Bevan, Aneurin 1897-1960
Welsh Labour politician

Born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, he was one of 13 children of a miner. He began work in the pits at the age of 13. Six years later he was chairman of a Miners' Lodge of more than 4,000 members. Active in trade unionism in the South Wales coalfield, he led the Welsh miners in the 1926 General Strike. Elected as the Independent Labour Party (ILP) MP for Ebbw Vale (1929), he joined the more moderate Labour Party in 1931, establishing a reputation as a brilliant, irreverent and often tempestuous orator. In 1934 he married Jennie Lee. During World War II he was frequently a 'one-man Opposition' against Churchill. Appointed Minister of Health in the 1945 Labour government, he introduced the revolutionary National Health Service in 1948. He became Minister of Labour in 1951, but resigned the same year over the National Health charges proposed in the Budget. From this period dated 'Bevanism', the left-wing movement aimed at making the Labour Party more socialist and less 'reformist'. It made Bevan the centre of prolonged and often bitter disputes with his party leaders, but the movement began to wither late in 1956 when he became Shadow Foreign Secretary. He ceased to be a 'Bevanite' at the 1957 Brighton party conference when he opposed a one-sided renunciation of the hydrogen bomb by Great Britain. The most publicized Labour politician of his time, he brought to the Commons radical fervour, iconoclastic restlessness and an acute intellect. He published In Place of Fear (1952).

Bibliography: Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan (2 vols, 1975)