Word: bevinism
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Franks was then sent to Downing Street to give Churchill the right set of figures. Bevin was deeply impressed by Franks as "the only man in the Ministry of Supply whom Beaverbrook couldn't bully...
...lull in the political East-West conflict which had focused so much attention on the West's economic troubles, like sharp reefs exposed in an ebb tide. Yet nobody thought it safe to assume that Moscow would make no more bids for power in Europe. With Bevin, Schuman and Acheson in Washington, the representatives of nine other Atlantic Pact nations* joined them to blueprint Western defense machinery. In this field, the statesmen were on sure ground; a scheduled three-hour meeting lasted only one hour...
Once, when Beaverbrook did act without consulting Franks, he got himself into difficulties. The Beaver turned up at a cabinet meeting with a set of inaccurate labor figures, which Franks and his statisticians could have told him were wrong. Bevin, who loathed Beaverbrook, was quick to spot the error. In the cabinet meeting they started quarreling and Churchill had to intervene saying: "I really can't have two of my cabinet ministers carrying on like this," "Well,", said Bevin, "I won't accept those figures from Beaverbrook. I'll accept them only from Franks...
Furious, Beaverbrook returned to the Supply Ministry with his figures, called for Franks and asked him if they were right. Franks told him candidly they were wrong. But as Beaverbrook was still reluctant to admit the error to his archfoe, Bevin, he ordered Franks to try to find some way to reconcile these figures with the right ones. Franks smiled, went to work with his statisticians and devised an ingenious way of doing it. Having proved he could achieve this little triumph of twisted cunning, Franks burst out laughing. "That," said he, "is what I would call chicanery...
...pick of many glittering big business jobs. He turned them all down to go back to Oxford as provost of his old college. But the following year, in 1947, when a stricken and bankrupt Europe was feverishly fingering the hope just held out by the Marshall Plan, Ernie Bevin, now Foreign Minister, called Franks from his cloister to head the British delegation to the 16-nation Paris conference...