In 1945, the Attlee Cabinet thought that after a reconstruction period Britain as a major world power should promote a multilateral international trade system. They also thought that Britain should foster colonial welfare and economic progress for British prestige. The first eighteen months of the Labour Government's life provided little evidence of systematic exploitation of colonial resources to solve British economic difficulties. But in 1947, confronted with the economic embarrassment of a winter fuel crisis and a convertibility fiasco in summer, the Attlee government sought to ease its economic problems by drawing on colonial resources. Especially the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, worried about British dependence on America and was Captured by the imperial option based on large-scale colonial development. In January 1948, Bevin announced his grand design for a union of western European states sustained by a system of Euro-African development. He thought that Britain could re-emerge as an independent world power by the leading the "Western Union". His idea to boost British power through large-scale colonial development was supported by back-benchers of both parties. In reality Britain did not deliver sufficient capital equipment to carry out their colonial development plans. On the contrary, the colonies were hit with severe controls on trade and could not use their earnings, particularly dollars, for imports and development schemes. They sent dollars to London in exchange for "frozen" sterling balances. After the 1947 sterling crisis, the Attlee government defined the first priority of foreign economic policy as the attainment of 'dollar viability. For Treasury officials, the attainment of dollar viability was the essential step in restoring Britain's position in the international economy along with the US. For Labour Ministers, dollars were indispensable to sustain the welfare state and full employment. The Treasury-led foreign economic policy dominated the Attlee government's colonial economic and development policy. Promoting large-scale colonial development was not desirable because such development schemes would necessitate supplying commodities to the colonies instead of exporting them to areas that used dollars. What was important for Labour ministers and the Treasury was building up the dollar-surplus colonial economy through the sterling area system and physical controls in order to enable Britain to take its place in a multilateral trading world and to sustain the pound sterling as an international currency. As Bevin's grand design was fading, this dollar-surplus colonial economy proved its worth.