Ernest
Bevin was born in Winford, Somerset in 1881. The son of poor parents,
he was an orphan by the age of six. After a couple of years of formal
education, Bevin became a farm labourer. At eighteen he moved to Bristol
where he found work as a van driver. He became interested in Nonconformist
religion and for a while was a Baptist
lay preacher.
Bevin joined
the Dockers' Union and by the age of 30 was one of its paid officials.
Bevin, a member of the Labour Party, was
unsuccessful in his attempt to become the MP for Bristol Central in
the 1918 General Election.
When Ben Tillett and Harry
Gosling formed the National Transport Workers' Federation (NTWF)
Bevin was elected to its executive. By 1921 over 32 separate unions
had joined together to form the Transport & General Workers Union
(TGWU). Bevin was elected general secretary, a post he was to hold
for the next nineteen years. He was also a member of the General Council
of the Trade Union Congress between 1925 and
1940.
Considered to be a moderate by more militant trade unionists, Bevin
was opposed to the forming of the Triple Alliance
with the miners and railwaymen and played an important role in negotiating
the TGWU's withdrawal from the General Strike
in 1926. Bevin was defeated when he represented the Labour
Party at Gateshead in the 1931 General Election.
Bevin became
a strong supporter of the Popular Front
government in Spain and in August 1936 made
a speech where he praised "the heroic struggle being carried
on by the workers of Spain to save their democratic regime."
He encouraged young men to join the International
Brigades and this included the TGWU shop steward, Jack
Jones.
In May
1940 Winston Churchill invited Bevin
to become Minister of Labour in his coalition government. The following
month Bevin won a by-election at Wandsworth and joined the House
of Commons. Bevin successfully achieved mobilization of Britain's
workforce and became one of the most significant members of Churchill's
war cabinet.
When the Labour Party won a landslide victory
in the 1945 General Election, Clement
Attlee appointed Bevin as his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Bevin, who held strong anti-communist views, played an important role
in the acceptance of the Marshall Plan,
the creation of of NATO and Britain's decision
to develop nuclear weapons.
In very poor health, Bevin resigned from Attlee's government in March
1951. Ernest
Bevin
died the following month on 14th April, 1951.
(1)
In his autobiography Philip Snowden
described telling the Trade Union Congress
about his plans in 1931 to cut wages and unemployment benefits (1934)
The spokesman of the Trade Unions was Mr. Bevin and Mr.
Citrine, the Secretary of the Trade Union Committee. This deputation
took up the attitude of opposition to practically all the economy
proposals which had been explained to them. They opposed any interference
with the existing terms and conditions of the Unemployment Insurance
Scheme, including the limitation of statutory benefit to 26 weeks.
We were told the Trade Unions would oppose the suggested economies
on teachers' salaries and pay of the men in the Fighting Services,
and any suggestions for reducing expenditure on works in relief of
unemployment. The only proposal to which the General Council were
not completely opposed was that the salaries of Ministers and Judges
should be subjected to a cut!
(2)
In 1929 Helen Wilkinson wrote about
Ernest Bevin in her book on the General Strike.
Ernie Bevin, a rough-hewn fellow, a transport workers' leader,
who had started selling ginger beer from a cart. One of the ablest
of the younger trade unionists who in quiet tones concluded, "History
will ultimately write that it was a magnificent generation that was
prepared to do it."
(3)
Jack Jones, Union
Man (1986)
I was elected as a shop steward, and to the branch and area committees
of the TGWU, as well as delegate for the ports of Garston and Preston
on the National Docks Group Committee of the union. This meant that
I came into contact with Ernie Bevin, the General Secretary of the
union, who took a keen interest in the Docks Group and was present
at all the national meetings. He had been the driving force in building
the union and he let everybody know it. On occasions we had to listen
to Ernie orating about the financial problems of the world. My impression
was that few, if any, members of the committee took in what he was
saying. He spoke over their heads, certainly over mine although I
was attending classes on economics and finance organized by the Labour
College in Liverpool. No wonder Bevin took a poor view of the Labour
College movement! But I wondered sometimes whether he was clear in
his own mind or was simply trying to unravel his thoughts aloud to
a sympathetic audience. He may not have been the clearest exponent
of complicated issues but he achieved remarkable results by his driving
power.
(4)
Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, attempted to persuade women
to volunteer for war work. A report of his speech was reported in
the Manchester Guardian on
10th March, 1941.
Making an urgent appeal to women to come forward for war work mainly
in shell-filling factories, Mr. Bevin said he did not want them to
wait for registration to take effect. He wanted a big response now,
especially by those who might not have been in employment before.
There was a tendency to hang back and wait for instructions. If he
could get the first 100,000 women to come forward in the next fortnight
it would be priceless.
"I
have to tell the women that I cannot offer them a delightful life,
" said Mr. Bevin. "They will have to suffer some inconveniences.
But I want them to come forward in the spirit of determination to
help us through."
In districts
where married women had been in the habit of doing the work the Government
had decided to assist them so far as the minding of children was concerned.
They had arranged for the rapid expansion through local authorities
of day nurseries and they were asking local authorities to prepare
immediately a register of "minders".
The married
woman would pay only what she paid in pre-war days - about sixpence
a day - and the Government would pay an additional sixpence a day
for looking after the children.
(5)
Robert Boothby, Boothby:
Recollections of a Rebel (1978)
Of the Labour leaders, Arthur Greenwood was the nicest, but
apt to be tight. Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison loathed each other.
The story that when someone remarked that Morrison was his own worst
enemy, Bevin said, "Not while I'm alive he ain't", is true.
(6)
Konni
Zilliacus wrote
about the relative merits of Ernest
Bevin and Hugh
Dalton in his unpublished autobiography,
Challenge to Fear.
He (Bevin) was a great working class leader with a fine record. But
he was tragically miscast as
Labour's Foreign Secretary in 1945. For he did not have a due to the
problems facing him. He was too old and set in his ways to learn.
Or rather, to unlearn and then learn afresh: that is, to do the kind
of painful thinking that goes down to one's own prejudices and assumptions,
tests them in the light of reason and facts, and then works out a
policy that is genuinely 'realistic' because it is rooted in reality
and not to an out-of-date conception of the world in which we are
living, and harnessed to Labour's view of the national interest and
not to that of the defenders of the old order.
Hugh Dalton would have
been far better, first of all because he really did know a lot about
foreign affairs; secondly because he knew how to manage the Foreign
Office officials, instead of being run by them; thirdly, because he
was capable of learning from experience and correcting his mistakes;
fourthly because he would listen to the views of back bench colleagues
instead of treating any criticism or comments as an insult and relying
on blind trade union loyalties and the power of the block vote to
impose on the Labour Party the Churchillian policies that the Foreign
Office had induced him to adopt.
(7)
Guy
Burgess gave information to Harold
Nicolson about a meeting between Ernest Bevin and Vyacheslav
Molotov in 1947. Nicolson wrote about it in his book Diaries
and Letters (1966)
"Now, Mr Molotov,
what is it that you want? What are you after? Do you want to get Austria
behind your Iron Curtain? You can't do that. Do you want Turkey and
the Straits ? You can't have them. Do you want Korea? You can't have
that. You are putting your neck out too far, and one day you will
have it chopped off.. .. You cannot look on me as an enemy of Russia.
Why, when our Government was trying to stamp out your Revolution,
who was it that stopped it? It was I, Ernest Bevin. I called out the
transport workers and they refused to load the ships. Now again I
am speaking to you as a friend... If war comes between you and America
in the East, then we may be able to remain neutral. But if war comes
between you and America in the West, then we shall be on America's
side. Make no mistake about that. That would be the end of Russia
and of your Revolution. So please stop sticking out your neck in this
way and tell me what you are after. What
do you want?"
"I want a unified
Germany," said Molotov.
"Why do you want
that? Do you really believe that a unified Germany would go Communist?
They pretend to. They would say all the right things and repeat all
the correct formulas. But in their hearts they would be longing for
the day when they would revenge their defeat at Stalingrad. You know
that as well as I do."
"Yes," said
Molotov, "I know that. But I still want a unified Germany."
And that was all he could
get out of him.
(8)
Harold
Wilson,
Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986)
Attlee relied heavily on Bevin. Ernie filled a gap which was missing
in Attlee's life. Clem had never really met trade unionists and ordinary
workers, apart from his time at Toynbee Hall and other East End settlements,
and also in the First World War where his relationship had been that
of a major with his rank and file In the Party he was revered and
much respected, but he always seemed to be at a distance. Bevin was
a tough leader of working-class origin who had fought Churchill during
the General Strike of 1926 and who, all tribute to Churchill, was
made Minister of Labour in 1940. He knew trade unionists, he had led,
or rather commanded, them for more than a generation. He knew employers
too, liked and respected many but feared none.
Ernie sat opposite the Prime Minister at the Long Cabinet table. If
a few ministers were talking more than they needed to, and Bevin wanted
to get in, he just signalled across. One of the problems in government
is whom you put on the various Cabinet sub-committees and who you
leave off. If my memory is correct, I do not think Attlee had any
sub-committee of which Bevin was not a member, even though it might
not in any way be concerned with foreign affairs. The two used to
meet often, particularly when a difficult Cabinet meeting was coming
up. I do not remember a single occasion when the two disagreed in
Cabinet, with Ernie acting as the bulldozer whenever necessary.
(9)
George
Brown, In My Way (1970)
There can be no doubt
that Ernest Bevin stands out among all the people I have met. He is
in a place by himself. He was a man with little or no taught advantages,
who relied wholly upon his own brain, his imagination and his capacity
for envisaging things and people. In this capacity he was not surpassed
and I think not even matched by anyone else I have ever met. The Churchills,
the Attlees, and most other leaders, political or industrial, had
all the advantages which their social position and long formal education
can bestow. Bevin had none of these advantages, but I have seen him
in every kind of situation - trade union negotiations round a table,
trade union meetings facing often hostile critics, meetings with industrialists,
with statesmen - and on every occasion it was quite clear that he
was master of the situation. He said that he hated politics, yet in
making politics or in running a political department few could match
him. He had a natural dignity which offset his endowment of determination
and ruthlessness.
It wasn't until the war
that he got his real chance to make a major impact on national history.
His work as Minister of Labour during the war contributed as much
to victory as that of any of the generals and, as Foreign Secretary
in the Labour Government after the war, there were times when he seemed
to hold the Western world itself on his great shoulders.
(10)
Herbert
Morrison, An
Autobiography (1960)
A powerful figure at meetings of the War Cabinet was Ernest
Bevin. A man of courage, he never allowed anyone to browbeat him,
and anyone included the Prime Minister who, I think, admired those
who stood up to him so long as it was a gesture rather than an obstructive
move. Bevin, in character and physique a big man, may sometimes have
been guilty of treating all opponents as formidable
ones, bringing in the full weight of his attack on a target hardly
worthy of it. Thus a charge of bullying would sometimes be justified.
Ernest Bevin was in some
respects a genius. Some facets of his character reminded me and many
others of Churchill. For example, he preferred to think aloud and
for that reason he needed an audience when there were decisions to
make. During these cogitations he was liable to talk too much and
to get the wrong idea, but fortunately there was invariably someone
in his audience to put him right: a situation which I suspect he arranged
deliberately, for he was sometimes conscious of, and sensitive about,
his lack of education. Later, rather like Jimmy Thomas, his rough
simple ways became something of a pose. He had noticed that his adjectives
and Anglo-Saxon monosyllables amused Churchill, and he was not above
maintaining this homely style of speaking in audiences at Buckingham
Palace, where it went down equally well.
His priceless asset was
an enormous fund of working-class common-sense.
Nobody could pull the wool over his eyes. His weakness was jealousy
of other people. The latter trait made life pretty tough for those
who worked for him.
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