MR BEVIN’S 67th BIRTHDAY: UNION’S APPEAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 March 1948, Page 5

MR BEVIN’S 67th BIRTHDAY: UNION’S APPEAL

LONDON, March 14. The Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin) always receives a warm welcome when he makes public appearances in places remote from the party fold. With Mr R. A. Eden and the Earl of Halifax as the other principal speakers, Mr Bevin received such a welcome this week in the heart of the City of London when the English Speaking Union held a dinner in the Egyptian room of the Mansion House. The chief purpose of the dinner was to launch an appeal for £250,000 to sustain and extend the unions work for English-speaking amity and understanding throughout the world. It also, however, happened to be Mr Bevin’s sixty-seventh birthday, and the Lord Mayor (Sir Frederick Wells), who presided, did not let it pass unmarked. At a signal, the orchestra in the gallery broke into strains of “Happy Birthday,” and the distinguished assembly of 250—including some of the most distinguished critics of Socialism —joined in signing the refrain to “Dear Ernie. Smiling broadly, Mr Bevin replied by urging his friends in the City of London to support the union’s appeal generously, “because you make the money and, after all, these appeals serve as an essential blood-letting ° P It was announced later that before the launching of the appeal £BO,OOO had been contributed to it, mainly by firms in the City of London.