Political Influence
At an after-dinner speech in Burnley on 8 January, Prime Minister Harold Wilson criticised those who were "complaining that the other fellow is not pulling his weight" including trade unionists who pointed to the failures of individual employers. Wilson declared "What we want is 'back Britain', not back-biting". Wilson, who later wrote that the campaign "was a helpful and robust response to the gloom and near-defeatism" after devaluation, put Edmund Dell, Under-Secretary at the Department of Economic Affairs, in charge of government assistance; Dell visited Colt on 8 January 1968, but kept his assistance largely concealed.
Cabinet minister Richard Crossman wrote in his diary on 7 January that the vigorously expanding campaign was a "political windfall", but that it was "something we should have nothing to do with". The Labour Party found itself in difficulty when it ordered 2,000 posters with the slogan "Back Britain with Labour" for local Labour Parties to display. After a complaint from a member of the Industrial Society the posters were withdrawn. The Industrial Society also reported resisting an attempt by the Conservative Party to "borrow" the slogan for political purposes.
Read more about this topic: I'm Backing Britain
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or influence:
“Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, at intervals of three centuries were, in a political sense, the levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea finding its fulcrum in the interests of man.”
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“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
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