Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881 – 14 April 1951) was a British statesman, trade union leader and Labour Party politician. He co-founded and served as General Secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1940 and served as Minister of Labour and National Service in the wartime coalition government. He succeeded in maximising the British labour supply for both the armed services and domestic industrial production with a minimum of strikes and disruption.
His most important role came as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, 1945–1951. He secured Marshall Aid, strongly opposed communism and was the main drive behind the creation of NATO. Bevin was also instrumental to the founding of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret propaganda wing of the British Foreign Office, which specialised in disinformation, anti-communism and pro-colonial propaganda. Bevin played an important role in the end of the Mandate of Palestine and was strongly opposed to the establishment of the State of Israel.During same period, the end of British rule in India and the independence of India and East and West Pakistan (Bangladesh and Pakistan) were part of the remit of the India Office, a separate government department His biographer Alan Bullock said that Bevin "stands as the last of the line of foreign secretaries in the tradition created by Castlereagh, Canning and Palmerston in the first half of the 19th century".
Early life
Bevin was born in the village of Winsford in Somerset, England, the seventh child of Diana Bevin, who since 1877 had described herself as a widow. Bevin never knew who his father was, but it is now thought to have been William Pearse (1816/17–1891). After his mother's death in 1889, the young Bevin lived with his half-sister's family and moved to Copplestone in Devon. He had little formal education; he had briefly attended two village schools and then Hayward's School, Crediton, starting in 1890 and leaving in 1892.Roger Steer, "From the hedgerows of Devon to the Foreign Office", Devon Life Magazine, July 2002.
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 Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union, and in 1914 he became a national organiser for the union.
Bevin was a large, strong man, and by the time of his political prominence, he was very heavy. He spoke with such a strong West Country accent 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 lay preacher, which he had given up as a profession to become a full-time labour activist.
Bevin married Florence Townley, daughter of a wine taster at a Bristol wine merchants. They had one child, a daughter, Queenie Mildred Wynne (6 May 1911 – 31 January 2000). Florence Bevin (died 1968) was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1952.
Transport and General Workers' Union In 1922, Bevin was one of the founding leaders of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), a merger of fourteen unions with a combined membership of 300,000, which, by the 1930s after several more mergers became Britain's largest trade union. Upon his election as the union's General Secretary, he became one of the country's leading labour leaders and the strongest union advocate within the Labour Party. Politically, he was on the right wing of the Labour Party. He was strongly opposed to communism and direct action. His opponents claimed that was partly because of antisemitic paranoia, which made him see communism as a "Jewish plot" against Britain.Peter Weiler, Ernest Bevin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 170–71 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, and he unsuccessfully fought Bristol Central at the 1918 general election. He was defeated by the Coalition Conservative Thomas Inskip. 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.
At the 1931 general election, Bevin was persuaded by the remaining leaders of the Labour Party to contest Gateshead on the understanding that if successful he would remain as general secretary of the TGWU. The National Government won a landslide, which resulted in Gateshead being lost by a large margin to the Liberal National Thomas Magnay.Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Trade Union Leader 1881 – 1940 (1960) pp. 495–97.
Bevin was a trade unionist who believed in getting material benefits for his members through direct negotiations with strike action to be used as a last resort. During the late 1930s, for instance, Bevin helped to instigate a successful campaign by the Trades Union Congress to extend paid holidays to a wider proportion of the workforce.Ernest Bevin by Peter Weiler That culminated in the Holidays with Pay Act 1938, which extended entitlement to paid holidays to about 11 million workers by June 1939.Eric Hopkins, A Social History of the English Working Classes 1815–1945.
Foreign policy interests During the 1930s, with the Labour Party split and weakened, Bevin co-operated with the Conservative-dominated National Government on practical issues, but during that period, he became increasingly involved in foreign policy. He was a firm opponent of fascism and of the British appeasement of the fascist powers. In 1935, arguing that Fascist Italy should be punished by sanctions for its recent invasion of Abyssinia, he made a blistering attack on the pacifists in the Labour Party and accused the Labour leader George Lansbury at the Party Conference of "hawking his conscience around" and of asking to be told what to do with it. Bevin's efforts to promote sanctions were successful, with an overwhelming majority of delegates voting in favour of sanctions.Bouverie, Tim (2019). Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War (1 ed.). New York: Tim Duggan Books. p. 99. . .
After the vote at the conference, 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 former Labour Ministers to be re-elected under that party label at the 1931 general election. After the November 1935 general election, Herbert Morrison, who was 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 Morrison and Cripps led further intrigue against Attlee.
Bevin was a member of the British delegation to the second British Commonwealth Relations conference. It was held at Lapstone, Sydney, Australia in 1938 organised by Chatham House and the Australian Institute of International Affairs with delegations from all the then existing Commonwealth countries. (issued under the auspices of The Royal Institute of International Affairs).
Wartime Minister of Labour
In 1940, Winston Churchill formed an all-party coalition government to run the country during the Second World War. Churchill was impressed by Bevin's opposition to trade union pacifism and by his appetite for work (according to Churchill, Bevin was by "far the most distinguished man that the Labour Party have thrown up in my time"). He appointed Bevin to the position of Minister of Labour and National Service. As Bevin was not actually an MP at the time, to remove the resulting 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 1939 gave Bevin complete control over the labour force and the allocation of manpower, and he was determined to use the unprecedented authority not just to help win the war but also to strengthen the bargaining position of trade unions in the postwar future.Borth, Christy. Masters of Mass Production, p. 74, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1945. 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," suggesting he aspired to have his doctrines remain at the Ministry of Labour as long as Gladstone's economic policies had governed the Treasury's approach. The industrial settlement he introduced remained largely unaltered by successive postwar administrations until the reforms of Margaret Thatcher's government in the early 1980s.
Under the Essential Work Orders, provision was made for such initiatives as guaranteed employment, the payment of proper wages, the honouring of wage agreements, and proper welfare facilities for workers. Bevin also encouraged the Minister of Food, W.S. Morrison, to develop communal feeding (especially in factories), resulting in provisions for communal feeding being extended throughout the country. As part of his Welfare Scheme, Bevin introduced various forms of entertainment in the factories, including mid-day canteen concerts. Nurseries were also set up for the children of working mothers by the Ministry of Health (under the recommendation of the Ministry of Labour). For workers who found it hard to get their shopping due to circumstances such as blackouts, special shopping facilities were set up to get around this problem. National standards were also introduced providing proper welfare and wages and conditions for the domestic staff of hospitals and institutions.Ernest Bevin's Work in Wartime 1940–1945 Published by the Labour Party, Printed by the Victoria House Printing Co., Ltd. (T.U. all Depts.), 14–15, Elm Street, Gray's Inn Road, London, W.C.1.