BEVAN AND BEVANISM

...They distrust his flamboyance and much prefer the sober, steady Attlee type, who can be depended upon not to surprise them...

...The result was that the Health Service was established almost free from the crippling conditions which the BMA seemed at first determined to impose upon it...

...Time after time he warded off determined attacks upon his budget, and maintained health services and housing at a high rate in spite of the economic storms raging over Britain...

...Dangerous Fallacy To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own...

...Basic to this case was the assertion that the Western powers had overestimated the danger of Russian military aggression, that an excessive program of rearmament had been undertaken, largely under American pressure, and that the recklessness of many influential Americans threatened the peace of the world...

...He was not the man, however, to interest himself in tidying up the administrative details of the National Health Service and the postwar housing program once the big battles had been won and the main lines of policy established...

...To this his Labor critics reply that American trade unionists, including Bevan's own good friend, Walter Reuther, are strongly in support of large-scale rearmament and recognize more than he does the gravity of the risk of Russian-aggression...

...Nothing could give more fuel to Bevanism, and help Bevan himself more rapidly to the fore, than a continued swing to the right in America...

...Relative to the degree of political maturity of the people it serves," he said, "the British press falls further, short than any other...

...He is known, for instance, to have spoken privately in favor of breaking the Berlin blockade by land—something which, many people think, would have been more dangerous than anything the Americans have done...

...Bevan and Bevanism, of course, are not co-extensive...

...Harold Wilson, president of the Board of Trade, and John Freeman, a junior minister, had resigned with him, and there was a small knot of Bevanites in the House of Commons, including Michael Foot and Jennie Lee...

...It was a frustrating period for a party like Labor, which thrives upon attack...

...Hysterical" America, they charge, is vastly exaggerating the Russian risk, and forcing counter-measures, like German rearmament, which actually increase the danger of war...

...Bevan is best qualified to give voice, and an eloquent voice, to this feeling...

...IV It seems to me that, given the degree of opposition tp Bevan among Britain's trade union leaders, his path to leadership is likely to be a longer and thornier one than many American commentators assume...

...Although year after year there were bitter complaints about the lack of housing, by the time of this year's General Election housing had well-nigh evaporated as a political issue —just as Bevan had promised...

...While this was a much lower level of housing activity than in America, it yielded much greater social dividends...

...This may be why Bevan, in another week-end speech, characterized the British press as "the most prostituted in the world...

...Also, Bevan has become something of a bogey to the middle class...

...But there had been in existence, ever since the early years of the Labor Government, a "Keep Left" group of the younger M.P.'s, mostly intellectuals, led intermittently by the eloquent Richard Crossman...

...In spite of a pronounced stutter, he is the best orator in attack of this generation of parliamentarians, excelling in this field as Churchill excels in unrolling the vistas of history...

...This is a popular form of attack, particularly in view of the volume of prejudice against America still existing in Britain...

...This was hardly enough to give his voice the power he wanted...

...Bevan joined forces with them, and Bevanism now could count upon thirty or so supporters in the House, most of them with gifted tongues...

...For instance, rearmament would force a lowering of European standards of living which would give the various Communist parties a chance to recover their driving force...

...The magnitude of the danger of Russian aggression has since been vigorously debated between Bevanites and orthodox Laborites...

...This was a godsend to the Tory press...

...II Bevan, a Welsh miner and union official, first made his mark in Parliament as a relentless critic of Churchill in the days of the wartime coalition government...

...It is a matter of degree, they say...

...It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order...

...Whatever one's estimate of the danger of Russian aggression, there is no question that Britain has taken on a larger program of rearmament than she can possibly afford...

...Bevan's negotiations with the British Medical Association showed him at his best...

...He talks in terms of the "other" and better America that, he claims, endorses his views...

...Lord Woolton, DAVID C WILLIAMS was stationed for several years in London as European representative of Americans for Democratic Action, and returned there recent' ly for an up-to-date survey of political developments...

...Moreover—and this always endears a British Minister to his department—he was an effective fighter for health and housing within the Cabinet...

...No one, it was thought, could tackle the job of rehousing the millions whose homes had been blitzed, or establishing the National Health Service in the toughest kind of negotiation with the British Medical Association, without taking punishment which would permanently damage his political career...

...Many others who, in important respects, do not agree with him, nevertheless are going his way because he seems to offer the sort of dynamic leadership they find lacking elsewhere in the Party...

...elections...

...However annoying Bevan's sallies were to the leadership, they were the salt and savor of existence to the rank and file...

...His performance in the field of housing was not spectacular, but it was more than adequate...

...The more they can make their influence felt, and the more they can shape American policy towards giving responsible leadership to the free world, the more the confidence that progressive groups in Britain and in Europe will place in the United States...

...It would lead to the neglect of economic aid to the under-privileged areas of the world, thus paving the way for further Communist victories there...

...Not so Hugh Gaitskell, who succeeded Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer...

...The Ministry of Labor, however, did not hold Bevan for long, nor did he take the path to 10 Downing Street charted for him by his admirers...

...Many Britishers who think like Bevan do not, for one reason or another, accept his leadership...

...In the next few months, Bevanism may be considerably more powerful than Bevan himself...

...He'll have the chance to solidify his position with the trade unions...

...Many commentators have already predicted that he will vault into the leadership of the Labor Party in the not too distant future...

...When some of us taxed him with these words, mentioning the claims of the French and American press in this regard, he chipped neatly out of the rough...

...By concentrating upon military measures, the Bevanites claimed, the Western powers were running the risk of Communist victory on the ideological front...

...Bevan and his friends, of course, make it clear that they recognize a risk of Russian aggression, and the need of considerable rearmament and of close association with the United States...

...But, although the personality and the principle are distinguishable, they have inevitably been thrown together in the hurly-burly of politics...

...He and his fellow critic of Churchill, Emanuel Shin-well, rose rapidly in the favor of the party activists, as evidenced by the annual elections to the Labor Party's Executive Committee...

...By then, he and Jennie [Jennie Lee, his wife and also a Labor M.P.] should be ready to move into 10 Downing Street...

...The fight came to a head over the 1951 budget, and Bevan resigned when his viewpoint did not prevail...

...Bevan became popular with the civil servants in the Ministry...

...Moreover, he shrewdly outflanked the BMA by bringing over some of the most eminent and prestige-laden specialists to his side...

...By hammering away at it, they convinced many people that Bevan had applied this term of abuse to all Conservatives, and indeed to the entire middle class...

...They found him a shrewd, capable administrator, with so firm a grasp of the field for which he was responsible that he could negotiate for hours with the BMA without asking or needing guidance from the staff of experts beside him...

...The election results, with Labor topping the Conservatives in total of popular votes, has put the Party in a cocky, fighting mood...

...Bevanism seems likewise a growing trend...

...It is perhaps reconcilable with his view of Russian military weakness...

...Just like one of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies," the trade unionist complained...

...His supporters \*^re pleased when he moved on to the Ministry of Labor...

...He made the minimum of concessions, but the concessions were shrewdly calculated to dull the edge of BMA opposition...

...Although Cripps had many battles with Bevan, he respected him greatly, and in the end usually made some concession to his viewpoint...

...When Attlee appointed Bevan as Minister of Health in 1945, he was suspected of a Machiavellian design to discredit the wartime rebel by saddling him with an impossible job...

...More to the point is the charge that talk of American "recklessness" comes rather oddly from Bevan...

...He was adroit at enlisting public opinion...

...Nor was it even confined to the 1951 budget as a whole, with its restriction upon social expenditures and its emphasis upon rearmament...

...Gait-skell himself talked very much in Bevanite terms at the Ottawa conference of the North Atlantic powers, and Churchill will be saying the same thing sometime soon in Washington...

...In this rapidly narrowing world, what happens in Washington largely determines what happens in Westminster and the other capitals of the free world...

...Bevan, who had considered himself an irresistible force, now found himself colliding with an immovable body...

...What is likely to happen first is that more and more of Labor's recognized leaders will themselves be talking in Bevanite terms...

...Developments in the American political scene are bound to cause considerable alarm and suspicion, which will be voiced freely now that Labor is in opposition...

...Bevan does indeed have talents which should shine in opposition...

...After a multitude of troubles in getting the housing program started, it finally settled down to a steady clip of 200,000 units a year...

...It was not, Bevan insisted, a dogma confined to free dentures and spectacles—the precise budget issue on which the split appeared to have come...

...Williams is now director of research and education for the ADA, with headquarters in Washington...

...It is not too much to say that Bevan and Bevanism will rise or fall according to the result of the 1952 U.S...

...A high proportion of the housing units were built for municipal governments and rented by them to the families in greatest need of rehousing...

...In one of those week-end speeches which sometimes made the Monday morning newspapers painful reading for more orthodox Laborites, he described the Conservative leadership as "vermin...

...Rearmament is not something to which an idealistic movement like British Labor takes at all naturally or gladly...

...boss of the Conservative Party machine, has blamed "war scare" whipped up by the Labor Party campaigners for putting the Tories on the defensive from the beginning, and winning for Labor the votes which came near to keeping it in office...

...Bevan has some bitter enemies among the trade union leaders...

...Even during the campaign, many formerly quite orthodox Laborites found attack upon the Americans for recklessness, and upon the Conservatives for subservience to the Americans, a popular line to take...

...It's just the thing for him," a high Labor official who is privately a Bevanite told me...

...Bevanism, by which is meant criticism of the present scale of rearmament sharply flavored by anti-Americanism, is said already to be pervading the Labor Party as it goes back into, opposition after six crowded years of power...

...The elder leaders of the party were silenced by membership in the Government, or out of respect for the electoral truce which prevailed...

...No, the Bevan case, as expounded in two pamphlets, One Way Only and Going Our Way, was to be put in far broader terms...

...In retrospect, the retirement of Sir Stafford Cripps appears to have started the change...

...It is not a very profitable discussion, since the Kremlin has seen to it that very little in the shape of hard fact about Russian military power is available...

...Then he'll become Foreign Secretary, and win over the middle class by whacking away at the Russians...

...Ill But what, as one commentator put it, was he to resign to...

...Those American liberals and trade union leaders who now feel that Bevan has let them down badly have the remedy in their own hands...

...I recall standing by one of the most rapidly rising trade union leaders in Britain as we were listening to a Bevan oration at a Labor Party conference which brought the delegates cheering to their feet...

...Thomas Jefferson, in the 1785 Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom...

...Here the Bevanites can certainly boast that events have justified them...

...Indeed, he reminds many of the older parliamentarians of David Lloyd George, and no one testifies to this more emphatically than his daughter, Lady Megan Lloyd George, herself...

...And what was Bevanism...

...Bevan would deny that he is anti-American...