West: Ernest Bevin

Dave Harvey
Political Correspondent, BBC West

Ernest Bevin was born into a poor Somerset family with seven boys to feed. He had no formal schooling and came to Bristol to work aged eleven.

Workers of the world Unite

The ferry looks a little unusual, if only because it is packed on a cold December afternoon.

As it draws closer, you see a huge green banner on the front deck.

"Workers of the world Unite" it proclaims, calling Bristol's workers to arms.

No fancy dress for Ernie Bevin's supporters, the men and women of the Transport and General Workers Union.

It underlies his contemporary appeal: he may be dead 50 years, but his achievements are with us still.

Trade Unionist

The T&G, his first creation, is still Britain's biggest voice for working people.

NATO, which he helped create, is very much with us.

But perhaps deeper is the idea that anyone with a political dream, however humble, can go to Downing Street.

University of life

Ernest Bevin was of lowly origin

Bevin was born into a poor Somerset family with seven boys to feed, he had no formal schooling and came to Bristol to work aged eleven.

The trams, some cafes, then a job as a carter in the docks were his workplace, and his education.

Rapidly he got fed up with the conditions, men were paid three months in arrears, and joined the growing Socialist Party.

"He led an extraordinary occupation of the Cathedral", says Councillor John Bees, his political champion.

400 unemployed men with a band at the front, just imagine that.

All the toffs in their serried ranks, then in comes Bevin and his men.

It worked though, the clergy backed his campaign for Make Work programmes and Bristol City Council set one up.

Minister of Labour

Bevin's supporters canvassed in the dockers pub

Bevin rose rapidly through the Labour movement, and in the war Churchill asked him to join his cabinet as Minister of Labour.

He formed the famous Bevin Boys, an army of industrial conscripts that kept the mines working and the factories powered up.

Warwick Taylor was one of those sent down the mines, and he still remembers it today from his home in Somerset.

None of us liked it much at the time, but the work had to be done, and looking back you have to take pride in the achievement.

The Bevin Boys were less obvious heroes than the Spitfire pilots, but without them the RAF would have run out of planes.

After the war Bevin became foreign secretary in Clement Attlee's government, and helped found NATO.

From farm labourer to foreign secretary

At the time, Roosevelt asked him where he was educated, he found him so wise. "Sir" answered Bevin, "I gathered my knowledge on the hedgerows of experience."

John Bees said.

He was a farm labourer who became foreign secretary.

But he never forgot his roots, he was always working for ordinary working people.

Other candidates Alfred the Great William Tyndale John Pym Beau Nash William Pitt

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