Editing Hugh Gaitskell (section)

=== Cost of rearmament ===
[[Marshall Plan|Marshall Aid]], which had totalled $3.1bn over previous three years, ended officially on 1 January 1951, although in practice it had ended six weeks earlier. It was held that the balance of payments was now strong enough for it no longer to be necessary.<ref name="Dell 1997, p.144" /> [[Harold Wilson]] ([[President of the Board of Trade]]) and [[George Strauss]] ([[Minister of Supply]]) warned Gaitskell that the burden of rearmament was too much for the shortage of raw materials and manufacturing capacity, but Gaitskell ignored them as they were friends of Bevan. On 27 January 1951 Bevan was reshuffled to the Ministry of Labour with Health, now under [[Hilary Marquand]], downgraded to a non-Cabinet appointment.<ref name="Dell 1997, p.146">Dell 1997, p.146</ref> Gaitskell welcomed the changes as reducing an obstacle to economies in health spending.<ref>Campbell 2010, p205</ref>

Gaitskell still favoured discrimination in favour of sterling trade and was opposed to sterling convertibility but was now a lot more pro-American since his October 1950 visit to Washington. By February 1951 he was strongly critical of anti-Americanism in cabinet.<ref>Dell 1997, p.145</ref>

Bevan's Commons speech on 15 February 1951 defended the extra £4.7bn on armaments, although most of it was a warning not to rearm too fast and that communism would be defeated through democratic socialism and not through arms. The following day Gaitskell recorded his regret that for all Bevan's brilliance in oratory he should be "a difficult team worker, and some would say even worse – a thoroughly unreliable and disloyal colleague."<ref>Campbell 2010, p206</ref>