Word: coaling
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Winston Churchill is the descendant of great nobles. Minister of Health Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan, a quarter-century younger, is the descendant of Welsh coal miners. Both have a look of pink cherubic majesty; both are enormously effective speakers. In the four years of the Labor government Bevan and Churchill, who hate each other, had not been directly opposed as principals in a Commons debate...
...pegged anywhere between 20? and 24?. After fevered cabling to their capitals, the French and British suggested 27?. McCloy beat the British down to 24?. Then the French proposed two conditions: 1) ending German subsidies that made for export dumping below cost, 2) freezing the price of exported German coal at the pre-devaluation rate. If Germany insisted on raising the export price of coal, then, François-Poncet insisted, the price of inland coal in Germany must also be raised; this would make Germany's steel and other fabricated articles more expensive in the export market...
This proposal was almost impossible for McCloy to swallow, for Germany's coal is sold abroad for dollars, and under the French scheme Germany's loss of dollars would be large. As the all-day, all-night session went on, tempers fired up and threats emerged. McCloy threatened to use the U.S.'s veto on economic matters, which he is given by the High Commission Charter. François-Poncet threatened in turn to take the dispute back to his government...
...with the commission's prestige at stake, the French budged a little on the mark rate (to 23.8?); McCloy agreed to the anti-dumping and coal clauses...
...Bundestag next day, Adenauer read the Allies' communique. He passed lightly over the 23.8? decision with the remark that it did not do justice to the "rightful interests of the German economy." He also passed over the anti-dumping clause and the freezing of the price of export coal. But when he came to inland coal, he was sure and stern: ". . . The price of coal would have to be increased 25% ... We will under no circumstances adopt this measure. I say this explicitly in the name of the federal government, so that any unrest in the German people will...