Rejected Man

Nye Bevan was a changed and embittered man. Ever since he broke with Clement Attlee over the Labor Party's support for a Southeast Asia alliance and German rearmament, Bevan had kept to himself. Night after night he sat brooding in the "Bevanite" corner of the Commons' Smoke Room with one or two henchmen. Only rarely did the old wit flash out, the great laugh boom.

Some said he had the death wish on him, some that he had taken the hit-run motor incident (TIME, May 3) badly and was deeply ashamed at driving on without stopping. Others saw him as he saw himself, the tragic figure of a savior to whom nobody was grateful. He insisted over and over that only his resignation from Labor's shadow Cabinet at the first mention of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization had restrained Clement Attlee and indirectly, Anthony Eden, from plunging ahead and bringing on a world war. Stubbornly he reiterated that the rank and file supported him, that the Labor leadership was wrong.

The Test. Three weeks ago he put the issue to a test: he decided to oppose the moderates' candidate, 48-year-old ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell, for the job of Labor Party treasurer at the party conference in September. Key to election is the block votes of Britain's six biggest unions, usually pledged in advance. At first, Bevan seemed headed for success. Britain resounded with shrill voices echoing Bevan's "No guns for the Hun." The National Union of Railwaymen (323,000 members) announced their support. Many small unions chimed in. But Britain's biggest union (the Transport and General Workers) and its fourth biggest (the General and Municipal Workers) pledged themselves to Gaitskell. Last. week the miners, Nye's own union (and Britain's second biggest with 683,000 members) met to choose their candidate.

Once the miners had come over the Welsh hills singing hymns as they came and crying aloud for "Nyrin, a king among men." Nye had gone down in the pits as one of them, with them had ridden the grimy streetcars, allotted to keep miners apart from clean folk. Miners held him their champion when he ranted against the Tory "vermin." In the Labor Party's councils, Nye was a leader of the tough unionists with small patience for the pale, university-trained Fabians such as Hugh Gaitskell. Unless Nye could capture the vote of his own miners, he had no chance of capturing the party as a whole.

The Blow. Last week, by a decisive vote of 505,000 to 223,000, the miners turned Nye and his policies down, and picked Gaitskell. To make the matter doubly clear, they rejected by a similar margin Bevan's starfcl against German rearmament. The vote was emphatic indication that despite the noisy outcry, Britons still reject the easy panacea of neutralism.

For Bevan, it was a crushing blow.

"Whoever would have thought that the--day would come when a miner would vote for a bloody intellectual like Gaitskell instead of an ex-miner like Nye?" cried a faithful follower. Same day, the engineers, third biggest union, also plumped for Gaitskell. With the solid support of Britain's four biggest unions, Gaitskell was now assured of 2,800,000 votes (v. Bevan's 853,000) and election in September.

In Parliament, Bevan sulked in the Smoke Room, declaring with fierce obstinacy: "I'll fight the blighter year after year if necessary." He shook off friends who pleaded with him to withdraw and run instead for his sure seat (representing the constituency parties) on the party's National Executive.

Best guess was that Bevan would be willing to risk thumping defeat to dramatize his cause. That, and the cloak of martyrdom, might be what frustrated Nye was seeking. Years ago he had written: "My concern was with one practical question . . . Where was power, and which the road to it?" He had still to find the answer.

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