Whenever the name Ernest Bevin (1881-1951) is mentioned in conversation, it is often met with: “Do you mean Bevan?” The latter, Aneurin, founded the National Health Service; but his near-namesake was a yet more titanic figure. Ernest Bevin was, in succession, the founder of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and its general secretary for 23 years, minister of labour in Winston Churchill’s wartime government, foreign secretary in Clement Attlee’s administration, and an architect of Nato. He was a working-class autodidact, a formidable orator, a master of statecraft, a good friend and a bad enemy.
For decades Bevin’s imposing frame loomed over British politics. That he has been largely forgotten would bewilder past generations. In this vivid biography, Andrew Adonis, the Labour peer and former transport secretary, makes it his mission to rescue Bevin from undeserved obscurity. Labour’s Churchill is the first major work to be published on its subject since the historian Alan Bullock’s epic trilogy concluded in 1983. But Bevin’s story is worthy of cinema.
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