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John Maynard Keynes At the height of the Great Depression, in 1933, Keynes published The Means to Prosperity, which contained specific policy recommendations for tackling unemployment in a global recession, chiefly counter cyclical public spending. He worked with David Lloyd George and with Churchill. Keynesian-like policies were adopted by Sweden and Germany. In 1931, he received considerable support for his views on countercyclical public spending in Chicago, then America's foremost centre for economic views alternative to the mainstream. However, orthodox economic opinion remained generally hostile regarding fiscal intervention to mitigate the depression, until just before the outbreak of war. On the whole, his ideas achieved widespread acceptance Ernest Bevin He had little formal education, briefly attending two village schools At the age of eleven, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol, where he joined the Bristol Socialist Society. In 1910 he became secretary of the Bristol branch of the Dockers' Union, and in 1914 he became a national organiser for the union. He had developed his oratorical skills from his time as a Baptist laypreacher, which he had given up as a profession to become a full-time labour activist. In 1922 Bevin was one of the founding leaders of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), which soon became Britain's largest trade union. Upon his election as the union's general secretary, he became one of country's leading labour leaders, and their strongest advocate within the Labour Party. Politically, he was on the right-wing of the Labour Party, strongly opposed to communism and direct action; He took part in the British General Strike in 1926, but without enthusiasm. He had poor relations with the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and was not surprised when MacDonald formed a National Government with theConservatives during the economic crisis of 1931, for which MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party. Bevin was a pragmatic trade unionist who believed in getting material benefits for his

members through direct negotiations, with strike action to be used as a last resort. During the 1930s he became increasingly involved in foreign policy. He was a firm opponent of fascism and of British appeasement of the fascist powers. When Winston Churchill formed an all-party coalition government to defend the country in the crisis of World War II in 1940, Bevin was appointed to the position of Minister for Labour and National Service, although Bevin was not actually an MP at the time. But eventually, a parliamentary position was found and he was elected as MP for the London constituency of Wandsworth Central to clear up this constitutional anomaly. During the war Bevin was responsible for diverting nearly 48,000 military conscripts to work in the coal industry. These workers became known as the Bevin Boys. He also drew up the demobilisation scheme that ultimately returned millions of military personnel and civilian war workers back into the peacetime economy. Bevin became Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was almost bankrupt as a result of the war and yet was still maintaining a huge air force and conscript army, in an attempt to remain a global power. The effort of paying for all this - and for the US loans - required austerity at home in order to maximise export earnings. Bevin was unsentimental about the British Empire in places where the growth of nationalism had made direct rule no longer practical, and was part of the Cabinet which approved a speedy British withdrawal from India in 1947, and from other territories. Bevin, a determined anti-Communist, was a strong supporter of the United States in the early years of the Cold War and a leading advocate for British involvement in the Korean War. Two of the key institutions of the post-war world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Marshall Plan for aid to post-war Europe, were in considerable part the result of Bevin's efforts during these years. This policy, little different from that of the Conservatives. Bevin in office showed the same pragmatic stubbornness that had characterised his years as a trade union leader, and as one of the integral organisers of the Labour Party. Like Churchill, he was an old fashioned

English (as opposed to British) patriot, which was why the two leaders worked well together. But he was also an internationalist, a supporter of the American alliance and of European unity. He saw clearly that Britain's days of imperial greatness were over, something he did not regret for, in his view, the working class had never benefited from the Empire.

Stafford Cripps Cripps was the nephew maternally of Beatrice Webb. His father was a Conservative member of the House of Commons and comes from a privileged background he was a long time supporter of socialism and the rights of working people. During World War II he served in a number of positions under the Churchill led National Coalition, including Minister of Aircraft Production. After the War he was a member of the Attlee Labour government, serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1947 to 1950 in which post he supported nationalisation of heavy industry. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1942, a period that included both the Soviets alliance with Hitler. He was elected in a by-election for the solidly Labour seat of Bristol East. He moved rapidly to the left, and became an outspokensocialist and a strong proponent of Marxist social and economic policies. He enthusiastically advocated Marxist economic views of government control of the means of production and distribution. In 1932 he was one of the founders of the Socialist League, composed largely of members of the Independent Labour Party who rejected its decision to disaffiliate from Labour. He became the archetype of the British upper-class doctrinaire socialist so common in the 1930s. Cripps opposed British rearmament. In early 1939, however, Cripps was expelled from the Labour Party for his advocacy of a Popular Front with the Communist Party and anti-appeasement Liberals and Conservatives. When Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition government in 1940, he appointed Cripps ambassador to the Soviet Union, in the (perhaps naive) view that Cripps, an avowed Marxist, was the best person to try to negotiate with Stalin, who was at this time allied with Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Cripps led a mission to Moscow in 1940 and unsuccessfully attempted to warn Stalin of the

possibility of an attack by Hitler on the Soviet Union. When Hitler attacked in June 1941, Cripps became a key figure in forging an alliance between the western powers and the Soviet Union. n 1942 Cripps returned to Britain and made a broadcast about the Soviet war effort. The popular response was phenomenal, and Cripps rapidly became one of the most popular politicians in the country, despite having no party backing. He was appointed a member of the War Cabinet. When Labour won the 1945 general election, Clement Attlee appointed Cripps President of the Board of Trade, the second most important economic post in the government. Although still a strong socialist, Cripps had modified his views sufficiently to be able to work with mainstream Labour ministers. In Britain's desperate post-war economic circumstances, Cripps became associated with the policy of "austerity." He enforced rationing with equal severity against all classes. Although Cripps's severe manner and harsh policies made him unpopular, he won respect for the sincerity of his convictions and his tireless labours for Britain's recovery. His name once induced an infamous Spoonerism when the BBC announcer McDonald Hobley introduced him as 'Sir Stifford Crapps'.