"I've Got to Upset Somebody"

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."

Economists on both sides of the Atlantic promptly reminded Bevin that U.S. wealth lay in its high productivity, not in its gold hoard at Fort Knox. Bevin knew that a higher standard of living for Britain ultimately depended on increasing Britain's own productive capacity, not on "purchasing power."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.