"personal abuse has been our stock-in-trade for twenty years and has got us nowhere". Unlike the British communists, Davies did not change his position when the Soviet Union entered the war in June 1941. He continued to oppose all co-operation with the Conservatives, believing that only through socialism could a just and lasting peace be achieved. Victory in 1945, and the subsequent election of a Labour government, did little to affect Davies's individualism. In the Labour years 1945–51, he opposed government policies on conscription, NATO, the development of nuclear weapons, and intervention in the Korean War. According to his biographer Robert Griffiths, it was hatred of capitalist militarism, rather than a wish to support the Soviet Union, that underlay Davies's stances. His popularity in South Wales was unaffected: he was returned to parliament in each postwar election with large majorities. In 1945–46, he served as Merthyr Tydfil's mayor, remaining on the local council until 1949. Labour rebel In assessing Davies's political career, the historian Alun Morgan notes certain inconsistencies: while calling for unity among leftist factions, Davies frequently rebelled against agreed Labour Party policies. He championed democracy, individual liberty and the rights of small nations, yet gave the Soviet Union his unvarying and uncritical support. However, he was consistent in certain core areas, often in defiance of official Labour policy: unremitting hostility to US foreign policy, opposition to the party's post-war defence policies (specifically on issues concerning American bases in Britain, rearmament in West Germany, and development of the Polaris submarine programme), and above all commitment to the needs and interests of his Merthyr constituents. His dedication to his own agenda brought him into frequent conflict with party managers, and led to withdrawals of the party whip throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Stating his position in a 1948 letter to the Labour Party general secretary Morgan Phillips, he wrote: "Our movement embraces millions of men and women, and not merely a few hundred MPs and a few dozen ... members of the National Executive. I am habitually inclined to give our millions my first thoughts and consideration." Davies's popularity with the voters of Merthyr Tydfil remained constant; he secured 75 per cent or more of the vote in each of the general elections of 1955, 1959, 1964 and 1966. In December 1951, Sephora Davies was expelled from the Labour Party because of her close association with a proscribed organisation, the