Word: bevins
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Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin's job at Southport was to convince the T.U.C. that Britain was not subservient to the U.S. He did it, sweeping the delegates with him on a flood of vigorous, if ungrammatical, oratory. "Eee, Ernie gave 'em something, didn't he?" grinned delegates...
...Laborite Bevin, like any Tory imperialist, plumped for an imperial economic union. Rumbled big Ernie: "I hope our Commonwealth and certainly the [colonial] Empire will agree as to the possibility of a customs union. . . . There are tremendous resources-diamonds for industrial purposes, lead, mica, asbestos, copper and all kinds of things...
Ernie was not being realistic. Neither Australia nor Canada wanted to join Britain in pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of an imperial closed shop. Bevin took another poke at the rich old bogey of the U.S. "I know these Americans will be upset," he said, "but I've got to upset somebody. My own conviction is that she handicapped herself ... by failure to redistribute the Fort Knox gold ... to assist in increasing the purchasing power of the devastated areas of the world...
Inside, members and lucky strangers sat through a dull "Question Time." It was just ending when Clement Attlee slipped in, scarcely noticed. Ernest Bevin, for one, did not see him. Bevin was on his feet answering a foreign policy question. Attlee slid down the bench just in time to avoid his Foreign Secretary's 240-lb. bulk as Bevin took a pace back, prepared to sit down...
There was torrid talk about Labor having to seek a coalition with the Tories. People whispered of convulsions within the Labor Cabinet (Shinwell was about to be thrown to the dogs. Bevan was ready to move in where Bevin feared to tread). Cried Ernie Bevin: "My God, working men and women! This is the first Labor Government you've got.* Don't let it fall!" A gust of anti-Attlee anecdotes swirled up. Said one Labor minister: "If you told Attlee, 'Look here, sir, I've just put strychnine in your wife's coffee...