scenes during the divisions following a debate on the nationalisation of the railways, recorded that "Mrs E.M. Braddock ... danced a jig as she moved over to the Opposition benches where she occupied the seat usually used by Mr Churchill." When the Bolton Evening News called her performance "nauseating, a sorry degradation of democratic discussion" she sued the newspaper for defamation. She lost the case, and a subsequent appeal was unsuccessful. In 1947 Bessie was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC). At the time she was generally identified with the left wing of the party, and was associated with a grouping known as the "Socialist Fellowship", which espoused a programme of colonial freedom, workers' control and reduced arms expenditure. She resigned from the Fellowship in 1950, along with fellow-MPs Fenner Brockway and Ellis Smith, when it condemned the United Nations intervention in the Korean War. She continued her wholehearted campaigning on behalf of the poorest in the country, pleading with parliament to "remember the queues outside the Poor Relief offices", and castigating the "New Look" fashion of 1948 as wasteful, "the ridiculous whim of idle people". Bessie's fiery reputation did not harm her electorally; in the February 1950 general election, with the Exchange constituency greatly increased by boundary changes, her majority rose to 5,344. Nationally, Labour lost 76 seats, and its parliamentary majority was reduced to five. Attlee's second government was short-lived; in the October 1951 general election Bessie increased her personal majority again, to 6,834, but nationally Labour was defeated by the Conservatives and went into opposition. Outside her political duties Bessie, a keen fan of boxing, accepted the honorary presidency of the Professional Boxers' Association, and was a passionate defender of the sport. Her enthusiasm arose in part from her experiences as a juvenile court magistrate; she believed that the sport fostered character and mutual respect. She was frequently at odds with her parliamentary colleague Edith Summerskill, a physician who wrote the anti-boxing tract The Ignoble Art, and campaigned for the sport's abolition. 1950s: Rightward shift After leaving Socialist Fellowship, Bessie moved steadily towards the centre and right of her party, distancing herself from colleagues with whom she had earlier found common cause. She did not support Aneurin Bevan when he resigned from the government in April 1951 over the introduction of National Health Service charges, and later asserted that, by making dissidence fashionable, Bevan