Tempestuous Life Of Aneurin Bevan

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29251, 8 July 1960, Page 11

Tempestuous Life Of Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin Bevan, the most tempestuous politician of post-war Britain, was loved, hated, and feared. He was loved by his own countrymen in the coalmining valleys of Wales; he was feared by his political opponents for the mocking oratory; and hate is not too strong a word for the emotions he for long aroused in the Conservatives of Britain, especially after the notable occasion in which he embraced them with the term “vermin.”

During his most rebellious phase, when he led the Left-wing Bevanites of the Labour Party, he was distrusted and opposed by the Right and especially by the solidly moderate trade union leaders, in spite of his own political origins as a union official. His bid for leadership of the party failed. To the surprise of many he seemed to accept the

inevitable and in recent years the rebel sought “respectability,” apparently content to be second string to Mr Hugh Gaitskell, the man he had once sneered at as “a dessicated calculating machine.”

In the process of mellowing he won new respect and friendship from his old foes, the moderates, but lost much of the regard of his former allies. His goal became the second prize—to become Foreign Secretary of Britain, but that, too, eluded him when the voters at the last General Election rejected the claim of Labour. Welsh Upbringing

Aneurin Bevan was bom In 1897 at the mining town of Tredegar. His parents were unwilling immigrants to the coal valley from sheep farming, which was in decay; they clung to the old Welsh culture and christened their children such names as Blodwyn, Myfanwy, Arianwen, lorwerth. There were 13 children bom of whom five died in their four-room house.

He went to work in the pit at 13, and remained working underground for seven years until he developed nystagmus, a mining disease, caused by . inadequate lighting, affecting the nerves and eyesight. This severe set-back in his first dealings with the outside world seems to have had a fundamental effect: with a job at the pithead, he turned his attention to mental and verbal activity. He began to read even more than before and he entered mining politics as an agitator. It Was at once clear that he was unusually gifted and energetic—but he was held back by a bad stammer. The way that he overcame this paralysing internal obstacle seems also to have been profoundly formative. He drove himself to speak in public—and discovered that, once involved in a fighting debate, his nervousness disappeared. His powers could be released only by this process: thus he was from the start selfdriven to impassioned attack or

exultant banter. This formula meant individual action against an adversary in public—lt militated against committee discussion, peaceful solutions and private life. Bead to Bueeeaa He entered a miners’ lodge, was elected its chairman at 19 and was soon prominent in the councils of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. After World War I he went to London to attend the Central Labour College where he learned more politics and economics for two yean. When he returned home to Tredegar in 1921, the year of the miners’ lock-out, he could not get work. For three years he was partly unemployed but, at the same time, his stature as a champion of the miners grew and his political career began to take shape. He was elected to the Tredegar Urban Council and by 1928, the year of the general strike in which he was against compromise or surrender, he had become a miners’ dispute agent He became a Monmouthshire councillor in 1928, and in 1929 he was elected to Parliament for the Ebbw Vale Division of Monmouthshire, polling two-thirds of the votes cast He then settled in London. In the elections of 1931, when many of his Labour colleagues lost their seats, he was returned unopposed, and had held the seat ever since. In 1939 he Was expelled from the Labour Party, along with Sir Stafford Cripps,

when he took part in the popular front movement which grouped all Left-wing parties, including Communists in a campaign against Fascism. But he was received back less than a year later. National Health Service

Much the most solid and constructive effort of his political career was the establishment of the National Health Service. His early training equipped him to out-manoeuvre the doctors—he turned their flank and captured them by playing to the calloused appetite for power and money of some great consultant physicians. And his driving ihotive was plain —his own experiences had given him ample reason to believe sincerely in the heed for a free medical service for the poor. What was more surprising was his administrative success. He not only established the service promptly, despite all obstacles, but earned the regard of his own civil servants.

He was also charged with the implementation of a big housing programme necessitated by enormous destruction through bombing and the time-lag in war-time building. His policy was to meet the greatest needs first by concentrating on the building of houses to let at reasonable rents for the families in greatest need. Among measures which he Introduced into Parliament was also the National Assistance Act, which swept away the vestiges of the old poor law and formed, as he

said, “the coping-stone on the structure of the social services of Great Britain.” , Resignation As Minister

In the 1950-51 Labour Government he was again Minister of Health until January, 1951, when be became Minister of Labour. But he was finding himself in growing disagreement with the policy of Mr Attlee’s Government.

Within four months he resigned because he objected to Budget proposals, chiefly on the ground thait they introduced into the National Health Scheme charges for false teeth and spectacles which had hitherto been supplied free. Two other Ministers resigned with him. But a truce was called as the General Election of 1951 drew near.

The Labour Government lost and its Right-wing leaders found Mr Bevan and his supporters a sharper thorn in the flesh than ever.

Mr Bevan was elected to Labour’s “Shadow Cabinet” in 1952, but continued to clash with the other leaders. He resigned after strongly criticising the proposal to establish the South-east Asian defence organisation, S.E.A.T.O.

In the struggle for power to succeed Earl Attlee, Mr Bevan’s chief rival was Mr Gaitskell. Their big test of strength came when they fought for the post of trea’ur" the party in 1954. Mr Gaitskell won and eventually succeeded Earl Attlee. From then on Mr Bevan seemed to become less and less the rebel. He was appointed treasurer and in the shadow Cabinet given responsibility for foreign affairs. Return To Feld In 1957 came the parting of the ways with his erstwhile Leftwing supporters. Until then he had always opposed manufacture of the nuclear bomb. But at the party’s annual conference he said: No Foreign Secretary could go oaked into the conference chamber—and secured the rejection of a motion pledging the next Labour Government to ban the manufacture and use of the Hbomb. Without their leader, the Bevtanites lost influence. Mr Bevan lived a semiBohemian life in London and his ntereets were wide. His reading was immense. For five years he was editor of “Tribune,” an independent Socialist weekly of uncompromising character, and did , thl £ post until he took Ministerial office in 1945. He was author of many pamphlets and articles, and wrote ■ In Place 04 Fear,” PubUshed in 1952.

In 1934 he married Miss Jennie fallow Socialist member or Parliament and a miner's daughter. They had no children.