, and took the train to his Buckinghamshire home. But next day he ordered an emergency meeting of all 294 Labor M.P.s for this week, to consider the defiance of his leadership. In rebuttal, brash Nye Bevan demanded and got an emergency session of Labor's executive committee, to be held later in the week. Bevanites are outnumbered on the committee, 23 to 4, but Bevan seemed unconcerned...
Long Shot. London buzzed with talk that Bevan and his key lieutenants would be expelled from the party. Nye Bevan did not still the talk when, four days after the Commons mutiny, he vowed before a Socialist meeting that he would not promise to get in line in the future. The Bevanites would try to persuade the rest of Labor to join them in fighting Toryism, said Bevan. "But if we cannot go on together, we shall go on alone." Presumably neither Nye Bevan nor Clement Attlee wanted a divorce, for such a split might mean a Tory government...
Bevanites are already talking, in a casual way, about such a man. He is James Griffiths, a 61-year-old Welshman who came, like Nye Bevan, out of the coal mines. They hint that should Attlee drop out at some future date, Bevan himself might not grab for control. Privately, the Bevan followers say that silver-maned Jim Griffiths would be a fine bridge between the moderate, old-line Socialists and the left-wingers. An old-style trade unionist himself, he came from the revivalist meetings and coal dust of South Wales, eked out an education in London...