Word: bevans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Labor M.P.s listened in tense silence, the teller read out: "There voted for Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, 157; Mr. Aneurin Bevan, 70." In third place, with a humiliating 40 votes, was old Herbert Morrison, who only two years ago was recognized as Attlee's likely successor...
Labor's new leader turned to his chief rival. "Let bygones be bygone," said Gaitskell. Aneurin Bevan smiled and pledged his support. But there was no jubilation; no one headed for the bar to celebrate. They had rejected Bevan because he was too unreliable and would "frighten the country off us." Sadly they had rejected Morrison because he had become too old during the long years as Crown Prince. Gaitskell had been chosen in cold rationalism, not hot enthusiasm...
...cried injustice from housetop and street corner. The comfortable feared them. Gaitskell represents a new generation. He is no militant. He never talked himself hoarse on windy street corners under a policeman's hostile eye (as did Morrison), or chewed tobacco against the pit dust (as did Bevan). But 30 years after, Labor was in the position of having won its crusade. Once the citadel is stormed, the need is not for happy warriors but a good housekeeper; the welfare state needs to be run, not won. Successful British politics today consists in capturing the middle, and Hugh Gaitskell...
Last week Britain gratefully received Labor's choice. "Aneurin Bevan is a rousing one-man band," wrote the Laborite Daily Mirror. "But the leader of a party must be the conductor of a massive orchestra." From the far Tory right came an echoing chorus. Gaitskell, wrote Journalist Randolph Churchill (see PRESS), is "a first-class politician of patriotism and ambition. He has political guts, and merit. Let us salute...
Bevanites admit that Nye cannot command the votes to win. If Morrison were elected, 58-year-old Nye might yet have his turn when Morrison retired, but if 49-year-old Gaitskell wins, Bevan will have been passed over, and probably for good. Over the years, Morrison and Bevan have been the bitterest of personal rivals...