If the workers see themselves faced with defeat through starvation, they will prefer to go down fighting rather than fainting — and whether or not we… - Ernest Bevin

What I say is this, and I am not afraid of saying it. I sit on a Colonial Development Committee under an Act passed by the Labour Government, and I see the expenditure of millions of pounds going on for the development of areas where native races have not yet begun to be industrialised. You talk about the coal trade. Ought there not to be some control against the possible development of coal in Tanganyika and in East Africa, which might come into competition with your coal here at a time when the world does not want it?

It is placing the Executive and the Movement in an absolutely wrong position to be taking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what you ought to do with it.

(b) Under existing policy, however, we cannot agree to any proposals which mean our getting involved in the economic affairs of Europe beyond the point at which we could, if we wished, disengage ourselves. There are no grounds for abandoning this policy. (c) Any surrender of political sovereignty in matters of vital importance would jeopardise our ability to maintain the policy at (b). We must therefore maintain a very strict reserve in regard to schemes for the pooling of sovereignty or the establishment of European supra-national machinery.