Another Welsh Warrior

Aneurin Bevan, A Biography, 1945-1960 By Michael Foot Atheneum, 692 pp., $13.95 In the seventh century the Britons were defeated by the Saxons at the Battle of Cattraeth. The event lives in the epic Gododdin, written by a Welsh bard and warrior priest who was captured by the Saxons. His name was Aneurin. It is fitting that Nye Bevan bears the same name, for in his own way he too was a warrior and poet and the high priest of British Marxist socialism in the years following the Second War. Like the other great Welsh politician of this century, David Lloyd George, Bevan was a rebel. But he was a less successful one, for he didn’t quite wreck the Labor Party as Lloyd George did the Liberal Party, and he never became Britain’s prime minister.

Nye Bevan should not be confused with Ernest Bevin, the trade union leader who served in Churchill’s war coalition cabinet. Ernest Bevin was more of a George Meany type, working the right wing of the Labor Party and often engaged in battle with Bevan, whose “feet were planted in Moscow.” Bevan was an articulate far left politician and not a union leader. When the Labor Party vanquished Churchill in 1945, Bevan entered Attlee’s cabinet and served as Minister of Health and Housing. Bevan was the 1948 midwife at the birth of the National Health Service, better known as socialized medicine. The NHS is distinguished by the longest pregnancy known to medicine: its term was 35 years and it was in labor for most of the time.

Aneurin Bevan, A Biography, 1945-1960 By Michael Foot Atheneum, 692 pp., $13.95 In the seventh century the Britons were defeated by the Saxons at the Battle of Cattraeth. The event lives in the epic Gododdin, written by a Welsh bard and warrior priest who was captured by the Saxons. His name was Aneurin. It is fitting that Nye Bevan bears the same name, for in his own way he too was a warrior and poet and the high priest of British Marxist socialism in the years following the Second War. Like the other great Welsh politician of this century, David Lloyd George, Bevan was a rebel. But he was a less successful one, for he didn’t quite wreck the Labor Party as Lloyd George did the Liberal Party, and he never became Britain’s prime minister.

Nye Bevan should not be confused with Ernest Bevin, the trade union leader who served in Churchill’s war coalition cabinet. Ernest Bevin was more of a George Meany type, working the right wing of the Labor Party and often engaged in battle with Bevan, whose “feet were planted in Moscow.” Bevan was an articulate far left politician and not a union leader. When the Labor Party vanquished Churchill in 1945, Bevan entered Attlee’s cabinet and served as Minister of Health and Housing. Bevan was the 1948 midwife at the birth of the National Health Service, better known as socialized medicine. The NHS is distinguished by the longest pregnancy known to medicine: its term was 35 years and it was in labor for most of the time.