Word: thorneycroft
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...single year as Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, persuasive, even-tempered Peter Thorneycroft, 48, had established himself as a prospective Tory Prime Minister. His sponsorship of the British plan for a free trade area embracing all Western Europe (TIME, Jan. 28) earned him a reputation for vision; he won the admiration of Britain's business community by his unflinching fight against the domestic inflation that lies at the root of Britain's economic difficulties. Early last week the Times of London gave Prime Minister Harold Macmillan high marks for "coolly and firmly backing a courageous Chancellor...
...cause of Thorneycroft's abrupt departure from the Cabinet was his insistence that government expenditures must be maintained at exactly the same level as last year's. But in the new estimates, expenditures came out almost ?50 million ($140,000,000) higher. This was not because of new extravagances but because standard welfare-state services would cost more. To cut the last ?50 million would mean cutting into such programs as free milk for children and expectant mothers, reducing the family allowances that pay parents $1.12 a week for their second child, $1.40 for each subsequent child...
...measures are designed to make money scarcer and more expensive," he said, "to make it harder both to earn profits and to get wage increases." Thorneycroft announced that the government would veto all wage increases for its own employees in the ministries and nationalized industries, hoped thereby to set an example for private industry. Further wage hikes, warned Thorneycroft, "would be a disaster to this country." Snapped the Labor Party's economic spokesman, Harold Wilson: "A straight declaration of war" against the trade unions...
...last week Thorneycroft's austere measures (tightened credit, a ceiling on investment) were beginning to take effect. As he had planned, the pulse of the economy beat slower. The London stock market dipped to a three-year low. Bankers advised clients to postpone expansion plans. In some industries production had already begun to sag. Last week Thorneycroft slashed government investment still further by cutting back allocations for nuclear power plants, modernization of railroads and slum clearance...
Before the week was over, Thorneycroft got a chance to prove that he meant what he said. An arbitration board granted a wage boost to 32,000 white-collar employees of the Ministry of Health. The government promptly announced that it would refuse to pay the increased amount. Labor reacted instantly. "This is not the way to industrial peace," thundered Frank Cousins, boss of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Britain's biggest. "It is the way to industrial idiocy...