Ernie Bevin. MP for Woolwich

 

Over the past couple of months I have written two brief biographical articles of Members of Parliament for the Greenwich constituency. These days we have one Member who covers Greenwich and Woolwich - just one joint constituency but in the past they were separate. I thought that as I’d done two Greenwich MPs perhaps I’d better do one for Woolwich too and I was looking to see who that could be. There were many interesting people but one stood out - the great Ernie Bevin.

I rather suspect that nobody much these days, outside of political historians,  know anything about Ernie Bevin.  The better informed will sort of know that there was a politician called Bevan who started the National Health Service and I guess most of them would assume that is who I mean. The  two similar names were confusing enough at the time when they were both in the cabinet where Nye Bevan was a Welsh left winger and much less important figure then Bevin. 

Bevin had come from an impoverished childhood in rural Somerset to casual unskilled work in Bristol. Self educated and with a background in the Methodist church he had become involved in politics.  By 1922 he had set up, and was General Secretary of, the Transport and General Workers Union – at one time the biggest trade union in the world.  In 1940, and already recruited to a Churchill’s war cabinet, he was elected Member of Parliament for Central Wandsworth and continued to play a central role alongside Churchill and Clement Attlee.  In the post war Labour Government he was Foreign Secretary - a role which included both negotiating the future of the many constituent parts of the British Empire. but also the setting up of a reconfigured world  –-  NATO, Israel , the Marshall Plan, etc, etc. including working with and on Stalin, and the like. By 1950 he was also a very sick man.  He also had some prejudices which would not be acceptable to us today.

He had remained as MP for a seat Central Wandsworth and then suddenly in 1950 was proposed for Woolwich East – this is the main bit of central Woolwich.   It it’s not at all clear why, and I first thought to write this article with a view to finding out and I had been advised there was little in various biographies of him to explain this. It may have been because his health was so poor and his government role so massive that such a very safe seat  would allow for him not to be seen locally as a much as he should be -  and that turns out to be largely true. It is perhaps worth noting that Woolwich East Labour Party was the oldest Labour Party in the country having been founded considerably before the National Party which had copied its rules. In particular it was,and had been for many years, the largest Labour Party in terms of membership in the country.

The first newspaper reference I can find is from March 1949 where he addressed a wider Woolwich Party meeting on the foreign policy issues in which he was currently involved. This appears to have been an opportunity to introduce him to the wider membership of the local Labour Party having been chosen as parliamentary candidate by, I assume, their General Council. He told the meeting that he would have liked to have stood as MP for Woolwich many years ago but that he could not get released from his trade union duties to fight the seat - and so had eventually to take up the Wandsworth vacancy because of his role in the Cabinet. Of his age he said “ I am getting on, but I am only 21 in the arteries. The calendar does not always determine your age."

At around the same time the Conservative and Empire party had held a local meeting to introduce their election candidate – the  six foot tall Mr Campbell. He challenged Bevin to come and look at some substandard housing  with him - although I’m sure this never took place. He also managed to categorise some Labour women as ’grim faced harridans’.  Rather livelier opposition came from Woolwich Communist Party who also declared a candidate in the shape of their national chairman Palme Dutt.  We have perhaps forgotten the strong influence of the Communist Party in Woolwich  - they were still standing in local elections in the early 1980s - and in the 1950s the redoubtable Charlie Wellard was holding mass meetings in Woolwich Odeon with reference to working conditions at Siemens.

The local elections for the Council were in May 1949 and throughout the country results were not good for the Labour Party. In Woolwich Labour lost seven seats to the Conservatives – in the new Council  had 36 Labour councillors and nine Conservatives . This result sent party organisation staff off to see what could be done and in Woolwich this meant a review of work by Mabel Crout.  She had been running elections in the Woowich Party as secretary since 1906 when the party didn’t legally exist. She would act as Bevin’s  election agent and in the same year she herself would also be elected to the London County Council.

The general election was eventually called for the 23^rd of February 1951. Bevin was out of England on Foreign Office business and needed to get back.  He had been at the Colombo Conference held with a number of newly independent Commonwealth countries to discuss issues including economic development. Bevin had chaired it but was now so frail he was carried into the conference chamber ‘in a palanquin’.  Coming back he had stopped off for lunch in Alexandria with King Farouk and Prince Philip and then was picked up from there by a cruiser’, HMS Birmingham, and taken to Naples. He then undertook discussions with various Italians. He returned from Italy by train, with his doctor.   He had sent the text of his election address on in advance.

He was pictured submitting his nomination papers and deposit at Woolwich Town Hall accompanied by Mabel Crout and his wife, Flo.  It was recorded that the Town Hall cat was also present and it was noted that Bevin had made it up the sixteen steps into the Town Hall with only one pause. He was one of five candidates standing in Woolwich East - in addition to Palme Dutt for the communists and John Campbell for the Tories there was also to be a pacifist, Frank Hancock and a Liberal, Arthur Sage.

National election results saw a massive swing against the Labour Party and the Labour Government, leaving them with majority of only 5.  Of course Bevin won in Woolwich East with a massive majority - and publicly talked about the effort he had put in with local people and had made       speeches in many other places. In fact he had spent some time during the campaign in hospital and Flo and their daughter, Queenie, had put in a major effort to compensate.

in the new administration He continued as Foreign Secretary working with Attlee. The tiny majority meant that all Members would need to be present in Parliament to vote to get Government business through – but for the Foreign Secretary the gruelling round of meetings around the world would also have to continue. 

By April he was again in hospital.  He was usually a patient in the trade union financed Manor House Hospital in Hampstead - which closed only in 1999.  I remember it well; visiting my Paperworkers Union officer, Dad, when he was a patient there in the 1970s.

For the rest of 1950 he remained as foreign secretary although there was at least one other hospital admission which seems to have involved surgery of some sort.  Throughout this time there were constant rumours that he had told Woolwich Labour Party that he would not stand again at a General Election. These stories were always denied and then again stressed.

On 5^th January 1951 he dined at the Royal Naval College with the King and Queen and the French ambassador. Soon after there was a big party and dance at Woolwich Town Hall for Labour Party members – he left to the strains of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. The next day it was Abbey Wood ward New Year’s party at Federation Hall. In between  he was involved in discussions about the future of the Commonwealth, discussions with Eisenhower and Montgomery, discussions on the Argentine and  about Soviet Russia and the US.

In the next few months there were constant calls for him to resign as Foreign Secretary -   increasingly coming from ‘responsible’ sources. On 24^th February he held and paid personally for a  supper for 300 Woolwich Labour Party workers. He eventually resigned on 17^th March after what appears to have been pressure from Attlee. 

He died on 14^th April - in bed while working on some papers. Of course there were tributes from all over and huge crowds lined the roads as his coffin was taken for cremation to Golders Green.

This has been a very quick a very inadequate look at the life and work of this remarkable man and I’m sorry that Woolwich - and I suspect a lot of the rest of the country - have completely forgotten him.

PS  Perhaps we should also note a younger and fitter Labour Foreign Ssecretary who died very suddenly of a stroke in 1977 -  Anthony Crosland. There were revelations then about his diary and the workload he was expected to carry.