Word: benn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Foot, the unions' staunchest defender in the Cabinet, who during the last election campaign flatly committed himself to quit if compulsory wage controls were enforced. There were fears that a Foot resignation would trigger the fall of the Wilson Cabinet. Not only would leftist Energy Secretary Anthony Wedgwood Benn have had little choice but to follow suit; the unions would have withdrawn their support from the government's program as well...
...Britain's rainbow began flowing ashore from the North Sea for the first time last week. The victory over wind, sleet, 100-ft. waves and British muddle came on the 160th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, and it sent Energy Secretary Anthony Wedgwood Benn into a fit of hyperbole as he opened the first valve on the Isle of Grain. Benn held aloft a souvenir bottle of the crude and announced to an assembly that included U.S. Ambassador Elliot Richardson: "This is much more significant and historic than the moon shot, which only brought back soil and rock...
...Benn's analogy was not altogether farfetched. The technology of North Sea production is indeed impressive. But the prospective financial benefits are hardly enough to send Britons into orbit. The nation last year suffered a $9 billion payments deficit; production from the small Argyll field off the east coast of Scotland-the first tapped-will lighten that load by only $140 million annually. The Argyll field and three others to be opened this year will supply a bare 2% of Britain's oil needs...
...Benn felt a bit manhandled, he did not say so. In fact he seemed almost to revel in his new public role as a good and gracious loser. "I have just been in receipt of a very big message from the British people," he said in a television interview. "I read it loud and clear." Whether that means he is ready to modify his radically leftist approach to economic policy remains to be seen. At any rate, his politic response to the popular will suggests that Benn, at 50, thinks he is a man with a future. Wilson...
...present Parliament, oratory is often more tinny than golden. The only bon mot of the day came from Labor's former Industry Minister Anthony Wedgwood Benn. The embattled Benn responded to Tory taunts that he resign by taking an ungentlemanly swipe at Conservative Party Leader Margaret Thatcher: "If the opposition wants my head on a salver, the leader of the Conservative Party will have to be a lot more seductive Salome than she has been so far." Less dazzling repartee came from left-wing Labor M.P. Eric Heffer, who responded testily to a pro-Market interjection by shouting...