Ernest Bevin

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26397, 16 April 1951, Page 6

Ernest Bevin

It is sad that Mr Ernest Bevin did not live longer to enjoy life in lighter harness. It is only a little more than a month since Mr Bevin laid down the onerous duties and heavy responsibilities of the Foreign Secretaryship. If ever a man earned, by sheer hard work, honest endeavour, and great achievement, a period of retirement for relaxation and reflection, Mr Bevin did. When he left the Foreign Office on March 9, on his seventieth birthday, world-wide tributes were paid to one whose life of active work began at the age of IL A handicap of

little formal education was compensated for by immense persona] qualities which enabled Ernest Bevin to educate himself magnificently in the school of experience. Step by step he moved along to the top of the trade union movement in Britain; from that eminence into the war-time Government as Minister of Labour. His life’s work reached its peak, and Ernest Bevin became a British and a world statesman when he was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1945. His background was quite unlike that of any of his predecessors for several centuries, and while several traceable defects in his Foreign Secretaryship sprang from it, great advantages also came. Ernest Bevin had been a negotiator for most of his working life; he ha<i learnt to see, and never lose sight of, fundamentals. He took charge of Britain’s foreign affairs at a time charged with immense difficulties. A severely strained nation was expecting a very great deal from the victory it had done so much to earn. Mr Bevin steered the British people through the frustration and disillusionment of international politics in the immediate post-war years; despite disappointments, confidence grew that Britain’s major policy lines were the right ones—the only ones. The trust thereby implied was no small tribute to Mr Bevin. It may be that the historian of the future will not put Mr Bevin among Britain’s great Foreign Secretaries. But the more distant judgment may well coincide with present impressions that as Foreign Secretary Mr Bevin filled so adequately the needs of the times that his appointment was another manifestation of the British genius for finding the right man for the job at critical periods. So great a patriot could have no better monument; there is no greater reason for pride in Ernest Bevin s career than in the belief that from the humblest beginnings he became, at a particular juncture in his country’s history, the best man to guide its foreign affairs.