Word: bevans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the suggestion first came up in a cabinet meeting that the government ought to collect half the price of dentures and eyeglasses from the beneficiaries, at a saving of ?25 million a year, Nye Bevan shouted: "I am worth more than ?25 million to the Labor Party...
...wasn't. Last week the bill providing for the denture and eyeglass charges went before the House of Commons. Bevan's followers fought it hard. When Tories criticized the National Health Service for being so extravagant as to provide free treatment even for foreigners in Britain, Bevan indignantly cited a 14th Century monk who "was captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Arabia as a prisoner. He fell sick, was in the hospital for six months, and was treated entirely free . . . The infidels of Arabia were more Christian than the Tory party...
...House of Commons nevertheless voted for the government bill (but decided to keep free medical treatment for foreigners). It was a precarious vote. Bevan and 30 of his followers abstained; three Labor left-wingers voted against the government. The Tories in a body voted for the government...
...squelched, though he had entered into an uneasy peace, Nye Bevan took to the stump to rouse the country. He opened his campaign at Ebbwvale, his Welsh constituency. He warned again that rearmament meant economic dislocation. Bevan protested that he was not anti-American-in fact, said he, some of his best friends were Americans. But "It is not necessary for mankind to walk the way Russia has walked or ... the way America still walks." Sevan's red-headed ally, Barbara Castle, M.P. from Blackburn and one of Labor's left-wing firebrands, went barnstorming in Lancashire...
...wonder and pity; and by our enemies . . . with hostility or even contempt. . . Not one of them is so weak they cannot spare a quip or even a taunt for Britain. [Yet] we have but to cast away, by an effort of will, the enfeebling tendencies and fallacies of socialism . . ." Bevan and the other ministers who resigned had "rendered a public service," said Churchill, by drawing attention to the government's failure to buy necessary raw materials in good time-a muddle just like "the meat, the nuts, the eggs...