Word: benne
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...question of what to do about the British economy became intertwined with the question of what to do about Industry Minister Anthony Wedgwood Benn, whose impassioned antiMarket campaigning had made him the darling of the Labor Party left and the pariah of its right. Business leaders, panicked by Benn's grandiose plans for public control of industries and investment, had been demanding his dismissal from the Cabinet. On the other hand, powerful union leaders including Jack Jones, president of the Transport and General Workers Union, had warned that any demotion of Benn would be taken as "a grave affront...
...Benn swapped places with Energy Minister Eric Varley, a stolid Wilson loyalist who had also campaigned against the EEC but less noisily than Benn. Education Minister Reginald Prentice, a leading pro-Marketeer, was switched to the Ministry of Overseas Development as a gesture of evenhandedness. Although the Overseas Ministry is technically sub-Cabinet, Prentice was allowed to keep his Cabinet rank when Home Secretary Roy Jenkins threatened to resign over his fellow moderate's demotion. The Prentice move displaced Leftist Judith Hart, who was offered the Ministry of Transport but turned it down in pique. "I fear...
Gracious Loser. In effect, Benn had been moved neither up nor down but sideways. As Energy Minister, he will preside over the development of North Sea Oil, the only bright spot in Britain's otherwise cloudy economic future. Lest the oil companies panic, however, Wilson made it clear that Benn will have little hand in the delicate licensing negotiations the government is now conducting with them...
...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...
Healing Wounds. Wilson, however, has reportedly decided not to dismiss Benn from his Cabinet; to do so would only aggravate the party wounds that Wilson now hopes to heal. But to restore confidence in his government's ability to check inflation, Wilson will probably shift Benn-whose proposals to step up public ownership of industry have made him anathema to Britain's business and financial community-to a less economically powerful Cabinet ministry...