Bevan, Aneurin

Bevan, Aneurin (1897–1960). Perhaps the greatest and certainly one of the most controversial of Labour Party politicians, Bevan was born in Tredegar, a miner's son in a dissenting family. His creation of the National Health Service in 1948 remains Labour's most enduring legacy to the people of the United Kingdom. During the war years he was virtually a one-man opposition to Churchill and had no ministerial experience when Attlee appointed him minister of health in 1945. He resigned when his cabinet colleagues in 1951 imposed charges on dental and ophthalmic treatment in order to pay inflated defence estimates during the Korean War, a resignation they must have anticipated. He was not an easy colleague to work with. He twice lost the party whip (1939 and 1955) and in the 1950s he opposed party leadership on defence and foreign affairs. He and his wife Jenny Lee, also an MP, were regarded by many party workers as the socialist soul of Labour. His followers became known as Bevanites and were accused of forming a party within a party around the Tribune newspaper. But they also found Bevan difficult, especially after he denounced unilateral nuclear disarmament at the 1957 party conference, declaring that no Labour foreign secretary should be sent ‘naked into the conference chamber’. Thereafter he was reconciled with Gaitskell.

A brilliant orator, who mastered a residual stammer, he was capable of taking on Churchill and Lloyd George. His jeer in 1948 (much interpreted) that the Tories were ‘lower than vermin’ gave his adversaries a propaganda feast. He was the most loved and hated politician of his time.

Alan Sked