HIS MAJESTY'S OPPOSITION

"When Labor has again won power, the Party will immediately go straight ahead with the promulgation of socialist legislation, irrespective of party consequences." Thus was the resolution adopted by the annual conference of the British Labor Party in Leicester. Mr. Arthur Henderson's warning that the resolution would seriously damage the Party's cause was drowned out in an uproar of dissent.

When the Labor Party began it career it had definite, independent attitudes toward all vital political problems, as contrasted with the Liberal's and Conservatives, who were bound to unmeaning doctrines by tradition. In office, however, it did not act on the principles which it had confessed as His Majesty's Opposition, and came dangerously near to proving the Communist indictment, that socialism will always, in a pinch, stoop to the grossest opportunism. However, the facts that a Labor Cabinet has never had a majority in the House of Commons, and that the Party is a combination of elements never in accord on the subject of socialism, explain its previous cunctatory policy toward the social reforms which it proposes. Too, MacDonald as leader of the Party is accountable, for while he has ever acted for what seemed to him the best interests of England, he has perceptibly become more and more conservative, even if in theory he has clung to the Fabian doctrines.

The recent news from England shows that the Laborites have learned what they consider the error of their ways. There will be no delay in socializing the Bank of England and certain industries that have long been slated for government control. The resolution passed at Leicester is essentially an impatient repetition of the old cry: "Socialism in our day." Today it appears that the intellectual socialist element is dissatisfied with its past role of adviser to the stand-pat trade unions, and intends to renew its appeal by turning to the professions and to the bourgeois classes in general.

A general election must come soon in England. Whether the outcome will fulfill Henderson's prophecies of evil for Labor is doubtful. In view of the general swing to the right, it is quite possible that the English people will decisively reject socialism as a panacea for its ills, in which case the defeated can console themselves with the assurance that their time will come.