from a Parliamentary correspondent
The ice appears to be breaking in Parliament. Torn as they were by conflice — ting loyalties, the left in the last Parliament tended to err on the side ‘of caution, The fact that Mr, Wilson is continuing his remorseless shift to the right in spite of his overwhelming majority is beginning to provoke an increasing number of M.P.s beyond worry into open protest. On Monday, Frank Allaun, M.P., an old friend of The Week, told a rally of 200 N.U.S. members that now there were 160 M.P.s behind the strike, 110 had already contributed to the strike fund, but also about 50 others are in sympathy but were not around when the collection was taken, he said, Quite rightly, these members are increasingly concerned to press the Government to attack the shipowners, not the seamen, Newcomers like Kevin MacNamara, the Hull M.P.. who won the famous by-election, are proving very sharp critics of the Governnent}s trade union policies, Mr. Wilson will force a fight, it is to be hoped, when he tries to give the incomes policy "legal teeth," In foreign policy, the debilitatory cry for a "negotiated settlement" in Vietnam is also coming under question. The obvious fact that the Americans have ruthlessly killed the results of the Geneva negotiations, which had already led many on the left to echo the demand of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, that new negotiations were pointless until the old ones are honoured, has now found an adovocate in Parliament, Mrs. Anne Kerr, another friend of The Week, pressed the Prime Minister the other week in the most remorseless way. How would we have reacted to talk of negotiations, if half of Britain was occupied and the other half being bombed? she asked. It is very good to sce left wing M.P.s open up. They are welcome allies - one might say necesssary allies - in the fight against the rightward course of the Government, \What is now needed is for the Parliamentary opposition to begin to come together with the opposition in the country, and to work out a constructive alternative programme of socialist advance upon which the left can unite. For this reason the support given by M,P.s to the C.S.E, seminar on workers! control is entirely to be welcomed,