top of an act of God, a terrible winter of heavy
snowfall and ice. Coal was running out, unem-
ployment temporarily soared, and now in the
summer the government announced an austerity
programme to cut imports. Rationing became
more severe. Sir Stafford Cripps, gaunt and
ascetic, symbolised the new era of austerity when
he took charge of the treasury as chancellor of
the exchequer in November 1947. Food rations
were small, though the population judged as a
whole was in better health than before the war.
Wages were low, and modest increases kept them
low. Working people were asked to produce more
without more pay – a theme to become familiar
in the post-war era. Britain was probably one of
the few countries in the world where a sense of
fair play and discipline could make rationing work
year after year without a large black market devel-
oping. Output in 1948 was already 36 per cent
higher than before the war, and this production
was being directed to support an export drive.
Given the difficult conditions with which the gov-
ernment was faced, it could take credit for its
achievements so far. ‘Better times’ for the people
were nevertheless still a long way off. Full employ-
ment was taken for granted, so Labour would run
into difficulties when people tired of the unend-
ing prospect of austerity.
Britain’s dire financial plight forced the Cabinet
to sort out British priorities in the rest of the world;
Hugh Dalton, when at the treasury (1945–7),
constantly urged Ernest Bevin at the Foreign
Office to cut back on Britain’s overseas responsi-
bilities. The Foreign Office, which rapidly came to
admire him, had never known a foreign secretary
like the tough, blunt and ebullient Bevin, proud
of his working-class background and his long
experience as leader of the largest trade union,
the Transport and General Workers’ Union; he
had also been an effective minister of labour in
Churchill’s wartime coalition. Deeply committed
to the democratic left, he was just as determined as
Churchill not to allow communism any power base
in Britain or in any region abroad where vital
British interests were involved. Nor did he lag
behind Churchill when it came to safeguarding
Britain’s empire. Thus he supported Churchill’s
policy of suppressing the communist-dominated
front (EAM) in Greece despite vociferous protest
from the British left, because, as he put it, ‘the
British Empire cannot abandon the position in the
Mediterranean’. In Europe, Bevin in 1945 still
regarded resurgent Germany as a greater danger
than the Soviet Union. He shared Roosevelt’s
vision rather than Churchill’s realism, however, in
his belief that war could be avoided by a strong
world organisation, the United Nations, with the
US, Britain and the Soviet Union each guarantee-
ing the peace in its own global region. Bevin was at
first more ready than the Americans to accept the
place of the Soviet Union in this scheme as having
special interests and security concerns in Eastern
and central Europe; he believed business could be
done with Stalin. In the conduct of that business,
Bevin’s lifelong experience as a negotiator helped
him to appreciate when to be tactically aggressive
and when to be emollient. He did not wish to see
the wartime Allies split into Eastern and Western
blocs, and he was in any case suspicious of US poli-
cies. In speaking to Stalin in December 1945, he
made it clear that Britain’s intentions were peace-
ful, but that ‘there was a limit beyond which we
could not tolerate continued Soviet infiltration and
undermining of our position’.
The hostility of Soviet propaganda until the
summer of 1946 was directed mainly against
Britain, with threats to Turkey and Iran and com-
plaints about Allied policies in Germany souring
British relations with the Soviet Union. In March
1946, at Fulton, Missouri, Churchill delivered his
famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech. He saw Britain in
the front line of halting communist expansion and
subversion beyond the Soviet Union’s own
acceptable sphere of power in Eastern Europe. He
was now trying to get the Americans to take these
threats seriously. Bevin also saw the Soviet threat
but he had not yet given up trying to persuade
Stalin to work out problems cooperatively while
remaining firm towards him. A Western alliance
directed against the Soviet Union would only
provoke it, and Bevin regarded public condem-
nations such as Churchill had delivered as
counter-productive. Patient firmness was Bevin’s
policy until 1948; meanwhile his suspicions of the
Germans continued to play a considerable part in
his European outlook.