Ernest Bevin

British politician

• Born: March 9, 1881
• Birthplace: Winsford, Somerset, England
• Died: April 14, 1951
• Place of death: London, England

Bevin founded, and for eighteen years led, the Transport and General Workers Union, influenced Labour Party policy during the 1930’s, served as minister of labour and national service in World War II, and in the postwar Labour government was foreign secretary and one of the architects of the Cold War.

Early Life

Ernest Bevin (BEHV-ihn) was the last and an illegitimate child of a mother who already had seven children by a husband who had disappeared in 1877. Bevin was orphaned at the age of eight, left school at eleven, worked for two years on farms, and then joined a half brother in Bristol. When eighteen years old, he became a drayman, delivering mineral water with a horse and wagon. After 1900 he attended meetings of the Bristol Socialist Society, in 1910 formed a carmen’s branch of the Dockers’ Union, and in 1911 became a full-time official of the union. In November, 1918, Bevin ran for the House of Commons as a Labour candidate and lost. In February, 1920, Bevin presented the dockers’ case at the hearings of the special Shaw Inquiry with so much vigor and command of the facts that he won a favorable report from the commission and the informal title of the Dockers’ K.C. (King’s Counsel). In May, he became the assistant general-secretary of the Dockers’ Union. In the same month, Bevin supported the London dockers when they refused to load munitions on the Jolly George, a ship bound for Poland, then at war with Soviet Russia. In August, Bevin helped found the Council of Action, which threatened to call strikes should Great Britain enter the war against the Soviet Union, and led the delegation that confronted the prime minister, David Lloyd George. Now a national figure, Bevin merged the Dockers and thirteen other unions in 1922 to form the Transport and General Workers’ Union, which began with about 300,000 members and eventually became the largest union in Great Britain, uniting workers in almost every sector of industry and with varying degrees of skill into an effective bargaining machine.

In 1926, Bevin was elected to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. When the unions called a general strike in May to help the coal miners resist cuts in wages, Bevin joined the Strike Organization Committee. After nine days, the strike ended in failure, but Bevin had enhanced his reputation as a skillful organizer and shrewd tactician. In 1928 and 1929, he participated actively in the Mond-Turner talks, which brought together Great Britain’s leading businessmen and trade union leaders to discuss joint efforts to make industry more productive. Little was accomplished, but again Bevin made an impact as the voice of the broader interests of the British working class.

Bevin was a powerful, if sometimes ungrammatical, speaker. Although he was not tall, his large chest and shoulders gave an impression of bulk and power. He read little but had a retentive memory and quick understanding, and he learned much through conversation. He had, through years of bargaining, accumulated information about the workings of many branches of British industry. He was a declared socialist, but his main concerns were with immediate gains for working men and women. He was a man of strong likes and even stronger dislikes. He had feuds of impressive durability and intensity with a number of his colleagues in the trade unions and in the Labour Party. He did not accept criticism easily, especially when it came from those whom he castigated as “intellectuals,” unreliable dilettantes who had entered the Labour Party in search of adventure. Men of intellect whom he liked escaped the label.

Life’s Work

Bevin continued to be an active trade union leader and negotiator, but he moved vigorously into wider spheres. In 1928 and 1929, he worked successfully to save the Daily Herald, a commercial newspaper, which was sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and supported the Labour Party. In 1929, he was appointed by the new Labour government to serve, along with four bankers and the great economistJohn Maynard Keynes, as the only trade unionist on the high-powered Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry. In the eighteen months of hearings, Bevin learned much about the gold standard and the international banking system. Not intimidated by the prestigious reputations of the other committee members or by the intricacies of monetary theory, Bevin expressed in his usual forceful manner some unorthodox criticisms of the gold standard that have stood the test of time rather well. In August, 1931, the Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, was reeling from the effects of the Great Depression and its inability to cope with it. MacDonald knew no economics, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the strong-willed Philip Snowden, knew only the economics of the balanced budget and adherence to the gold standard. In August, 1931, MacDonald and Snowden were striving heroically to cut government spending, including unemployment benefits, to balance the budget and impress French and American bankers whom they were asking for a large loan in gold to keep the British pound on the gold standard. They presented their plans to a joint meeting of party and union leaders and ran into a barrage of criticism, led by Bevin, who argued that it was wrong to cut spending and to follow a policy of deflation, thus making the working class pay for the mistakes of British bankers. Bevin convinced several wavering cabinet members to oppose the cuts. MacDonald and Snowden resigned, but they became heads of a new national coalition government, supported by Liberals, Conservatives, and a few Labourites, which made the cuts, balanced the budget, got the loan, and was still forced to go off the gold standard and accept the arrival of managed paper currency. Fortunately, the predicted economic catastrophe did not arrive.

Bevin helped rally the dispirited Labour Party and worked closely with the new leader, Arthur Henderson. He showed his new commitment by running for Parliament in the general election in October and, like most other Labour candidates, lost badly, as the Parliamentary party fell from 289 to 46 seats. Bevin did not run again in the election of 1935, when the party made a modest recovery, but he had determined to ensure that a future Labour government would not betray its supporters, as he believed the MacDonald government had done. Bevin was a director of the Daily Herald, and his union contributed amply to party funds and directly sponsored a group of members of Parliament. Bevin influenced policy making at the annual party conferences both by his control of the large union bloc vote and by his effective speeches. He helped develop a program that committed a future Labour government to nationalize some industries and to extend social welfare programs. At the same time, he rejected what he viewed as provocative and posturing “leftism” by Sir Richard Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan. By 1935, Bevin wanted the Labour Party not only to oppose Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini verbally but also to support rearmament, a hard policy for many in the party the semi-Pacifists, such as the leader, George Lansbury, and the leftists, such as Cripps and Bevan (who distrusted the Conservatives almost as much as the fascists) to accept. In October, 1935, Bevin, in a brutal but effective speech, attacked Lansbury for hawking “your conscience round from body to body to be told what you ought to do with it.” Lansbury, old and ailing, resigned a few days later. He had already been considering resignation, but Bevin had probably hastened his departure. Bevin now had helped depose two leaders of his party, MacDonald and Lansbury. Working closely with Hugh Dalton, a former professor of economics who somehow escaped being labeled an “intellectual,” Bevin finally succeeded in 1937 in convincing the parliamentary Labour Party to stop voting against rearmament measures.

In September, 1939, Neville Chamberlain took Great Britain into war with Germany. In May, 1940, Winston Churchill replaced the ineffective Chamberlain and invited Labour to serve under him in a national coalition. Clement Attlee became deputy prime minister, and Bevin, even before a parliamentary seat was found for him, became minister of labour and national service. In peacetime, Labour was not an important department, but in war it became essential. Labor was now the scarcest of all scarce commodities, and the competitive market alone could not get the right workers to the right jobs in the right numbers quickly enough. Bevin was given sweeping powers to direct both men and women to essential jobs, but he used them sparingly. By the summer of 1943, he had issued three-quarters of a million individual directives, not a great number for the mobilization that had taken place. Great Britain put a higher percentage of its men and women into the armed forces or into war work than any belligerent except for the Soviet Union. Churchill inspired the British people and Hitler terrified them. Still, Bevin brought to his task several important assets: great negotiating skill, wide knowledge of British workers and British trade unions, and a great fund of credit for past service from which he could draw in asking trade unions to give up, for the duration of the war, some of their most valued safeguards.

In July, 1945, the Labour Party won a sweeping victory and Attlee became prime minister. Attlee initially intended to make Bevin his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the post Bevin himself wanted and was best prepared for. King George VI, however, suggested to Attlee that Bevin be foreign secretary, and Attlee soon came to that decision himself, mainly because he realized that as chancellor, Bevin would have to work closely with the Leader of the House of Commons, Herbert Stanley Morrison, probably the colleague Bevin hated most. Bevin was the last British foreign secretary to represent a world power in charge of a vast empire. Bevin supported Attlee against all plots and cabals, and Attlee gave Bevin a virtually free rein in all areas, except for India, where Attlee himself took direct responsibility. Bevin’s foreign policy had certain clear features. First, he asserted Great Britain’s role as a continuing great power, as is well illustrated in his comment on the atomic bomb: “We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it.” Second, he was ready to oppose all Soviet efforts to extend their empire. Third, he worked in close partnership with the United States in most areas.

The one area where Bevin clearly failed was Palestine, where he often clashed with President Harry S. Truman, who gave occasional support to the Zionists. Labour, out of office, had criticized the 1939 white paper that severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine. Bevin, however, continued to limit Jewish immigration and sought a settlement that would have Arab support. This provoked a virtual revolt by the Jews of Palestine. After many acts of guerrilla warfare and government reprisals, Great Britain withdrew in May, 1948, leaving Arabs and Jews to fight for the land. Bevin’s reputation was somewhat tarnished by the obvious failure of his policy and by the charges that it had been motivated by anti-Semitism . Bevin had made some rather insensitive statements, such as his warning to the Jews in the displaced persons’ camps of Europe not to rouse hatred by wanting “to get too much to the head of the queue. . . .” Whatever Bevin’s feelings were about Jews, the motive for his Palestine policy was clearly the desire to gain Arab goodwill, which a weakened Great Britain needed to maintain its position in the Middle East. It is hard to imagine any British foreign secretary in this period coming to a significantly different conclusion. Bevin’s insensitivity to Jewish feelings, however, probably made a bad situation a little worse.

Bevin’s most impressive moment came when he responded quickly and decisively to the very tentative offer of American economic aid to Europe made by General George C. Marshall, then secretary of state, in his commencement address at Harvard on June 5, 1947. Bevin quickly called meetings with officials of the other European nations that eventually led to the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, through which the generous supply of American aid began to flow by April, 1948. Bevin was the effective coauthor of the Marshall Plan . Bevin might also be called the coauthor of another and more controversial American initiative, the Truman Doctrine . Since December, 1944, British troops had been helping a right-wing regime in Greece battle a predominantly communist insurgency. In February, 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford the burden and would withdraw its soldiers. Privately, Bevin urged the United States to intervene. The United States did that and more. The Truman Doctrine of March 11, 1947, pledged not only to defend Greece but also to defend all free nations under attack, from without or within, from communist aggression. This doctrine gave a blank check to any government, however repressive and inept, which could discern the hand of Moscow in the actions of those rebelling against it. The Truman Doctrine went far beyond what the situation in Greece required, and perhaps further than Bevin had expected.

Bevin worked closely with the United States in establishing the new West German Federal Republic, and Great Britain participated in the airlift that broke the Russian blockade of West Berlin. Bevin, too, was perhaps more important than any other European leader in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), set up in April, 1949, which brought the United States and the nations of Western Europe into an alliance for mutual defense. Bevin’s most surprising achievement was to carry his party with him against only feeble opposition. Many in the Labour Party disliked both heavy military spending and the alliance with the United States; others harbored warm feelings about the Soviet Union. Bevin, however, overcame these opponents easily. Joseph Stalin, by his brutal rule in Russia and by his imposition of Russian control over Eastern Europe, made Bevin’s task easier. Bevin had made his first impact in foreign policy by opposing British efforts to help Poland fight Russia in 1920, but much had happened since then. Bevin in the 1930’s had a number of bad encounters with British communists in the Labour Party and within his own union, especially with a rebellious rank-and-file movement among the London busmen. After 1945, he developed an intense hatred for Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, the Russian foreign secretary, making negotiations very difficult. On March 9, 1951, Bevin, who had been ill for many months, reluctantly left the Foreign Office and took the undemanding post of Lord Privy Seal. He died of a heart attack shortly thereafter, on April 14 in London.

Significance

Bevin played a large role in twentieth century English history. His importance cannot be contested. He was the most successful trade unionist between the two great wars, helped make Labour Party policy in the 1930’s, was the most important minister on the home front during World War II, and made British foreign policy after 1945. The only part of his career that has continued to rouse controversy is his foreign policy.

His faith in the United States and his fierce hostility to the Soviet Union have been espoused most strongly by the Conservative Party, especially under Margaret Thatcher, and have been under assault by many in the Labour Party. To be sure, it has been possible in later years to call for détente and still support what Bevin did in the postwar years. Europe was economically and militarily much weaker in Bevin’s time, and Russia was perceived as more threatening. It may be, however, that Bevin was a bit too fearful of the Soviet Union, a bit too suspicious, and therefore too unwilling to continue negotiating with the hated Molotov. Bevin’s policy, and U.S. policy as well, may have become too much one of confrontation. Some of Bevin’s greatest triumphs as a trade union leader and as minister of labour had been as a negotiator. It may be one of the tragedies of the twentieth century that in the years after 1945 he did not stay at the bargaining table longer.

Bibliography

Anderson, Terry. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981. Useful short study of the beginning of the Cold War.

Barker, Elizabeth. The British Between the Superpowers, 1945-1950. London: Macmillan, 1983. A good short study, occasionally critical, of the problems facing Bevin as he tried to carry out ambitious policies with limited resources.

Bullock, Alan. The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin. 3 vols. Vols. 1 and 2. London: William Heinemann, 1960-1967. Vol. 3. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. A massive biography that describes and analyzes Bevin’s career. The research is extraordinarily full and the coverage detailed. The judgments are carefully thought out. Perhaps Bullock is too uncritical of Bevin, but this work must be numbered among the outstanding biographies of modern political leaders.

Chaitani, Youssef. Dissension Among the Allies: Ernest Bevin’s Palestine Policy Between Whitehall and the White House. London: Saqi, 2000. Chronicles the events following World War II that eventually led Bevin to relinquish Britain’s control of Palestine.

Donoughe, Bernard, and G. W. Jones. Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973. Comprehensive study of an important colleague whom Bevin disliked. Had Bevin disliked Morrison a bit less, Bevin would probably have become Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1945 rather than foreign secretary.

Harris, Kenneth. Attlee. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982. A good biography of the person who led the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. It contains much information about Bevin in his relations with the leader and prime minister whom he loyally supported.

Hathaway, Robert W. Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. An interesting book that shows the incompleteness of American and British cooperation. The interests of the two nations were not always as close as Bevin wished them to be.

Louis, William Roger. The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. A long (747-page), scholarly study of the framework in which Bevin made his Palestine policy. It shows how the aspirations of Zionism collided with British plans for continuing dominance in the Middle East.

Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour in Power, 1945-1951. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Carefully researched and well-balanced examination of Labour’s most successful government. Morgan presents Bevin in the context of the cabinet and the problems it faced, and shows Bevin’s strong standing in the cabinet.

Pimlott, Ben. Hugh Dalton. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985. A thorough study of the Labour leader who had expected to become foreign secretary in 1945 and became Chancellor of the Exchequer instead. Dalton was one of the colleagues whom Bevin respected, despite his earlier career as a professor of economics.