Word: wilmot
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...tolled a quarter after three when dapper John Wilmot, Labor's Minister of Supply, rose in the House of Commons. Confidently, he announced that the hour for Britain's third-largest heavy industry had struck. Said he: "The position of the steel industry and its importance in the national economy necessitate a large measure of public ownership. . . . For [the transition] period I propose to establish a control board. . . ." He gave no further details. It was Labor's vaguest policy statement to date. It was also Labor's greatest blunder...
...firms employed most of the half million workers. But those firms had grown into huge vertical combines, in which it would be difficult to divorce ownership of vast iron-ore mines, limestone quarries, brickworks, diesel-engine works, nut-&-bolt plants. Just what parts of the steel industry did Wilmot propose to nationalize...
Steel was not one of the sick industries, like coal and textiles. Even Labor critics of the industry admitted that it had done a good job in 1939-45. Now, asked the Tories, how can the industry reconvert amid the uncertainty created by the Wilmot statement...
...Wilmot and the less patient Laborites began to realize that socialism's clock had been a little fast. There was still plenty of fight left in the Tories. Before the Easter recess they won their first victory: Minister Wilmot announced that the Federation's special report, until then a cabinet secret, would be published...
DONALD C. WILMOT Cleveland...