Word: bevinism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...first the packed House of Commons was disappointed. Listening M.P.s had to remind themselves that Ernie Bevin was making history. He read his speech from typescript, too rapidly, sometimes gobbling his words. Afterwards, in the lobbies, Laborites agreed that "Ernie was bloody awful" in his delivery. But the history was in what he said, not in how he said...
...began with Yalta: "The solution arrived at . . . was looked upon by His Majesty's Government at that time as a sensible compromise . . . [but] the Communist process goes ruthlessly on. . . . You have only to look at your maps. . . ." With a sort of elephantine perversity, Bevin droned over the old ground of Greece, Trieste and Lake Success. His audience fidgeted. He said: " [The] policy on the part of the Soviet Union [is] to use every means in their power to get Communist control in Eastern Europe and . . . in the West as well." What did the British government propose...
...Spiritual Union." Then Bevin gave them the phrase they were waiting for: "Western Union." It was a milestone in postwar history. Bevin explained it: "I believe the time is ripe for a consolidation of Western Europe...
...Luxembourg. Later (if the April elections there go the right way), "the new Italy" might be brought in, as well as Portugal. There was no hard & fast schedule, no thought of immediate federation or a United States of Europe. More than the western edge of Europe was involved. Bevin pointed to the British Commonwealth, to the overseas territories of Britain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Portugal. And Bevin said what the union could not be-a system for dominating the smaller states. Said Bevin: "It must be a spiritual union . . . more of a brotherhood and less of a rigid system...
...part of their meat and fats to the Ruhr next month. If it worked, Ruhr tension would be eased. But what about the other Western Germans, plenty of whom were having thin scrabbling (see cut)? Was divvying up the rations just another way of divvying discontent? In London, Ernie Bevin sent an urgent personal note to George Marshall warning that German hunger and unrest would likely grow worse. And there were other tensions...