Scotsman Archive

We were not living on charity at all, declared the Rt. Hon. Ernest Bevin the Foreign Secretary, when speaking at the centenary celebration dinner of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers. He had noticed the other day that Mr Churchill had said we were living on charity from another nation. He regretted that Mr Churchill had said that, because he ought to know better. If they took the loan from the United States and Marshall aid together, he said, they worked out about almost the figure we had decided was essential to ask for in the loan.

The loan had been cut in the process of passing through, and it had also been calculated on the then basis of prices.

Priorities, continued Mr Bevin, had been worked out on the basis of our possible capital expenditure. He wished this country had had 20,000,000 tons capacity of steel before the war. If we had had that capacity, the post-war story would have been different.

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