Trial of Aneurin Bevan

Britain's parliamentary Labor Party expelled its leading troublemaker last week and came close to splintering itself in the process. The troublemaker was Aneurin Bevan, 57, the mischievous Welsh spellbinder and best orator under 80 in British politics. At a party "trial" in the New Palace of Westminster, Bevan was charged with flouting party discipline and insulting his leader, 72-year-old Clement Attlee, during a debate in the House of Commons (TIME, March 14).

Like Old Bailey judges, Attlee and 13 members of Labor's shadow cabinet* took their places on the platform in Committee Room 14, overlooking the Thames. All but a handful of Labor's 294 M.P.s squeezed into the stifling room, and Nye Bevan, dressed in black, took a chair in the corner to the right of the platform. The questions before the court were purely disciplinary: Had Bevan flouted the party, and if so, how should he be punished? Wispy little Clement Attlee assumed the prosecutor's role.

The Prosecution. Attlee plainly disliked it, but in his thin, waspish voice, he built up a case against the burly Welshman that could not be controverted. Bevan, said his leader, had publicly decried his party's support for the SEATO pact, West German rearmament, and disputed Attlee's endorsement of NATO's nuclear strategy.

Once. Attlee complained, Bevan "sprang to the dispatch box and gave me a public affront." Bevan had also publicly chided his party leaders for being absent from the House of Commons during one of his speeches. "That," said Attlee, "was unpardonable." Attlee's windup revealed his own misgivings over his handling of the Bevan revolt. "I have tried and failed to get unity ... I have been abused for not taking action, for weakness and dithering." Now he was taking action. He demanded the highest penalty: "Withdrawal of the whip," i.e., releasing Nye from party discipline.

No cheering sounded, either for Attlee as he sat down or for Bevan as he rose to reply. There were few men in the room who did not remember 1931, when the Labor Party under Ramsay MacDonald splintered hopelessly and left Labor in the wilderness for a decade. With Celtic scorn, Nye Bevan sought to show that other Socialists than he had insulted Clement Attlee. Manny Shinwell, for instance, said Bevan. And Dick Stokes, the burly M.P. from Ipswich; only last year he had sneered at Attlee's leadership by quoting what he said was a Chinese proverb: "A fish starts rotting at its head." Bevan accused the trade union bosses, who contribute most to Labor's treasury, of ordering his expulsion. Pudgy finger pointing at member after member, he ranged along the row of the shadow cabinet: "There are the conspirators . . . Those who hold the moneybags demand my expulsion. They have given the orders. They await the decision."

The Debate. While the Welshman's stream of words eddied around him, Clem Attlee chewed his pipe, taking it out of his mouth only to mutter: "Most embarrassing, most embarrassing." Attlee left it to his right-wing followers to tear Bevan down, and they did, though messily. "Why did you once take me for a walk down the corridor and say we must get rid of Mr. Attlee?" one woman M.P. demanded of Nye Bevan. "That's a wicked lie," Bevan shot back.

For two hours the Socialists wrangled, and the trial got out of hand. A right-winger suggested that Nye Bevan was a Communist dupe. Bouncing Bessie Braddock tried to create a diversion but subsided ponderously, when a Bevanite shouted: her "four years with the Communist Party hardly entitle her to a certificate of political virginity." Eventually, three main groups emerged from the hubbub: the right-wingers who were determined to expel Bevan; the left-wingers who wanted to save him; and the majority in the middle, who wished they could avoid a choice. Reluctantly, Attlee agreed that the vote should be an expression of confidence in his leadership.

Verdict: Expulsion. The first vote was for an amendment proposing to censure Bevan but not to expel him. Despite Attlee's opposition to it, the amendment was rejected by the hairbreadth margin of 14 votes. Then came the vote on expulsion: 141 to 112. Nye Bevan was kicked out of the parliamentary Labor Party by the vote of less than half of the 294 Labor M.P.s.

For Bevan, it was a severe blow: should Labor's National Executive Committee endorse the decision of the parliamentary group when it meets this week, he will no longer be eligible to stand as a Labor candidate on the Labor ticket. Bevan himself was bitter. He complained that, in effect, Attlee had stolen his policy and organized his exile in one coordinated maneuver. But though Sevan's extremist followers were urging him to form a new leftist party, Nye told the assembled Socialists: "I am now 57 years of age. I have given 45 years of my life to this party. My fundamental loyalties are still with it. I am not going out to form a new party."

The Other Loser. All over Wales there were "indignation meetings" and votes of support for "Nurrin." "The whole constituency is still behind Bevan," said the Trade Council chairman in Ebbw Vale, Nye's South Wales home town. "If Attlee himself stands from here, he won't have a chance."

Attlee, indeed, seemed likely to be the main loser in the entire affair. His failure to swing a decisive majority of the party against Bevan led the Laborite Daily Herald to call him: "The man whose days are numbered."

Never a tower of strength as a leader, Attlee has been challenged of late not only by the Bevanites. but by Labor's right-wingers, many of whom take a dim view of his tendency to outmaneuver his opponents by adopting their policies. At 72, he shows little of the political dexterity and penetrating common sense that were his outstanding characteristics as Prime Minister; on an issue so vital to Britain as West German rearmament, for example, he ordered his party to vote neither yes nor no, but to abstain.

Out of office, Attlee has failed to provide the new ideas and momentum that his party so badly needed after exhausting its program in office. One result is that the divided Labor Party is drifting, policy-less, into the continental Socialist habit of opposition for its own sake. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is currently failing in its constitutional duty to provide Britain with an effective alternative to the government in power.

*Meaning men who would be Cabinet ministers if their party returned to power. When one of them speaks from the Front Bench on his chosen field (health, defense, etc.), he is presumed to speak for the party.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.