After 20 Years

Ernie Bevin had been spoiling for this fight for 20 years. In the House of Commons canteen he gulped a cup of hot coffee and an unbuttered bun. Then he slumped down on his front bench to wait for the bell.

For two embittered days Tories and Socialists had been trading blows over Labor's four-line bill to repeal the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act. The four lines packed more political dynamite than a buzz bomb. Britain's first and only general strike in 1926, the nearest it had come to violent revolution in a century (and it was not very close), had shocked the easygoing Baldwin Government into banning political strikes. For all Labor, and especially for a bellicose trades unionist named Bevin, the Act was a standing insult.

Cheers & Jeers. Ernie landed a haymaker. "If ever there was a class act, it was this one." The rafters rang with Labor cheers. Bevin's jowls quivered with anger and excitement. Ignoring the Speaker, he yelled at Tories across the aisle: "You deliberately endeavored to destroy the economic and political power of the working man. You would do it again if you had the chance."

Winston Churchill, who had supported the hated Act, was holidaying in faraway Florida, but Ernie knew his words would carry that far. "I regret he is not in his place," he bawled, with a baleful glare at Anthony Eden in Churchill's seat. "He [Churchill] is the father of all these troubles," added Ernie, skipping clean over five years of warm wartime comradeship. "This nation today is paying a terrible price for the stupid, insane action taken at that time."

The Tories tried to howl him down, but it was no use. "I know the medicine is nasty," roared the Battler, "and I know you'd do it again if you were in power." Labor cheered wildly. "I have a clear card in my union; I want this Act off the statute books so that we have a clear card before the law." Then Ernie swung his knockout to the Tory solar plexus. "We Socialists are here. . . in power and we are going to stop here."

After a couple of pints with Commons cronies, he returned to the Chamber to see the Tories take the count, 369 votes to 194. Ernie grinned cavernously.

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