All the major industries will be owned and controlled by the community, but there may well exist for a long time many smaller enterprises which are l… - Clement Attlee

The British people now realise the danger with which they are faced, and know that in the event of a German victory everything they have built up will be destroyed. The Germans kill not only men, but ideas. Our people are resolved as never before in their history.

[Attlee] reminded the delegates that it was vital to reduce costs by greater efficiency, which meant that both employers and employed had to seek in every way to attain it. He did not believe in lowering wages as a means of reducing costs, but equally it was necessary to realize that increases of wages that were not matched by increases of production would gravely impair their chances of getting rapidly over their difficulties. Increased demands for money payments, when there was no increase of goods to meet them led straight away to inflation. There was a danger that when a justifiable advance in wages for an under-paid section of the workers had been granted it resulted in demands from those who had enjoyed higher wages to maintain the same differential. This was bad economics and bad social morality. He had been disturbed at the evidence that some people were abusing the social services in such matters as sickness benefit. They could not have them sabotaged by misuse.

A great campaign was launched to try to prevent the success of the Marshall plan in western Europe. Why? I am forced to the conclusion that it was because economic recovery in western Europe did not suit the foreign policy of the Soviet Government. Communism flourishes where the standard of life is low. The Communists did not care a jot for the sufferings of the people. If they had had their way—and their campaign against the Marshall plan has been an utter failure—the remarkable progress towards recovery which has taken place in western Europe would not have taken place. Aid from across the Atlantic would have been rejected. Your standard of life would have been reduced in order that there might be fertile ground for Communist propaganda.