Forthright, 49-year-old Ellis Smith is a deep-dyed socialist. He is also a firm friend of the potters who sent him to Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent (he once publicly protested to the War Office because his plate at an Army dinner was marked “foreign manufacture”). Last week crockery and conviction caused Socialist Smith to quit his job as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade—in protest against his fellow-socialist, Board of Trade President Sir Stafford Cripps.
Smith wanted the pottery industry nationalized and expanded. Sir Stafford Cripps refused, ordered Britons to eat off white (austerity) dinnerware and export all fancy ware. In a huff, Smith resigned his post.
It was the first breach in the solid wall of Labor rule, and the first open break among the Labor rulers over the degree of socialism the Government should apply. Prime Minister Clement Attlee, an apostle of the middle way, firmly accepted Ellis Smith’s resignation.
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