Ernest Bevin
| The Right Honourable Ernest Bevin |
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Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
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| In office 27 July 1945 – 9 March 1951 |
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| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
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| Preceded by | Anthony Eden |
| Succeeded by | Herbert Morrison |
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Minister of Labour and National Service
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| In office 13 May 1940 – 23 May 1945 |
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| Prime Minister | Winston Churchill |
| Preceded by | Ernest Brown |
| Succeeded by | Rab Butler |
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General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union
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| In office 1 January 1922 – 27 July 1945 |
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| Preceded by | Office Created |
| Succeeded by | Arthur Deakin |
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| Born | 9 March 1881 Winsford, England |
| Died | 14 April 1951 (aged 70) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
| Religion | Baptist |
Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881–14 April 1951) was a British Labour politician, best known for his time as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government.
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Early life
Bevin was born in the village of Winsford in Somerset, England, to Diana Bevin who, since 1877, had described herself as a widow. His father is unknown. After his mother's death in 1889, the young Bevin lived with his half-sister's family, moving to Morchard Bishop in Devon. Compared to most politicians, he had little formal education, briefly attending two village schools before gaining a place at Hayward's School, Crediton, in 1890, leaving in 1892.[1] He later recalled being asked as a child to read the newspaper aloud for the benefit of adults in his family who were illiterate. At the age of eleven, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol, where he joined the Bristol Socialist Society. In 1910 he became secretary of the Bristol branch of the Dockers' Union, and in 1914 he became a national organiser for the union.
Bevin was a physically huge man, strong and by the time of his political prominence very heavy. He spoke with a strong West Country accent, so much so that on one occasion listeners at Cabinet had difficulty in deciding whether he was talking about "Hugh and Nye (Gaitskell and Bevan)" or "you and I". He had developed his oratorical skills from his time as a Baptist laypreacher, which he had given up as a profession to become a full-time labour activist.
Bevin was married and had a daughter.
Transport and General Workers Union
In 1922 Bevin was one of the founding leaders of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), which soon became Britain's largest trade union. Upon his election as the union's general secretary, he became one of country's leading labour leaders, and their strongest advocate within the Labour Party. Politically, he was on the right-wing of the Labour Party, strongly opposed to communism and direct action - allegedly due to anti-Semitic paranoia, seeing communism as a 'Jewish plot' against Britain.[2] He took part in the British General Strike in 1926, but without enthusiasm.
Bevin had no great faith in parliamentary politics, but had nevertheless been a member of the Labour Party from the time of its formation. He had poor relations with the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and was not surprised when MacDonald formed a National Government with the Conservatives during the economic crisis of 1931, for which MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party. Bevin was a pragmatic trade unionist who believed in getting material benefits for his members through direct negotiations, with strike action to be used as a last resort.
Foreign policy interests
During the 1930s, with the Labour Party split and weakened, Bevin co-operated with the Conservative-dominated government on practical issues. But during this period he became increasingly involved in foreign policy. He was a firm opponent of fascism and of British appeasement of the fascist powers. In 1935, arguing that Italy should be punished by sanctions for her recent invasion of Abyssinia, he made a blistering attack on the pacifists in the Labour Party, accusing the Labour leader George Lansbury at the Party Conference of "hawking his conscience around" asking to be told what to do with it.
Lansbury resigned and was replaced as leader by his deputy Clement Attlee, who along with Lansbury and Stafford Cripps had been one of only three Labour Cabinet Ministers to be re-elected at the General Election in 1931. After the November 1935 General Election Herbert Morrison, newly returned to Parliament, challenged Attlee for the leadership but was defeated. In later years Bevin gave Attlee (whom he privately referred to as "little Clem") staunch support, especially in 1947 when Herbert Morrison and Stafford Cripps led further intrigue against Attlee.
Wartime Minister of Labour
In 1940 Winston Churchill formed an all-party coalition government to defend the country in the crisis of World War II. As part of this he appointed Bevin to the position of Minister for Labour and National Service, although Bevin was not actually an MP at the time. To clear up this constitutional anomaly a parliamentary position was hurriedly found for him and Bevin was elected unopposed to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP)for the London constituency of Wandsworth Central.
The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act gave Bevin complete control over the labour force and the allocation of manpower, and he was determined to use this unprecedented authority not just to help win the war but also to strengthen the bargaining position of trade unions in the postwar future. Bevin once quipped: "They say Gladstone was at the Treasury from 1860 until 1930. I'm going to be at the Ministry of Labour from 1940 until 1990." Given that the industrial settlement he introduced remained largely unaltered by successive postwar administrations until the reforms of Margaret Thatcher's government in the mid-1980s, this was a prescient remark.
During the war Bevin was responsible for diverting nearly 48,000 military conscripts to work in the coal industry. These workers became known as the Bevin Boys. He also drew up the demobilisation scheme that ultimately returned millions of military personnel and civilian war workers back into the peacetime economy. Bevin remained Minister of Labour until 1945 when Labour left the Coalition government. On V-E Day he stood next to Churchill looking down on the crowd on Whitehall.
Foreign Secretary
After the 1945 general election, Attlee had it in mind to appoint Bevin as Chancellor and Hugh Dalton as Foreign Secretary, but ultimately changed his mind and swapped them round. Some claim that he was persuaded by King George VI to do so; but others note that whoever was Chancellor would have to work with Herbert Morrison, with whom Bevin did not get on. Indeed, it was once noted that Bevin, on overhearing a (supposed) private conversation in which somebody commented "the trouble with Herbert [Morrison] is that he is his own worst enemy", immediately responded with a booming "Not while I'm alive he ain't!" (Some sources say this was about Nye Bevan, who he also disliked)
One anecdote from the period after Labour's 1945 landslide election victory was that, late on a Friday afternoon, he was left a number of red ministerial boxes, with a note inviting him to take the boxes home to read over the weekend if he so desired. On the following Monday morning the civil servants found the boxes as they had left them on the previous Friday with the note amended with the words "a kind thought, but sadly mistaken". At that time most diplomats were recruited from public schools, and it was said of Bevin - as a compliment to the respect which he had earned - that it was hard to imagine him filling any other job in the Foreign Office except perhaps that of an old and truculent lift attendant.
Bevin became Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was almost bankrupt as a result of the war and yet was still maintaining a huge air force and conscript army, in an attempt to remain a global power. The effort of paying for all this - and for the US loans - required austerity at home in order to maximise export earnings, while Britain's colonies and other client states were required to keep their reserves in pounds as "sterling balances". Britain was still closely allied to France - with whom the Dunkirk Treaty was signed in 1950 - and both countries continued to be treated as major partners at international summits alongside the USA and USSR until Paris in 1960. Broadly speaking, all this remained Britain's foreign policy until the late 1950s, when the humiliation of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the economic revival of continental Europe, now united as the "Common Market", caused a reappraisal.
Bevin was unsentimental about the British Empire in places where the growth of nationalism had made direct rule no longer practical, and was part of the Cabinet which approved a speedy British withdrawal from India in 1947, and from other territories. Yet at this stage Britain still maintained a network of client states in the Middle East (Egypt until the early 1950s, Iraq and Jordan until the late 1950s), major bases in such places as Cyprus and Suez (until 1954) and expected to remain in control of parts of Africa for many more decades, Bevin approving the construction of a huge new base in East Africa.
Bevin, a determined anti-Communist, was a strong supporter of the United States in the early years of the Cold War and a leading advocate for British involvement in the Korean War. Two of the key institutions of the post-war world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Marshall Plan for aid to post-war Europe, were in considerable part the result of Bevin's efforts during these years. This policy, little different from that of the Conservatives ("Hasn't Anthony Eden grown fat?" as wags had it), was a source of frustration to some backbench Labour MPs, who early in the 1945 Parliament formed a "Keep Left" group to push for a more Left-Wing foreign policy.
In 1945, Bevin advocated the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, saying in the House of Commons that "There should be a study of a house directly elected by the people of the world to whom the nations are accountable." He also made a crucial intervention in the cabinet committee GEN 75, insisting that the United Kingdom should commit to developing an atomic bomb whatever the cost, because of the effect on Britain's international standing; Bevin's support was said to have swung the meeting.[3]
Bevin was said to have defined his foreign policy as "to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!"[4]
Bevin, Palestine and Israel
Bevin was Foreign Secretary during the period when the Mandate of Palestine ended and the State of Israel was created. Bevin failed to secure the stated British objectives in this area of foreign policy, which included a peaceful settlement of the situation and the avoidance of involuntary population transfers. Personally, Bevin was opposed to the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state, and supported the creation of a unitary and exclusively Arab-ruled state in western Palestine. Bevin negotiated "the Portsmouth Treaty" with Iraq (signed on 15 January 1948), which was accompanied by a British undertaking to withdraw from Palestine in such a fashion as to provide for swift Arab occupation of all its territory. According to then-Iraqi foreign minister Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali,
"It was agreed that Iraq would buy for the Iraqi police force 50,000 tommy-guns. We intended to hand them over to the Palestine army volunteers for self-defence. Great British was ready to provide the Iraqi army with arms and ammunition as set forth in a list prepared by the Iraqi General Staff. The British undertook to withdraw from Palestine gradually, so that Arab forces could enter every area evacuated by the British in order that the whole of Palestine should be in Arab bands after the British withdrawal. The meeting ended and we were all optimistic about the future of Palestine."[5]
Regarding Bevin's handling of the Middle East situation, at least one commentator, David Leitch, has suggested that Bevin lacked diplomatic finesse.[6] Leitch argues that Bevin tended to make a bad situation worse by making ill-chosen abrasive remarks. He also argues that Zionists were angered by Bevin's obstinate adherence to policies that limited Jewish immigration into Palestine. Bevin was infuriated by the refusal of the USA to open its doors to more Jewish displaced persons.
Bevin was also infuriated by attacks on British troops by militant Zionist groups, particularly those made by the more extreme groups, Menachem Begin's Irgun and the Lehi (after the King David Hotel bombing, the Haganah restricted itself to illegal immigration activities[7]). However, Britain's economic weakness, and its dependence on the financial support of the United States (Britain had received a large American loan in 1946, and mid-1947 was to see the launching of the Marshall Plan), left him little alternative but to yield to American pressure over Palestine policy. At the reconvened London Conference in January 1947, the Jewish negotiators were only prepared to accept partition and the Arab negotiators only a unitary state (which would automatically have had an Arab majority). Neither would accept limited autonomy under overall British rule. When no agreement could be reached, Bevin threatened to hand the problem to the United Nations. The Jewish representatives, not believing that he would carry out his threat, and the Arabs, believing that their cause would prevail before the General Assembly, called his bluff. Bevin accordingly announced that he would "ask the UN to take the Palestine question into consideration."[7] A week later, the strategic reasoning behind Britain's interest for retaining a presence in Palestine was transformed when the intention to withdraw from India in August of that year was announced.[7] The decision to allow the United Nations to determine Palestine's future was formalised by the Attlee government's public declaration in February 1947 that Britain's Mandate in Palestine had become "unworkable." During the remainder of the Mandate, fighting between the Jewish and Arab communities continued. Britain's final withdrawal at the end of the Mandate, when the founding of the State of Israel was declared and five Arab states immediately intervened, saw the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The army of Jordan, a British client state since the 1920s, was commanded by a British General, Sir John Glubb. This war ended in an Israeli victory, and the displacement of thousands of Arab civilians - the very opposite of what Bevin seems to have wanted.
Bevin was undeniably a plain-spoken man, some of whose remarks struck many as insensitive, but his biographer Alan Bullock rejects suggestions that he was motivated by personal anti-Semitism. The historian Howard Sachar cites a source which suggests otherwise. Sachar quotes a remark by Richard Crossman, a Labour Party MP and a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, who met Bevin on 4 August 1947. Sachar claims that Crossman described Bevin's outlook as:
"corresponding roughly with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic canard of the 1920s.[8] The main points of Bevin's discourse were ... that the Jews had successfully organised a worldwide conspiracy against Britain and against him personally."[9][10]
One of Bevin's last comments on the topic was: "The majority proposal is so manifestly unjust to the Arabs that it is difficult to see how we could reconcile it with our conscience."[11]
In 1946, an Irgun plot to assassinate Bevin and other British Parliament members thought to be "anti-Semitic" was foiled by the MI5.[12]
Later life
His health failing, Bevin reluctantly allowed himself to be moved to become Lord Privy Seal in March 1951. 'I am neither a Lord, nor a Privy, nor a Seal', he is said to have commented.[13] He died the following month, still holding the key to his red box. His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.
When on Stafford Cripps's death in 1952 Attlee, no longer Prime Minister, was invited to broadcast a tribute by the BBC, he was looked after by announcer Frank Phillips. After the broadcast, Phillips took him to the hospitality room for a drink and in order to make conversation said:
‘I suppose you will miss Sir Stafford, sir’.
Attlee fixed him with his eye: ’Did you know Ernie Bevin?'
‘I have met him, sir’
‘There’s the man I miss’.
A statue commemorating Bevin stands opposite Devon Mansions and the former St Olave's Grammar School in Tooley Street, South London.
Legacy
Bevin in office showed the same pragmatic stubbornness that had characterised his years as a trade union leader, and as one of the integral organisers of the Labour Party. Like Churchill, he was an old fashioned English (as opposed to British) patriot, which was why the two leaders worked well together. But he was also an internationalist, a supporter of the American alliance and of European unity. He saw clearly that Britain's days of imperial greatness were over, something he did not regret for, in his view, the working class had never benefited from the Empire.
For his critics, his most lasting legacy remains the failure of his Palestine policy.
See also
- Aneurin Bevan
- Ernest Bevin College
- Bevin Boys
- SS Exodus
References
- ↑ 'From the hedgerows of Devon to the Foreign Office' - Roger Steer. Devon Life Magazine, July 2002.
- ↑ Peter Weiler, Ernest Bevin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 170-171
- ↑ Peter Hennessy, "Cabinets and the Bomb", The British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 48.
- ↑ See Spectator, 20 April 1951.
- ↑ Jamali, Mohammed Fadhel. "Arab Struggle; Experiences of Mohammed Fadhel Jamali". Widener Library, Havard University. http://physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/Fadhel.html. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
- ↑ Leitch, David (1963). "Explosion at the King David Hotel". In Sissons, Michael; French, Philip. Age of Austerity 1945-51. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p. 81.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Cesarani, David (2010). Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal And Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945-1948. London: Vintage Books.
- ↑ Note. This slip, uncorrected by an historian of Sachar's stature, is odd. The Protocols date back to 1903. The text may allude to the diffusion in the 1920s of the English translation by Victor Marsden in 1920.
- ↑ [[Howard Sachar |Sachar, Howard]] (1996). A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (2 ed.). Knopf. p. 296. ISBN 0394736796.
- ↑ Crossman, Richard. A Nation Reborn. London: Hamish Hamilton. p. 69. "he [Bevin] became convinced that the Jews were organising a world conspiracy against poor old Britain and, in particular, against poor old Ernie"
- ↑ British Cabinet Minutes CP47/259 18Sep47 p4
- ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (6 March 2006). "Telegram warned of plot to kill Attlee's ministers". The Guardian (Guardian News and Media). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/mar/06/israel.past. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
- ↑ Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee (London: Richard Cohen Books, 1997), p. 285
Further reading
- Alan Bullock's magisterial three-volume biography Life and Times of Ernest Bevin was re-published in a single-volume abridged version by Politicos Publising in 2002.
- Denis MacShane contributed an essay on Bevin to the Dictionary of Labour Biography, Greg Rosen (ed), Politicos Publishing, 2001.
External links
- Chanter, Alan; Peter Chen (2007). "WW2DB: Ernest Bevin". http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=420. Retrieved 2007-11-04.
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Ernest-Bevin
- Peter Day. Jewish terrorists plotted to assassinate Ernest Bevin in 1946, The Sunday Times, March 5, 2006.
- British Security Service files on Jewish terrorist activities, The National Archives, released through Freedom of information legislation in March 2006.
- From the hedgerows of Devon to the Foreign Office - Roger Steer.
- Annotated bibliography for Ernest Bevin from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by Harry Nathan |
Member of Parliament for Wandsworth Central 1940–1950 |
Constituency abolished |
| Preceded by George Hicks |
Member of Parliament for Woolwich East 1950–1951 |
Succeeded by Christopher Mayhew |
| Political offices | ||
| New title | General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union 1922–1945 |
Succeeded by Arthur Deakin |
| Preceded by A. A. H. Findlay |
President of the Trades Union Congress 1937 |
Succeeded by H. H. Elvin |
| Preceded by Ernest Brown |
Minister of Labour and National Service 1940–1945 |
Succeeded by Rab Butler |
| Preceded by Anthony Eden |
Foreign Secretary 1945–1951 |
Succeeded by Herbert Stanley Morrison |
| Preceded by The Viscount Addison |
Lord Privy Seal 1951 |
Succeeded by Richard Stokes |
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