Word: bevans
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Labor's truculent Health Minister Aneurin Bevan had called British news papers "the most prostituted press in the world." The National Union of Journalists (which the weekly Economist labeled "the fifth column of the fourth estate") had been even more specific. It charged Britain's Tory press lords with operating monopolies, kowtowing to advertisers, distorting and withholding the news, and blacklisting (i.e., refusing to mention) political and personal enemies. To investigate charges of this kind, and perhaps to lay the groundwork for regulation of the press, the House of Commons voted to set up a Royal Commission...
Flatly disputing Nye Bevan, the commission reported itself satisfied that "the British press is inferior to none in the world." Rejecting government licensing or control, it added: "In our view free enterprise in the production of newspapers is a prerequisite of a free press, and free enterprise will generally mean commercially profitable enterprise . . . We see no reason to think that newspapers attached to ... political parties, trade unions or other organizations would . . . have greater regard for truth and fairness...
...result of skillful maneuvering, aided by earnest oratory from Attlee, Bevin, Bevan, Morrison and Cripps, the British Labor Party closed its conferences at Blackpool last week on a note of determined unity against the Tory opposition, which was dangerously on the upswing...
Labor faced bleak, uncertain months before the 1950 elections.* The leaders did not smother criticism from the delegates; they simply prevented any resolution from reaching the floor which could not command a resounding vote in favor. Fiery Minister of Health Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan did not denounce the opponents of full-speed nationalization. He seemed to have moved into the moderate camp of House Leader Herbert Morrison. What Bevan and Morrison asked the delegates for, and got, was a mandate to adjust the speed of nationalization to the economic and political weather ahead...
Delegates at Blackpool did not try to play down the danger. Militant Aneurin Bevan was in a somber mood when he addressed a preconference rally. Said Bevan: "Some of our people . . . appear to have achieved material prosperity in excess of their moral stature. Some of them have got what they have got too easily and they are in danger of throwing away by a few months of dissipating anarchy what we have spent our lifetime in building...