Just Finished Reading: Unskilled Labourer and World Statesman – A Portrait of Ernest Bevin 1881-1951 by Mark Stephens (FP: 1981)

It would seem that the great Labour leaders came from grinding poverty if my reading of the last two political biographies is anything to go by. Born into poverty and orphaned at age 8 the young Ernie had to fight for every penny he earnt and every meal he ate. Initially working on a farm (at incredibly low wages) he progressed through a series of unskilled jobs until final settling into a life of a delivery driver. Here he would have stayed (no doubt) if the economy had not taken a severe downturn and he had not personally experienced the deep divisions seemingly embedded in British society. Drawing on his Christian faith he determined that there must be a better way than this. It was here that he discovered a natural skill for organisation, negotiation and public speaking. Organising his first Union was a revelation and he soon became a full-time member of the Union movement progressing up the ladder of the organisation without ever taking his eyes off the place he came from and the men (and women in increasing numbers) he served. Seeing how the smaller unions held significantly less bargaining power than the giants of Coal, Railways and Shipping he proposed a radical idea – amalgamation of the smaller unions into a much larger one. This eventually became the Transport & General Workers Union (known as the T&G) which became one of the largest and most powerful in the Union system. My father was actually a member – although somewhat reluctantly!

As World War Two burst upon the world and the Chamberlin government fell it was Winston Churchill (actually a long time opponent) who asked for Bevan to join his government as Minister of Labour and greatly assisted in wartime production levels whilst at the same time greatly improving working conditions throughout industry and putting in place much of the working legislation taken for granted today. With war over Bevin imagined that he would stay on in the Labour department (now under Attlee’s Labour government) by Attlee had other ideas and sent him to the Foreign Office. At first totally out of his depth he quickly found his feet and because of his leadership style managed to produce an intensely loyal following within the department. Instrumental in procuring the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Post-War Europe, in at the foundation of both the UN and NATO, involved in the transition from Palestine to Israel as well as Britain’s acquisition of the Atomic Bomb and the Berlin airlift he was a central figure in Britain’s post-war world.

Yet again Bevin is someone I knew of (rather vaguely to be honest) but not someone I knew very much about. On many levels he seems to be a very interesting person to know more about. VERY down to earth, very smart and very driven be the need to see that everyone has their fair share of things and a fair crack of the whip. The book was a little sycophantic (being publish by his Union 30 years after his death in 1951) but was, it appears, generally fair. I think I shall be reading more about this interesting and important figure from the Left.