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 resourcesdiamonds for industrial purposes, lead, mica, asbestos, copper and...
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