This is My Truth: Aneurin Bevan in Tribune

INTRODUCTION

ANEURIN B EVAN has earned a substantial legacy in British politics. For members of the Labour Party and people across Britain, he has become a hero figure as a result of his role in establishing the National Health Service (NHS). 1 From Tony Blair to Jeremy Corbyn, 2 references to his politics are littered throughout the speeches of Labour politicians; it is rare to find a speech on health, for instance, that does not mention Bevan. In fact, this is a tendency that goes beyond the realm of party politics. Bevan is often invoked by politicians outside his own party, even including former Conservative Health Secretaries. 3 His memory is marked by a statue in Cardiff as well as the Aneurin Bevan Memorial Stones north of his hometown of Tredegar. Both monuments stand as reminders of the high regard in he is held. Over 125 years since his birth, Bevan is still revered as a inspirational politician.

It is not only his actions that receive significant attention, but also his words. Dai Smith notes the importance of speech as an expression of Bevan’s politics and the aspirations of his people:

Public speech, as interpreted and practised by Bevan, was an indictment of the suffocating wisdom of established superiority in its settled forms, whether in the mode of a sweeping Churchillian oration or a humble Baldwin homily. His rhetoric, not on one note but rich in its tonality of meaning and expressiveness, was designed to offer available forms of representative leadership. How else in a democracy should socialists offer themselves in a representative capacity to the people? ... The question of his power of speech becomes central to our view of this man. Bevan understood that it was language alone which allowed his listeners to comprehend reality as something which could be fashioned in its plasticity not just endured in its materiality.4

Bevan is hailed as a great orator. As a result, his pronouncements are frequently repeated, and his communication skills have become the subject of analysis.5 Quotes, placards, posters and various merchandise have been adorned with Bevan’s words, including lines that he likely never said, such as ‘We will Tredegarise you’, or ‘The NHS will last as long as there are folk to fight for it’.6 Genuine or fictitious, whether they are being repeated at anniversary celebrations for the NHS or to challenge political opponents, Bevan’s words have become timeless and transmitted across generations.

Despite the admiration and respect reserved for Bevan, his legacy has often-times been reduced to snappy quotes and one-liners that can fit onto a tea towel or a Twitter banner. Furthermore, he is a figure championed by opposing characters, which often leads to his words being abused, misused or taken out of context.7 It is not surprising to find, therefore, that people from different sides of the Labour Party have claimed Bevan’s legacy when engaging in ideological, as well as personal, battles. He can be all things to all people: a radical and idealistic politician to some, and to others, a pragmatic institution builder.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Bevan is so often reduced to snappy lines: apart from his 1944 tract Why Not Trust the Tories?8 and his 1952 book In Place of Fear,9 a bibliography of Bevan’s writing is not readily available. Consequently, there may be an over-reliance on key quotes, rather than a deeper engagement with his disparate works. Regardless of the reason, the reduction of Bevan into soundbite form simplifies the politics of a politician who had a significant impact and continues to invoke passion in society’s popular memory. A politician who, this author argues, can provide lessons for contemporary politics.

Often overlooked in favour of Bevan’s most famous speeches, there exist hundreds of articles in the pages of Tribune. Bevan wrote almost weekly for the socialist political magazine from 1937 until his death in 1960, amassing a collection of over 300 articles.10 Unfortunately, these articles are not so readily accessible beyond the archives. While several limited examples have been reproduced in various forms, sometimes in their entirety or quoted in biographies and books, Bevan’s contributions to the magazine have never before been brought together and disseminated more widely.11

This is My Truth represents the first dedicated curation of Bevan’s contributions in Tribune. Many articles could have been selected to give us an insight into Bevan’s political outlook; narrowing them down has therefore been a difficult task. Nevertheless, the current collection seeks to identify the most relevant and important articles by focusing on key themes, specifically those that appear most often in Bevan’s work and shed light on his political philosophy. This introduction will outline these key themes in detail following an exploration into significant moments in Bevan’s career in order to contextualise and demonstrate the development of his writing and of his ideas. The story of Bevan’s life has been told many times,12 but through this introduction we can gain an understanding of the events that shaped him, his influences and those subjects that he sought to analyse and understand.

BEVAN AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Born in Tredegar in 1897, Bevan left school at the age of thirteen and began working underground at Ty-Trist Colliery. Even as a youngster, Bevan became heavily involved in politics and gained significant popularity (and notoriety) within local trade union politics. In 1916, aged just nineteen, he became chairman of his miners’ lodge and would also go on to become a local delegate of the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF) to the Labour Party Conference in 1917.13 During this period, Bevan became associated with a number of local figures in the labour movement and the Plebs’ League, which provided him with an education in Marxism. Individuals such as Sidney Jones, Walter Conway and Noah Ablett helped to provide Bevan with the intellectual tools to understand his environment. It was from these individuals, and attending education classes run by them, that Bevan was introduced to politics not just as a practical activity but also as a philosophy, a theory of work and a way of life.

It was not only the politics of the town and its activists that inspired the young Bevan. His family was also a major influence. For instance, Bevan’s father, David Bevan, helped to shape him and his politics. A Welsh-speaker, David was a member of the Welsh cultural organisation Cymmrodorion and won prizes at local eisteddfodau. He was also a bookworm and ‘delightedly he discovered that he had one son who would accompany him there’.14 Although David did not pass on the Welsh language to his son, he inspired in him a love of reading, as well as his individualism.15

Bevan was an autodidact and soon won a scholarship to the Central Labour College (CLC) in London. Founded by former students of Ruskin College, the CLC was established in protest to increased control by Oxford University, as well as the resultant lack of Marxism being taught. The driving force behind the protest and the college was Noah Ablett, who sought to establish an institution that provided independent working-class education. Although there is dispute over the value Bevan placed on this period,16 it nevertheless allowed him the opportunity to explore new ideas, debate with like-minded individuals, and to develop his writing and analytical skills.

It was while studying at the college that Bevan’s first significant piece of writing was published in 1921: a review of the Communist Manifesto.17 The review was published in Plebs magazine, organised by the Plebs’ League, an educational organisation and political group formed to promote Marxist ideals.18 At just twenty-three years of age, the article demonstrates remarkable maturity in Bevan’s writing as well as his ability to comprehend, challenge and consume political ideas. The review also contains themes that would feature heavily in Bevan’s writing throughout his life, including his analysis of class, capitalism and, more specifically, the relationship between public and private property. Bevan wrote that the ‘treating of the development of the modern capitalist class and its counterpart the proletariat’ in the Communist Manifesto is the ‘best and most convincing exposition of the Marxian point of view’.19 While Bevan’s relationship to Marxism is a source of debate,20 the themes he analysed in this review are identifiable in the articles collected in this book.

Bevan returned to Tredegar from London to find that there was no employment in the town, his father was sick and that the coal owners ‘had the miners by the throat’.21 On his return, he was unemployed for three years – apart from a six-week period as a labourer – and received unemployment benefit. However, despite poor economic conditions sapping the energy of the workers and the unemployed in the town, Bevan was determined to fight. He spent much of the 1920s in Tredegar organising, agitating and carrying out the roles of local and then county councillor. He was heavily involved in the local trade union movement, even being sent as a representative to conferences of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), and was chair of the Council of Action during the General Strike in 1926.22 Consequently, he developed a formidable local profile. While this period did not produce a significant body of written work, the struggle for his class played an important role in shaping his ideas and his views on political strategy. The meetings of the Tredegar Urban District Council and the Monmouthshire County Council provided early signs of Bevan’s oratory and his skills of argumentation, which would be deployed on a national scale in Parliament. In the words of S. O. Davies, a contemporary in the SWMF and later in Parliament, Bevan’s experiences of unemployment and the class struggle in Tredegar during this period instilled in him his ‘torrential vituperation, his deadly ridicule and acid wit’.23 They also shaped his politics.

After his election as MP for Ebbw Vale in 1929, Bevan almost immediately began to make a name for himself, both for his continuing agitation outside the House of Commons, and for his contributions within it. He was not afraid to take on the giants of the House, notably using his maiden speech to attack former Prime Minister David Lloyd George and future Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the latter whose ‘chameleon-like character in politics’, Bevan concluded, ‘is founded upon a temperamental disability. He fills all the roles with such exceeding facility that his lack of political stability is at once explained’.24 A year later in 1930, Bevan’s fellow Welshman David Lloyd George was the target of a memorable Bevan offensive.25 In voting against a bill that attempted to ensure lower working hours for coalminers while at the same time protecting their pay, Bevan argued that Lloyd George’s actions were ‘characteristic of Liberal hypocrisy to pay lip service’ to the consequences, which, Bevan predicted, would be lower wages for the miners, more hours and, as a result, more accidents. He declared that what they had been listening to during the debate was simply ‘a desire on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs to use his Parliamentary position for the purpose of trying to put new life into the decaying corpse of Liberalism’. Bevan concluded with a withering attack on the former Prime Minister:

We say that you cannot get from the already dry veins of the miners new blood to revivify the industry. Their veins are shrunken white, and we are asking you to be, for once, decent to the miners – not to pay lip service, not to say that you are very sorry for them, not to say that you are very sorry that these accidents occur, not to say that you are very sorry for the low level of wages and for the conditions of famine which have existed in the mining districts since the War, and then to use all your Parliamentary skill, all your rhetoric, in an act of pure demagogy to expose the mining community of this country to another few years of misery.26

David Lloyd George was clearly disturbed by the scathing speech, being left ‘visibly shaken as though by the ghost of his own radical youth’.27 He replied that he was ‘sorry to have fallen foul of a young countryman of mine ... I have listened without interruption to a very bitter personal attack’. Despite being a newcomer in Parliament, Bevan was already making a name for himself, and was not intimidated by his new surroundings.

It was not just in the House that Bevan was articulating his ideas. He soon started demonstrating his writing skills by transferring these ideas onto the page. In 1932, he contributed a passage to The Coming Struggle for Power by John Strachey, later a minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war government, but at the time a left-wing critic of the Labour leadership.28 Bevan was not named in the book, only identified as a ‘most gifted and young’ supporter of the workers.29 His contribution appeared during a period of unrest within the Labour Party after the formation of the National Government. Already, just three years into his career as an MP, Bevan was witnessing, and partaking in, the recurrent internal battles that have plagued the party. His passage is another early demonstration of his developing ideas, which included his critique of gradualism within the Labour Party, critical as he was of its failure to offer radical solutions to the growing economic and political crisis. Whether in speeches at Labour Party Conference, speeches in the House of Commons, or rallying calls at a public protest, Bevan was not afraid to challenge the orthodoxies of his own party. This theme would permeate his career.

It was five years later in 1937 that Bevan’s writing career took off with the establishment of Tribune. The magazine, funded by Sir Stafford Cripps and George Strauss, included William Mellor as editor and Ellen Wilkinson, Harold Laski and Noel Brailsford (alongside Bevan) on its controlling board.30 It was initially established as a mouthpiece to voice frustration with the Labour Party leadership amidst its rigidity in the face of a growing international crisis.31 In 1947, Bevan recalled the founding of Tribune as a response by socialists who were:

tormented as we were by the tragic closing phases of the Spanish Republican Government. It seemed to us that Socialists of the Left needed a weekly instrument of communion, or communication, call it what you will, otherwise we might languish to impotency from lack of self-confidence and continuing inspiration.32

The magazine would go on to become an important voice for the left both within the party and throughout Britain. It would also become a crucial outlet for Bevan. He regarded his work for Tribune ‘as the Socialist activity of which I am most proud. Its service to the Movement has amply repaid all that we gave to its birth and growth’.

The magazine was launched at an ominous time in global as well as domestic history, demonstrated by Bevan’s articles responding to the rise of Fascism in Europe, the Spanish Civil War, the onset of the Second World War Two and other events that took hold in Britain and throughout the world. Indeed, this period had a significant influence on the development of Bevan’s outlook. However, the magazine was not only useful for commenting on the worsening international situation. Bevan also used Tribune as a conduit through which to publish his ideas on several issues ranging from unemployment to nationalisation and Labour Party politics, through to the decline of the British Empire. Initially, Bevan wrote under the pseudonym M.P. for several months and mainly focused on parliamentary debates. It was not long, however, until he started writing articles under his own name, continuing to write almost weekly for the magazine. He used these articles not only to provide commentary on the events of the day, but also to articulate his ideas and his view of the world, to challenge the Labour Party and its leadership and to theorise on the role of politics in shaping people’s lives.

In 1942, with the assistance of Jon Kimche and Evelyn Anderson, Bevan became the magazine’s editor. He was thus able to guide the editorial direction of the magazine during a crucial moment in history. As the articles in the present collection demonstrate, Bevan was keen to promote the interests of liberty and democracy during the war. Thus, the magazine gave him ample space to formulate and contemplate ideas for post-war society. The war did not prevent Bevan from considering these important issues, far from it in fact. The conflict strengthened his belief in a radical transformation of society and he used the pages of Tribune to set out how he felt this could be achieved.

After Labour’s triumphant election victory in 1945, Bevan was appointed Minister of Health and Housing in Clement Attlee’s new cabinet. It was a bold decision to appoint the ‘squalid nuisance’ of wartime (as Churchill had described him) into such an important position, particularly considering Bevan’s willingness to challenge the leadership and party edicts. Nevertheless, Attlee’s faith was rewarded when Bevan established the National Health Service, which cemented his enduring legacy as a minister with the required ‘tenacity, the drive, the commitment to the NHS and the skills to see it into existence’,33 and for which people remember and revere him today. Bevan captured the importance of the NHS when he argued that ‘no Government that attempts to destroy the Health Service can hope to command the support of the British people’.34 While his role as a Minister prevented him from contributing much to Tribune during this period, he did provide a few words celebrating its ten-year anniversary in 1947, declaring its function as ‘to carry on Socialist education and propaganda until political and economic power is equally matched’.35 A year later, on the eve of the launch of the NHS, Bevan gave an interview where he declared the service as a beacon for the rest of the world and as a first step on the road to socialism.36

It was also during his time in government that Bevan started to come into closer contact with political opponents, the resultant tensions having significant consequences for both Bevan’s future and the immediate future of the Labour Party. Oftentimes both ideological and personal, Bevan had many disagreements with colleagues such as Leader of the House Herbert Morrison and Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell, who was accused of comparing Bevan to Hitler – ‘They are demagogues of exactly the same sort’37 – and whom Bevan described as ‘nothing, nothing, nothing!’38 and a ‘desiccated calculating-machine’.39 The simmering animosities between Bevan and his colleagues were only the beginning of ideological and personal disputes that would be documented in the pages of Tribune.

Bevan returned as a regular contributor to the magazine in 1951 after his resignation from government. He was Minister of Labour at the time and resigned over the implementation of charges to teeth and spectacles to fund Britain’s defence budget during its involvement in the Korean War. Again, while this incident has been written about extensively, it is important to note that the event reignited the aforementioned battles that the Labour Party is so prone to, this time between the Bevanites and the Gaitskellites/Revisionists. Tribune became the mouthpiece of the Bevanite position,40 and was even accused of being the magazine of ‘a party within a party’, although its members vehemently denied this.41 Nevertheless, its contributors, Bevan included, did not shy away from criticising the leaders of their own party.

It should also be noted that this battle did not completely occupy Bevan’s mind during the 1950s. Quite often, Labour histories or reflections on this period can get lost in the personal over the political and the ideational. Bevan did not use Tribune simply as an outlet to attack the Labour leadership (Gaitskell in particular after he was elected as Labour leader in 1955): rather, he continued to sketch out his ideas, his political philosophy and his vision for society through analysing the world around him. He continued to outline his arguments for nationalisation, the need to extend democracy in society and his belief that property relations needed to be significantly altered. In the field of international relations, Bevan continued to write extensively on the emerging problems of power politics. This led him to analyse subjects such as the role of the United Nations, global poverty and the decline of empire. Further, the Cold War led Bevan to critique the major ideological battle taking place in the world between communism and capitalism, as well as allowing him to state his case and his vision for democratic socialism.

While Bevan published his ideas on these issues early in the 1950s in In Place of Fear, he developed them in the pages of Tribune throughout the decade. Bevan’s appointment as Shadow Foreign Secretary in 1956 and his subsequent election to Deputy Leader of the party in 1959 did not prevent his continued writing in Tribune. Further, these roles did not silence his views, despite accusations of having betrayed the left through his denouncement of unilateral disarmament at Labour Conference in 195742 and suggestions of an accommodation with Gaitskell.43 He may have upset many of his supporters as a result of his outburst at that conference, but Bevan nevertheless continued to express his opinions in Tribune right up until his death in 1960.

BEVAN THE WRITER

Bevan’s speeches have become famous for showcasing his sharp wit, powerful oratory44 and his ability to understand an opponent’s argument, target its strongest and most logical points, but then dissect them one by one.45 His contributions in the House of Commons are easily searchable46 and several speeches exist on YouTube and in other formats online. Yet, arguably, apart from In Place of Fear, his writing has not generated the same level of popularity. This is unfortunate, as, when it comes to understanding Bevan’s ideas most completely, his writing was as insightful and informative as his speeches. In Place of Fear is highly quotable, yet, as noted above, his writing did not begin or end there.

What was significant about the way Bevan wrote, particularly in Tribune, was that his articles combined two important elements. First, the articles in this collection reveal Bevan’s journalistic writing as he reported on events from around the world, Westminster and the political machinations of the day. This led him to go into significant detail about debates in Parliament, to interrogate legislation and the arguments of his opponents, and to unpick and analyse them just as he did in his speeches. Yet, Bevan was not only a journalist: his writings also expressed his political philosophy. While dissecting and analysing an event or a certain topic, Bevan would relate the discussions to wider concerns. He regularly referred to the primary importance of principles, priorities and those specific values that guided his writing. Even John Campbell, Bevan’s most critical biographer, praised his adeptness for combining commentary with philosophy in Tribune:

Bevan is not normally thought of as much of a writer; but these weekly articles reveal a surprisingly good journalist. Though strictly political, their variety expresses the richness of his mind, always able to focus a general argument on a telling detail or extrapolate an historical theory from a trivial episode.47

Examples of this style are numerous in the present collection. For instance, on 1 July 1938, Bevan wrote an article criticising the government’s foreign policy (‘This is How Fascism is Born’, Chapter 3), particularly its failure to condemn and be stirred by Italy’s sinking of British ships trading with the Spanish Republic.48 After detailing the negative effect of the government’s policies, Bevan delved into the ways in which the British ruling class attempts to maintain its grip on power. Echoing an almost Gramscian understanding of the role of hegemony, Bevan argued that the:

ruling class succeeds by appearing to identify its class interests with the general interest ... They are able to represent their sectional interests in terms of the national symbols, and the emotional and traditional associations with which these latter are seeped are an immense source of strength to the ruling class.

Far from just writing an article that criticised the government, Bevan located its failures within a wider theoretical point about the nature of class conflict in British society. A further example, from 1957 (‘Platitudes won’t save mankind’, Chapter 4), saw Bevan analysing an upcoming meeting of NATO. He discussed the build-up of arms and its effects, in addition to the power politics being inflicted upon the world. However, he did not stop there. He proceeded to relate power politics to wider questions of sovereignty, world integration and the nature of force in international affairs, providing more than just an analysis of the facts. These are only two examples of many, with this feature of Bevan’s writing on display in the present collection.

BEVAN’S TRUTH

A consideration of Bevan’s Tribune articles is therefore vital in understanding the details of his politics and his ideas. This collection gives readers the opportunity to do just that. Due to this book’s aim of presenting Bevan in his own words, I have endeavoured not to put too much of a ‘lens’ on the collected articles, but rather to present them on their own terms.49 This is to give readers the opportunity to form their own judgements. Similarly, the selection of these articles does not necessarily equate to an agreement with Bevan’s views. Nevertheless, the organisation of the book inevitably entails some degree of editorialising as the chapters are divided by key themes, identified as being central to Bevan’s worldview. It is hoped that organising them in this way will not sway the reader to view Bevan in a particular direction, but rather assist and guide them through the collection so they can make their own conclusions on Bevan’s written word. In fact, the necessary editorialising of Bevan’s work usefully proves beneficial in elucidating key elements of his political thought. In reproducing the articles, editorial intervention has been made to correct any spelling and grammatical errors in Bevan’s writing.

The collection is divided into five chapters: Bevan’s writings on capitalism, parliament, politics and the state; the Labour Party and the trade union movement; ideas, values and society; war; and international relations. They encompass Bevan’s views on how the working class could achieve power, the role of the Labour Party in doing so, the world at war, ambitions for peace and his vision for a new society based on the principles underpinning his conception of democratic socialism. Rather than organise the book chronologically, the collection homes in on these key themes, while organising each chapter chronologically to see these themes develop over time throughout Bevan’s life. In doing so, the thought, the philosophies and the ideas of Bevan himself can take centre stage.

Chapter 1, ‘Capitalism, Power and Politics’ provides the foundation for understanding many of Bevan’s ideas. It focuses on his analysis of capitalist society and the role of politics in establishing democratic socialist principles: essentially, the importance of economic and political power. The articles reveal his understanding of class conflict and his outrage at the pernicious effects of the poverty and exploitation he fought against throughout his life. Further, it focuses on the importance of democracy and the centrality of Parliament and the state in Bevan’s writing as avenues to rectify the ills of society. This inevitably overlaps with the subsequent chapter on the Labour Party, but its specific focus is to understand the role Bevan attributed to democratic politics in achieving change. These core themes permeate and shape the articles collected in the following chapters.

Chapter 2, ‘Labour and the Unions’ collects Bevan’s writings on the Labour Party and the trade unions. Rather than simply consisting of articles that discuss the role of party politics, this chapter also includes articles where Bevan grapples with the internal machinations of the party, the battle of ideas and personalities within it, and the role that Bevan envisioned the party playing in implementing democratic socialism. Further, the chapter includes articles Bevan wrote on the nature of trade unionism in Britain, particularly its intrinsic relationship to the Labour Party. Bevan’s career, particularly throughout the 1950s, has often been defined in conjunction with his role as part of the Bevanite movement within the party. These articles therefore provide a fascinating insight into Bevan’s perception of these disputes at all levels in the party and the wider labour movement. This is particularly important when we consider the prominence of similar arguments and debates in contemporary Labour Party discourse. As noted at the beginning of this introduction, internal disputes continue to define the Labour Party today, and Bevan is often invoked by different sides in the debate to support their own positions. Therefore, understanding Bevan’s views not only helps us to appreciate his own politics, but also to understand the nature of the Labour Party itself.

Chapter 3, ‘Ideas, Values and Society’ collates Bevan’s thoughts on the role of ideas and values in politics and society. As noted above, Bevan’s politics were developed amid deepening international tensions, and he wrote extensively on the ideological debates between Communist states, such as China and the Soviet Union, and supporters of capitalism and western democracy. These articles tell us much about how Bevan saw the world developing and reveal his vision for society and his hopes for the future. Bevan often repeated the phrase that ‘the language of priorities is the religion of socialism’50: the articles in this chapter identify those priorities.

The final two chapters in this collection focus their attention on the international level. They comprise Bevan’s writings on the nature of conflict in Chapter 4, ‘War’ and the world and international affairs in Chapter 5, ‘International Relations’. Throughout his career, Bevan was deeply concerned with what was happening on the international stage. His sights were not solely set on domestic issues; he recognised the significance of unfolding events in other countries and their role in defining politics and political debate beyond borders. Tribune itself was a product of this understanding, established during the rise of fascism and while the wheels of war were beginning to turn. Therefore, Bevan’s politics were shaped by the darkening international situation. As noted above, Bevan was also Shadow Foreign Secretary from 1956 to 1959, and continued to write for Tribune while carrying out this role. Chapter 4 demonstrates the link Bevan made between war, democracy and socialism, while Chapter 5 continues this theme, showcasing Bevan’s perspectives on international relations, empire and his vision for an international organisation that would bring competing countries together.

***

One may ask the question: why Bevan? Why is it important to consider the ideas of a politician from decades ago? One of the reasons has already been discussed – Bevan lives on in Britain’s collective memory. The NHS is still considered as one of the most important British national institutions, and Bevan’s name is synonymous with it. However, this does not answer the question of why we need to explore the rest of Bevan’s output, or why now. Despite his