The Right Honourable Aneurin Bevan
Deputy Leader of the Labour Party
In office 4 May 1959 – 6 July 1960
Leader	Hugh Gaitskell
Preceded by	Jim Griffiths
Succeeded by	George Brown
Shadow Foreign Secretary
In office 22 July 1956 – 4 May 1959
Leader	Hugh Gaitskell
Preceded by	Alfred Robens
Succeeded by	Denis Healey
Minister of Labour and National Service
In office 17 January 1951 – 23 April 1951
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	George Isaacs
Succeeded by	Alfred Robens
Minister of Health
In office 3 August 1945 – 17 January 1951
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	Henry Willink
Succeeded by	Hilary Marquand
Member of Parliament for Ebbw Vale
In office 31 May 1929 – 6 July 1960
Preceded by	Evan Davies
Succeeded by	Michael Foot
Personal details
Born	(1897-11-15)15 November 1897 Tredegar, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died	6 July 1960(1960-07-06) (aged 62) Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour

Aneurin "Nye" Bevan (pronounced /əˈnaɪrɪn/; Welsh: [aˈnəɨ.rin]; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people. He was a long-time Member of Parliament (MP), representing Ebbw Vale for 31 years, and became recognised as one of the leaders of the party’s left wing, and of left-wing British thought generally. His most famous accomplishment came when, as Minister of Health in the post-war Attlee government, he spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, which provides medical care free at point-of-need to all Britons.

Youth[link]

Bevan was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, in the South Wales Valleys and on the northern edge of the South Wales coalfield, the son of miner David Bevan and Phoebe née Prothero, a seamstress. Both Bevan's parents were Nonconformists; his father was a Baptist and his mother a Methodist. One of ten children, Bevan did poorly at school and his academic performance was so bad that his headmaster made him repeat a year. At age 13, Bevan left school and began working in the local Tytryst Colliery. David Bevan had been a supporter of the Liberal Party in his youth, but was converted to socialism by the writings of Robert Blatchford in the Clarion and joined the Independent Labour Party.

His son (Aneurin Bevan) also joined the Tredegar branch of the South Wales Miners' Federation and became a trade union activist: he was head of his local Miners' Lodge at only 19. Bevan became a well-known local orator and was seen by his employers, the Tredegar Iron & Coal Company, as a revolutionary. The manager of the colliery found an excuse to get him sacked. But, with the support of the Miners' Federation, the case was judged as one of victimisation and the company was forced to re-employ him.

In 1919, he won a scholarship to the Central Labour College in London, sponsored by the South Wales Miners' Federation. At the college he gained his life-long respect for Karl Marx. Reciting long passages by William Morris, Bevan gradually began to overcome the stammer that he had had since he was a child.

Bevan was one of the founding members of the "Query Club" with his brother Billy and Walter Conway. The club started in 1920 or 1921 and they met in Tredegar. They would collect money each week for any member who needed it. The club intended to break the hold that the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company had on the town by becoming members of pivotal groups in the community.^[1]

The Tredegar Query Club by friends including Aneurin Bevan and Walter Conway. Conway is in the middle of the picture. Aneurin is second from right on the back row and his brother Billy is second right on front row.^[1]

Upon returning home in 1921, he found that the Tredegar Iron & Coal Company refused to re-hire him. He did not find work until 1924 and his employer, the Bedwellty Colliery, closed down only ten months later. Bevan then had to endure another year of unemployment. In February 1925, his father died of pneumoconiosis.

In 1926, he found work again, this time as a paid union official. His wage of £5 a week was paid by the members of the local Miners' Lodge. His new job arrived in time for him to head the local miners against the colliery companies in what would become the General Strike. When the strike started on 3 May 1926, Bevan soon emerged as one of the leaders of the South Wales miners. The miners remained on strike for six months. Bevan was largely responsible for the distribution of strike pay in Tredegar and the formation of the Council of Action, an organisation that helped to raise money and provided food for the miners.

He was a member of the Cottage Hospital Management Committee around 1928 and was chairman in 1929/30.

Parliament[link]

In 1928, Bevan won a seat on Monmouthshire County Council. With that success he was picked as the Labour Party candidate for Ebbw Vale (displacing the sitting MP), and easily held the seat at the 1929 General Election. In Parliament he soon became noticed as a harsh critic of those he felt opposed the working man. His targets included the Conservative Winston Churchill and the Liberal David Lloyd George, as well as Ramsay MacDonald and Margaret Bondfield from his own Labour party (he targeted the latter for her unwillingness to increase unemployment benefits). He had solid support from his constituency, being one of the few Labour MPs to be unopposed in the 1931 General Election and this support grew through the 1930s and the period of the Great Depression in the United Kingdom.

Soon after he entered parliament Bevan was briefly attracted to Oswald Mosley's arguments, in the context of Macdonald's government's incompetent handling of rising unemployment. However, in the words of his biographer John Campbell, "he breached with Mosley as soon as Mosley breached with the Labour Party". This is symptomatic of his lifelong commitment to the Labour Party, which was a result of his firm belief that only a Party supported by the British Labour Movement could have a realistic chance of attaining political power for the working class. Thus, for Bevan, joining Mosley's New Party was not an option.

He married fellow socialist MP Jennie Lee in 1934. He was an early supporter of the socialists in Spain and visited the country in the 1930s. In 1936 he joined the board of the new socialist newspaper Tribune. His agitations for a united socialist front of all parties of the left (including the Communist Party of Great Britain) led to his brief expulsion from the Labour Party in March to November 1939 (along with Stafford Cripps and C.P. Trevelyan). But, he was readmitted in November 1939 after agreeing "to refrain from conducting or taking part in campaigns in opposition to the declared policy of the Party."

He was a strong critic of the policies of Neville Chamberlain, arguing that his old enemy Winston Churchill should be given power. During the war he was one of the main leaders of the left in the Commons, opposing the wartime Coalition government. Bevan opposed the heavy censorship imposed on radio and newspapers and wartime Defence Regulation 18B, which gave the Home Secretary the powers to intern citizens without trial. Bevan called for the nationalisation of the coal industry and advocated the opening of a Second Front in Western Europe in order to help the Soviet Union in its fight with Germany. Churchill responded by calling Bevan "... a squalid nuisance".

Bevan was also critical of the leadership of the British Army which he felt was class bound and inflexible. After Auchinleck's defeat by Rommel and his disastrous retreat across Cyrenaica in 1942, Bevan made one of his most memorable speeches in the Commons in support of a motion of censure against the Churchill government. In this he said, "The Prime Minister must realise that in this country there is a taunt on everyone's lips that if Rommel had been in the British Army he would still have been a sergeant...There is a man in the British Army who flung 150,000 men across the Ebro in Spain, Michael Dunbar. He is at present a sergeant...He was Chief of Staff in Spain, he won the Battle of the Ebro, and he is a sergeant." How angry this criticism made Churchill can be seen from the following. Churchill devotes almost an entire page in his history "The Second World War" to a lengthy quotation of this speech, yet he never mentions Bevan as the speaker, referring to him only as, "One Member."^[2] In fact, Michael Dunbar had been recommended for a commission, but he had himself turned the commission down.

Bevan believed that the Second World War would give Britain the opportunity to create "a new society". He often quoted an 1855 passage from Karl Marx: "The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality." At the beginning of the 1945 general election campaign Bevan told his audience: "We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders. We enter this campaign at this general election, not merely to get rid of the Tory majority. We want the complete political extinction of the Tory Party."

After World War II, when the Communists took control of China, Parliament debated the merits of recognising the Communist government. Churchill, no friend of Bevan or Mao Zedong, commented that recognition would be advantageous to the United Kingdom for various reasons and added, "Just because you recognise someone does not mean you like him. We all, for example, recognise the Right Honourable Member from Ebbw Vale."

Government[link]

The 1945 General Election proved to be a landslide victory for the Labour Party, giving it a large enough majority to allow the implementation of the party's manifesto commitments and to introduce a programme of far-reaching social reforms that were collectively dubbed the 'Welfare State' (see 1945 Labour Election Manifesto). These reforms were achieved in the face of great financial difficulty following the war. The new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, appointed Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health, with a remit that also covered Housing. Thus, the responsibility for instituting a new and comprehensive National Health Service, as well as tackling the country's severe post-war housing shortage, fell to the youngest member of Attlee's Cabinet in his first ministerial position. The free health service was paid for directly through public money. Government income was increased for the Welfare state expenditure by a severe increase in marginal tax rates for wealthy business owners in particular, as part of what the Labour government largely saw as the redistribution of the wealth created by the working class from the owners of large-scale industry to the workers.^[3]

The collective principle asserts that... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.

—Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, p100

On the "appointed day", 5 July 1948, having overcome political opposition from both the Conservative Party and from within his own party, and after a dramatic showdown with the British Medical Association, which had threatened to derail the National Health Service scheme before it had even begun, as medical practitioners continued to withhold their support just months before the launch of the service, Bevan's National Health Service Act of 1946 came into force. After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals. Bevan later gave the famous quote that, in order to broker the deal, he had "stuffed their mouths with gold". Some 2,688 voluntary and municipal hospitals in England and Wales were nationalised and came under Bevan's supervisory control as Health Minister.

Bevan said:

The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.

—Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, p106

Statue of Bevan in Cardiff by Robert Thomas

Substantial bombing damage and the continued existence of pre-war slums in many parts of the country made the task of housing reform particularly challenging for Bevan. Indeed, these factors, exacerbated by post-war restrictions on the availability of building materials and skilled labour, collectively served to limit Bevan's achievements in this area. 1946 saw the completion of 55,600 new homes; this rose to 139,600 in 1947, and 227,600 in 1948. While this was not an insignificant achievement, Bevan's rate of housebuilding was seen as less of an achievement than that of his Conservative (indirect) successor, Harold Macmillan, who was able to complete some 300,000 a year as Minister for Housing in the 1950s. Macmillan was able to concentrate full-time on Housing, instead of being obliged, like Bevan, to combine his housing portfolio with that for Health (which for Bevan took the higher priority). However critics said that the cheaper housing built by Macmillan was exactly the poor standard of housing that Bevan was aiming to replace. Macmillan's policies led to the building of cheap, mass-production high-rise tower blocks, which have been heavily criticised since (arguably due to many of them degenerating into new slums).

Bevan was appointed Minister of Labour (during which he helped to secure a deal for railwaymen which provided them with a big pay increase^[4]) in 1951 but soon resigned in protest at Hugh Gaitskell's introduction of prescription charges for dental care and spectacles—created in order to meet the financial demands imposed by the Korean War. Two other Ministers, John Freeman and Harold Wilson resigned at the same time. See Bevan's speeches Later the same year, the Labour party lost power in a general election.

Opposition[link]

In 1952 Bevan published In Place of Fear, "the most widely read socialist book" of the period, according to a highly critical right-wing Labour MP Anthony Crosland.^[5] Bevan begins: "A young miner in a South Wales colliery, my concern was with the one practical question: Where does power lie in this particular state of Great Britain, and how can it be attained by the workers?" In March 1952, a poorly prepared (and possibly inebriated) Bevan came off the worse in an evening Commons debate on health with Conservative backbencher Iain Macleod: Macleod's performance led Churchill to appoint him Minister of Health some six weeks after his debate with Bevan.

Out of office, Bevan soon initiated a split within the Labour Party between the right and the left. For the next five years, Bevan was the leader of the left-wing of the Labour Party, who became known as Bevanites. They criticised high defence expenditure (especially for nuclear weapons) and opposed the more reformist stance of Clement Attlee. In 1954, Gaitskell beat Bevan in a hard fought contest to be the Treasurer of the Labour Party. When the first British hydrogen bomb was exploded in 1955, Bevan led a revolt of 57 Labour MPs and abstained on a key vote. The Parliamentary Labour Party voted 141 to 113 to withdraw the whip from him, but it was restored within a month due to his popularity.

After the 1955 general election, Attlee retired as leader. Bevan contested the leadership against both Morrison and Labour right-winger Hugh Gaitskell, but it was Gaitskell who emerged victorious. Bevan's remark that "I know the right kind of political Leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating machine" was assumed to refer to Gaitskell, although Bevan denied it (commenting upon Gaitskell's record as Chancellor of the Exchequer as having "proved" this). However, Gaitskell was prepared to make Bevan Shadow Colonial Secretary, and then Shadow Foreign Secretary in 1956. Bevan was as critical of the Egyptian dictator Colonel Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956 as he was of the subsequent Anglo-French military response. He was a vocal critic of the government's actions in the Suez Crisis, noticeably delivering high profile speeches in Trafalgar Square on 4 November 1956 at a protest rally, and devastating the government's actions and arguments in the House of Commons on 5 December 1956. At the Trafalgar rally, Bevan accused the government of a "policy of bankrupcty and despair"”.^[6] Bevan stated at the Trafalgar rally:

"We are stronger than Egypt but there are other countries stronger than us. Are we prepared to accept for ourselves the logic we are applying to Egypt? If nations more powerful than ourselves accept the absence of principle, the anarchistic attitude of Eden and launch bombs on London, what answer have we got, what complaint have we got? If we are going to appeal to force, if force is to be the arbiter to which we appeal, it would at least make common sense to try to make sure beforehand that we have got it, even if you accept that abysmal logic, that decadent point of view.

We are in fact in the position today of having appealed to force in the case of a small nation, where if it is appealed to against us it will result in the destruction of Great Britain, not only as a nation, but as an island containing living men and women. Therefore I say to Anthony, I say to the British government, there is no count at all upon which they can be defended.

They have besmirched the name of Britain. They have made us ashamed of the things of which formerly we were proud. They have offended against every principle of decency and there is only way in which they can even begin to restore their tarnished reputation and that is to get out! Get out! Get out!"^[7]

That year, he was finally elected as party treasurer, beating George Brown.

In 1957, Bevan joined Richard Crossman and Morgan Phillips in a controversial lawsuit for libel against The Spectator magazine, which had described the men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy. Having sworn that the charges were untrue, the three collected damages from the magazine. Many years later, Crossman's posthumously published diaries confirmed the truth of The Spectator's charges.

Bevan dismayed many of his supporters when, speaking at the 1957 Labour Party conference, he decried unilateral nuclear disarmament, saying "It would send a British Foreign Secretary naked into the conference-chamber". This statement is often misconstrued: Bevan argued that unilateralism would result in Britain's loss of allies, and one interpretation of his metaphor is that nakedness would come from the lack of allies, not the lack of weapons.^{[citation needed]} According to the journalist Paul Routledge, Donald Bruce, a former MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary and adviser to Bevan, had told him that Bevan's shift on the disarmament issue was the result of discussions with the Soviet government where they advised him to push for British retention of nuclear weapons so they could possibly be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the United States.^[8]

In 1959, Bevan was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. In pain, he checked into a hospital at the end of 1959 to undergo surgery for an ulcer, but malignant stomach cancer was discovered instead.^[9] Bevan died the following year at the age of 62 at his home Asheridge Farm, Chesham, Buckinghamshire. His remains were cremated at Gwent Crematorium in Croesyceiliog.

His last speech in the House of Commons, in the Debate of the 3 November 1959 on the Queen's Speech,^[10] in which Bevan referred to the difficulties of persuading the electorate to support a policy which would make them less well-off in the short term but more prosperous in the long term, was quoted extensively in subsequent years.

In 2004, over 40 years after his death, he was voted first in a list of 100 Welsh Heroes, this being credited much to his contribution to the Welfare State after World War Two.

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Aneurin Bevan

• Social democracy
• Democratic socialism
• Bevanism
• Blaenau Gwent
• National Health Service
• Trade Union
• 100 Welsh Heroes

Bibliographic publications[link]

• Why Not Trust The Tories?, 1944. Published under the pseudonym, 'Celticus'. The title was intended ironically.
• In Place of Fear, 1952. (ISBN 9781163810118)
• Excerpts from Bevan's speeches are included in Greg Rosen's Old Labour to New, Methuen, 2005.

Bevan's key speeches in the legislative arena are to be found in:

• Peter J. Laugharne (ed) Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volume I, Speeches at Westminster 1929-1944, Manutius Press, 1996.
• Peter J. Laugharne (ed), Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volume II, Speeches at Westminster 1945-1960, Manutius Press, 2000.
• Peter J. Laugharne (ed), Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volumes I and II, Speeches at Westminster 1929-1960, Manutius Press, 2004.

Further bibliographic reading[link]

The major biographies are the uplifting two-volume Aneurin Bevan by Michael Foot (1962 and 1974) ^[11] and the more sceptical Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism, by John Campbell (1987).

Bevan's widow, Jennie Lee, published My Life with Nye, in 1980.

Shorter biographical essays can be found in:

• Kevin Jefferys (ed), Labour Forces, IB Taurus, 2002.
• Peter J. Laugharne (ed), Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volume I, Speeches at Westminster 1929-1944, Manutius Press, 1996.
• Peter J. Laugharne (ed), Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volume II, Speeches at Westminster 1945-1960, Manutius Press, 2000.
• Peter J. Laugharne (ed), Aneurin Bevan - A Parliamentary Odyssey: Volumes I and II, Speeches at Westminster 1929-1960, Manutius Press, 2004.
• Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People, OUP, 1987.
• Greg Rosen (ed), Dictionary of Labour Biography, Politicos Publishing, 2001
• G D H Cole, Aneurin Bevan, Jim Griffiths, L F Easterbrook, Ait William Beveridge, and Harold J Laski, Plan for Britain: A Collection of Essays prepared for the Fabian Society(Not illustrated with 127 text pages).^[12]
• Dai Smith, 'Bevan, Aneurin (1897–1960)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [1].

Notes[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2010)

External links[link]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Aneurin Bevan
• Never Again! Aneurin Bevan, Housing and Harold Hill
• History of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society
• Aneurin Bevan and the foundation of the NHS
• Biography with excerpts
• BBC Biography with Audio clip of speech on NHS
• Nye Bevan on The Guardian's Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century site, featuring full audio of Bevan's speech at the 4th November 1956 Trafalgar Square rally against British action in Suez.

v t e Secretaries of State for Health of the United Kingdom Ministers of Health Christopher Addison · Alfred Mond · Arthur Griffith-Boscawen · Neville Chamberlain · William Joynson-Hicks · John Wheatley · Neville Chamberlain · Arthur Greenwood · Neville Chamberlain · Edward Hilton Young · Kingsley Wood · Walter Elliot · Malcolm MacDonald · Ernest Brown · Henry Willink · Aneurin Bevan · Hilary Marquand · Harry Crookshank · Iain Macleod · Robin Turton · Dennis Vosper · Derek Walker-Smith · Enoch Powell · Anthony Barber · Kenneth Robinson Secretaries of State for Social Services Richard Crossman · Sir Keith Joseph · Barbara Castle · David Ennals · Patrick Jenkin · Norman Fowler · John Moore Secretaries of State for Health Kenneth Clarke · William Waldegrave · Virginia Bottomley · Stephen Dorrell · Frank Dobson · Alan Milburn · John Reid · Patricia Hewitt · Alan Johnson · Andy Burnham · Andrew Lansley

Vernon Bogdanor speaking on his book The New British Constitution in Blackwell’s bookshop, Oxford.

Vernon Bogdanor, CBE, FBA /ˈbɒɡdənɔr/ (born 1943) is Research Professor at the Institute for Contemporary History at King's College London, and a Fellow of Brasenose College, University of Oxford. He is one of Britain's foremost constitutional experts and has written extensively on political and constitutional issues. He is an advocate of constitutional reform including proportional representation, but supports the retention of the British Monarchy.

Career[link]

Educated at Bishopshalt School, Vernon Bogdanor gained his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (with congratulatory First Class honours) from The Queen's College, Oxford. He has been Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Brasenose College, Oxford, since 1966, where he has been Senior Tutor (1979–85 and 1996–97), Vice-Principal, and (in 2002-03) Acting Principal. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. In 1998 he was awarded the CBE for contributions to constitutional history, and in 2009 he was appointed Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur.^[1]

He has been a Member of Council of The Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, Member of the Court of Essex University, Adviser (as a member of the Council of Europe and American Bar Association delegations) to the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel and Slovakia on constitutional and electoral reform, Member of the Academic Panel of Local Authority Associations, Member of The Hansard Society Commission on the Legislative Process, Member of the UK Government delegation on Democratic Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and Conference on the Protection of Minorities, Consultant to Independent Television News (ITN) on the General Election, Member of the Economic and Social Research Council’s committee administering the 'Whitehall' programme, Special Adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on the Public Services, Member of the Swedish Constitutional Reform Project, Member of the Advisory Group to the High Commissioner on National Minorities, Adviser to the President of Trinidad on the Constitution of Trinidad, and Member of the ESRC's committee administering the Devolution programme.

Professor Bogdanor is a frequent contributor to TV, radio and newspapers. Between 2004 and 2008 he gave public lectures as Professor of Law at Gresham College, London. He continues to give public lectures at the College, now as Visiting Professor of Political History. He has published numerous books and articles. Recently, he edited The British Constitution in the 20th Century (published by Oxford University Press to mark the centenary of the British Academy) and authored The New British Constitution (2009) which analyses constitutional changes under the Labour government since 1997.

Professor Bogdanor is not a member of any political party. He is a member of the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank based in Cambridge, which seeks to spread ideas about democratic government.

Professor Bogdanor appeared on the BBC's coverage of the 2010 election night offering thoughts and insight onto the result, and their implications, as they came in. He made a further appearance in the BBC's election night programme for the Council elections and AV referendum in May 2011.

Bogdanor recently said that the democratic deficit in England "was a price worth paying', in order to secure the continuance of the United Kingdom. ^[2]

Comments[link]

David Cameron[link]

Professor Bogdanor's most famous former student is the current Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron whom he has described as "one of the ablest" students he has taught, whose political views were "moderate and sensible Conservative".^[3] Professor Bogdanor has, however, expressed reservations about certain policies of Cameron's, notably his proposal for a British "Bill of Rights", about which Bogdanor said, "I believe it's ill thought-out and confused.... He [Cameron] may have forgotten some of the things I've taught him. I'd be happy to give him a few more tutorials on civil liberties."^[4]

Damian Green[link]

He referred to the arrest and questioning of the Conservative MP Damian Green, by police from Special Branch as "a storm in a teacup" – "The important principle is that MPs – apart from when they're speaking in the chamber and dealing with constituents' correspondence – are as subject to the same laws as the rest of us."^[5]

Books[link]

Among books written or edited by Vernon Bogdanor are:

• The Coalition and the Constitution
• Constitutions in Democratic Politics
• Devolution in the United Kingdom
• Joined-Up Government
• Multi-Party Politics and the Constitution
• The Monarchy and the Constitution
• What is Proportional Representation?
• Power and the People: Guide to Constitutional Reform
• The New British Constitution
• The Age of Affluence, 1951-1964
• The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Institutions

Noteable Former Students[link]

Bogdanor's most notable former student is David Cameron. Others include: Kate Allen, Camilla Cavendish, Peter Conradi, Diane Coyle, Guy Spier and Toby Young

See also[link]

• List of Gresham Professors of Law

References[link]

1. ^ "Cameron tutor gains French honour". 2009-10-29. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5ivhrl4rM-5zA2UNJw751UFffH6OA. Retrieved 2009-10-30. 
2. ^ BBC Radio 4, 20th December 2011
3. ^ "The David Cameron story". BBC News. 2005-12-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4502656.stm. Retrieved 2010-05-27. 
4. ^ Woodward, Will (2006-06-27). "Cameron's call to repeal legislation would not end deportation battles, say ministers". The Guardian (London). http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1806784,00.html. Retrieved 2010-05-27. 
5. ^ "Row over Green 'grooming' claims", BBC News, 1 December 2008

External links[link]

• Power and the people, Article by Vernon Bogdanor, Ethos 2012
• Brasenose College - Professor Vernon Bogdanor
• Guardian op-ed by Bogdanor in defence of the monarchy

The Right Honourable The Lord Kinnock PC
Leader of the Opposition
In office 2 October 1983 – 18 July 1992
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher John Major
Preceded by	Michael Foot
Succeeded by	John Smith
Leader of the Labour Party
In office 2 October 1983 – 18 July 1992
Deputy	Roy Hattersley
Preceded by	Michael Foot
Succeeded by	John Smith
Vice-President of the European Commission
In office 16 September 1999 – 21 November 2004
President	Romano Prodi
Preceded by	Leon Brittan
Succeeded by	Günter Verheugen
European Commissioner for Administrative Reform
In office 16 September 1999 – 21 November 2004
Preceded by	Erkki Liikanen
Succeeded by	Siim Kallas
European Commissioner for Transport
In office 16 February 1995 – 16 September 1999
Preceded by	Karel Van Miert
Succeeded by	Loyola de Palacio
Shadow Education Secretary
In office 4 May 1979 – 2 October 1983
Leader	James Callaghan Michael Foot
Preceded by	Mark Carlisle
Succeeded by	John Smith
Member of Parliament for Islwyn
In office 9 June 1983 – 16 February 1995
Preceded by	Constituency Established
Succeeded by	Don Touhig
Member of Parliament for Bedwellty
In office 18 June 1970 – 9 June 1983
Preceded by	Harold Finch
Succeeded by	Constituency Abolished
Personal details
Born	Neil Gordon Kinnock (1942-03-28) 28 March 1942 (age 70) Tredegar, Wales
Nationality	Welsh
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Glenys Kinnock (m. 1967–present)
Children	Stephen Kinnock Rachel
Religion	Agnostic

Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a British politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992—his leadership of the party during nearly nine years (all in opposition) making him the longest serving opposition leader in British political history.

Following Labour's defeat in the 1992 election, Kinnock resigned as party leader and after his departure from the House of Commons three years later served as a European Commissioner from 1995–2004. Until the summer of 2009 he was the Chairman of the British Council.^[1] Kinnock served as President of Cardiff University from 1998 until 2009. Today, he is regarded as one of Labour's elder statesmen.

Early life[link]

Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales.^[2] His father Gordon Herbert Kinnock was a coal miner who suffered from dermatitis and had to find work as a labourer; and his mother Mary Kinnock was a district nurse.^[3][4] Gordon died of a heart attack in November 1971 aged 64;^[5] Mary died the following month aged 61.^[5]

In 1953, 11-year-old Kinnock began his secondary education at Lewis School, Pengam, which he later criticised for its record on caning in schools. He went on to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, obtaining a degree in industrial relations and history in 1965. A year later, Kinnock obtained a postgraduate diploma in education. Between August 1966 and May 1970, he worked as a tutor for a Workers' Educational Association (WEA).^[6]

He has been married to Glenys since 1967. They have two children – son Stephen (born January 1970), and daughter Rachel (born 1971). They now have four grandchildren.^{[citation needed]}Glenys has also served the Labour Party as a Member of European Parliament.

Member of Parliament[link]

In June 1969 he won the Labour Party nomination for the constituency of Bedwellty in Wales (later Islwyn) for the following general election. He was elected on 18 June 1970 and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in October 1978. On becoming an MP for the first time, his father said "Remember Neil, MP stands not just for Member of Parliament, but also for Man of Principle". Labour government policy at the time was in favour of devolution for Wales, but the wider party was split. Calling himself a 'unionist', Kinnock was one of six south Wales Labour MPs to campaign against devolution on centralist, essentially British-nationalist grounds. He dismissed the idea of a Welsh identity, saying that "between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century Wales had practically no history at all, and even before that it was the history of rural brigands who have been ennobled by being called princes".^[7] In the Wales referendum, 1979, the proposal for devolution was rejected.

Following Labour's defeat in the 1979 general election, James Callaghan appointed Neil Kinnock to the Shadow Cabinet as Education spokesman. His ambition was noted by other MPs, and David Owen's opposition to the changes to the electoral college was thought to be motivated by the realisation that they would favour Kinnock's succession. He remained as Education spokesman following the resignation of Callaghan as party leader and the election of Michael Foot as his successor in late 1980.

He was known as a left-winger, and gained prominence for his attacks on Margaret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War in 1982.

Leadership of the Labour Party[link]

First period (1983–1987)[link]

Shortly after Labour's hefty election defeat in June 1983, the almost 70-year-old Michael Foot resigned as leader and from the outset it was expected that Kinnock would succeed him. He was finally elected as Labour Party leader on 2 October 1983, with 71% of the vote, and Roy Hattersley was elected as his deputy; their prospective partnership was considered to be a 'dream ticket'.^[8]

His first period as party leader – between the 1983 and 1987 elections – was dominated by his struggle with the hard left, then still strong in the party. Kinnock was determined to move the party's political standing to a centre-left position.^[9] Although Kinnock had come from the Tribune left of the party, he parted company with many of his former allies after his appointment to the shadow cabinet.

In 1981, when still Labour's Education spokesman, Kinnock was alleged to have effectively scuppered Tony Benn's attempt to replace Denis Healey as Labour's deputy leader by first supporting the candidacy of the more traditionalist Tribunite John Silkin and then urging Silkin supporters to abstain on the second, run-off, ballot.

All this meant that Kinnock had made plenty of enemies on the left by the time he was elected as leader, though a substantial number of former Bennites gave him strong backing. He was almost immediately in serious difficulty as a result of Arthur Scargill's decision to lead his union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) into a national strike (in opposition to pit closures) without a members' ballot. The NUM was widely regarded as the labour movement's praetorian guard and the strike convulsed the Labour movement.^[who?] Kinnock supported the aim of the strike – which he famously dubbed the "case for coal" – but, as an MP from a mining area, was bitterly critical of the tactics employed. In 1985 he made his criticisms public in a speech to Labour's conference:^[10]

The strike's defeat early in the year,^[11] and the bad publicity associated with the entryism practised by the Militant tendency were the immediate background for the 1985 Labour Party conference.^[12] Earlier in the year left-wing councils had protested at Government restriction of their budgets by refusing to set budgets, resulting in a budget crisis in Militant-dominated Liverpool City Council. Kinnock attacked Militant and their conduct in Liverpool in one of the best remembered passages of any post-war British political speech:

One Liverpool MP, Eric Heffer, a member of the NEC left the conference stage in disgust at Kinnock's comments.^[13] In June 1986 the Labour Party finally expelled the deputy leader of Liverpool council, the high profile Militant supporter Derek Hatton, who was found guilty of "manipulating the rules of the district Labour party".^[14] By 1986, the party's position appeared to strengthen further with excellent local election results and a thorough rebranding of the party under the direction of Kinnock's director of communications Peter Mandelson.^[15] Labour, now sporting a continental social democratic style emblem of a rose, appeared to be able to run the governing Conservatives close, but Margaret Thatcher did not let Labour's makeover go unchallenged.

The Conservatives' 1986 conference was well-managed, and effectively relaunched the Conservatives as a party of radical free-market liberalism. Labour suffered from a persistent image of extremism, especially as Kinnock's campaign to root out Militant dragged on as figures on the hard left of the party tried to stop its progress. Opinion polls showed that voters favoured retaining Britain's nuclear weapons and believed that the Conservatives would be better than Labour at defending the country.^[16]

1987 general election[link]

In early 1987, Labour lost a by-election in Greenwich to the Social Democratic Party's Rosie Barnes. As a result, Labour faced the 1987 election in some danger of coming third in the popular vote. In secret, Labour's aim became to secure second place.^[17]

Labour fought a professional campaign that at one point scared the Tories into thinking they might lose. Mandelson and his team had revolutionised Labour's communications – a transformation symbolised by a party election broadcast popularly known as "Kinnock: The Movie".^[18] This was directed by Hugh Hudson and featured Kinnock's 1985 conference speech, and shots of him and Glenys walking on the Great Orme in Llandudno (so emphasising his appeal as a family man and associating him with images of Wales away from the coalmining communities where he grew up), and a speech to that year's Welsh Labour Party conference asking why he was the "first Kinnock in a thousand generations" to go to university.

Then-Delaware Senator and presidential candidate - and future U.S. Vice President - Joe Biden plagiarized lines from the speech for his own campaign speeches in the summer of 1987.^[19]

On polling day, Labour easily took second place, but with only 31 per cent to the SDP-Liberal Alliance's 22 per cent.^[20] Labour was still more than ten percentage points behind the Conservatives, who retained a three-figure majority in the House of Commons. However, the Conservative government's majority had come down from 144 in 1983 to 102.^[21] Significantly, it had gained 20 seats at the election.^[22]

Labour won extra seats in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, but lost ground particularly in Southern England and London, where the Tories still dominated.

Second period (1987–1992)[link]

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The second period of Kinnock's leadership was dominated by his drive to reform the party's policies and so win power. This began with an exercise dubbed the policy review, the most high-profile aspect of which was a series of consultations with the public known as "Labour Listens" in the autumn of 1987.^[23]

In organisational terms, the party leadership continued to battle with the Militant tendency, though by now Militant was in retreat in the party and was simultaneously attracted by the opportunities to grow outside Labour's ranks—opportunities largely created by Margaret Thatcher's hugely unpopular poll tax.

After Labour Listens, the party went on, in 1988, to produce a new statement of aims and values—meant to supplement and supplant the formulation of Clause IV of the party's constitution (though, crucially, this was not actually replaced until 1995 under the leadership of Tony Blair) and was closely modelled on Anthony Crosland's social-democratic thinking—emphasising equality rather than public ownership. At the same time the commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament was dropped, and reforms of Party Conference and the National Executive meant that local parties lost much of their ability to influence policy.

In 1988, Kinnock was challenged by Tony Benn for the party leadership. Later many identified this as a particularly low period in Kinnock's leadership—as he appeared mired in internal battles after five years of leadership and the Conservatives still dominating the scene and ahead in the opinion polls. In the end, though, Kinnock won a decisive victory over Benn and would soon enjoy a substantial rise in support.^[24]

The policy review—reporting in 1989—coincided with Labour's move ahead in the polls as the poll tax row was destroying Conservative support, and Labour won big victories in local by-elections.

In December 1989, he abandoned the Labour policy on closed shops—a decision seen by many as a move away from traditional socialist policies to a more Europe-wide agenda, and also a move to rid the party of its image of being run by the unions.^[25]

Kinnock was also perceived as scoring in debates over Margaret Thatcher in the Commons—previously an area in which he was seen as weak—and finally Conservative MPs challenged Thatcher's leadership and she resigned on 22 November 1990 to be succeeded by John Major. Kinnock greeted Thatcher's resignation by describing it as "very good news" and demanded an immediate general election.^[26]

Public reaction to Major's elevation was highly positive. A new Prime Minister and the fact that Kinnock was now current leader of a major party reduced the impact of calls for "Time for a Change". Neil Kinnock's showing in the opinion polls dipped; before Thatcher's resignation, Labour had been up to 10 points ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls (an Ipsos MORI poll in April 1990 had actually shown Labour more than 20 points ahead of the Tories), but many opinion polls were actually showing the Tories with more support than Labour, in spite of the deepening recession.^[27]

1992 general election, backbenches and retirement[link]

In the 1992 election, Labour made considerable progress – reducing the Conservative majority to just 21 seats. It came as a shock to many when the Conservatives won a majority, but the perceived triumphalism of a Labour party rally in Sheffield (together with Kinnock's performance on the podium) may have helped put voters off. Although most of those directly involved in the campaign believe that the rally really came to widespread attention only after the election itself.^[28]

In the run-up to the election, held on 9 April 1992, most opinion polls had suggested that the election would end in a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority.^[29]

On the day of the general election, The Sun ran an "infamous"^[30] front page featuring Kinnock (headline: 'If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights') that he blamed in his resignation speech for losing Labour the election. In his April 2012 appearance before the Leveson Inquiry Rupert Murdoch stated that the "notorious" headline was both "tasteless and wrong" and led to the editor Kelvin MacKenzie receiving a reprimand.^[30]

Kinnock also blamed his defeat on the other newspapers who had backed the Tories in the run-up to the election.^[31] However, the traditional Labour supporting Daily Mirror had backed Kinnock at the 1987^[32] election and again in 1992.^[33]

In the three years leading up to the 1992 election, Labour had consistently topped the opinion polls, with 1991 seeing the Tories (rejuvenated by the arrival of a new leader in John Major the previous November) snatch the lead off Labour more than once before Labour regained it.^[34] Since Major's election as leader, Kinnock spent the end of 1990^[35] and most of 1991 putting pressure on Major to hold the election that year, but Major had held out and insisted that there would be no general election in 1991.

Kinnock himself later claimed to have half-expected his defeat in the 1992 election and proceeded to turn himself into a media personality, even hosting a chat show on BBC Wales and twice appearing – with considerable success – on the topical panel show Have I Got News For You within a year of the defeat. Many years later, he returned to appear as a guest host of the programme.

Kinnock announced his resignation as Labour Party leader on 13 April 1992, ending eight and a half years in the role - making him the longest serving opposition leader in British political history. He had gained this distinction in November 1990, and no subsequent opposition party leader has yet matched this record.^[36]

John Smith, previously Shadow Chancellor, was his successor as party leader.^[37]

He remains on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which he helped set up in the 1980s.

He was an enthusiastic supporter of Ed Miliband's campaign to lead the Labour Party in 2010, and was reported as telling activists, when Ed Miliband won, "We've got our party back".^[38]

Biden incident[link]

Kinnock gained attention in the United States in 1987 when it was discovered that then-Senator Joe Biden of Delaware plagiarized one of Kinnock's speeches during his 1988 presidential campaign in a speech at a Democratic debate in Iowa in August 1987.^[39] This led to Biden's withdrawing from the race.^[40]

Biden was elected Vice President of the United States in 2008; on 18 January 2009 Glenys Kinnock revealed on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that she and Neil Kinnock had received a personal invitation from Biden to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama and Biden on 20 January 2009 at the United States Capitol in Washington.

European Union Commissioner[link]

Kinnock was appointed one of Britain's two members of the European Commission, which he served first as Transport Commissioner under President Jacques Santer, in early 1995; marking the end of his 25 years in UK parliament.^[41] This came less than a year after the death of his successor as Labour leader John Smith and the election of Tony Blair as the party's new leader.^[42]

He was obliged to resign as part of the forced, collective resignation of the Commission in 1999, but there was never any suggestion that he himself had done anything corrupt. He was re-appointed to the Commission under new President Romano Prodi. He now became one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission. His term of office as a Commissioner was due to expire on 30 October 2004, but was delayed owing to the withdrawal of the new Commissioners. During this second term of office on the Commission, he was responsible for introducing new staff regulations for EU officials, a significant feature of which was substantial salary cuts for everyone employed after 1 May 2004, reduced pension prospects for many others, and gradually worsening employment conditions. This made him disliked by many EU staff members, although the pressure on budgets that largely drove these changes had actually been imposed on the Commission from above by the Member States in Council.

In February 2004 it was announced that with effect from 1 November 2004 Kinnock would become head of the British Council. Coincidentally, at the same time, his son Stephen became head of the British Council branch in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the end of October, it was announced that he would become a member of the House of Lords (intending to be a working peer), when he was able to leave his EU responsibilities. In 1977, he had remained in the House of Commons, with Dennis Skinner, while other MPs walked to the Lords to hear the Queen's speech opening the new parliament. He had dismissed going to the Lords in recent interviews. Kinnock explained his change of attitude, despite the continuing presence of 90 hereditary peers and appointment by patronage, by asserting that the Lords was a good base for campaigning.

Life peerage[link]

He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005, after being created Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent.^[43][44] On assuming his seat he stated, "I accepted the kind invitation to enter the House of Lords as a working peer for practical political reasons." When his peerage was first announced, he said, "It will give me the opportunity... to contribute to the national debate on issues like higher education, research, Europe and foreign policy." His peerage meant that the Labour and Conservative parties were equal in numbers in the upper house of Parliament (since then, the number of Labour members has overtaken the number of Conservative members). Kinnock was a long-time critic of the House of Lords, and his acceptance of a peerage led him to be accused of hypocrisy, by Will Self,^[45] among others.^[46]

Personal life[link]

He is married to Glenys Kinnock, Britain's Minister for Africa and the United Nations from 2009 to 2010, and a Labour Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1994 to 2009. When she was made a life peer in 2009, they became one of the few couples to both hold titles in their own right. The two met while studying at University College, Cardiff, where they were known as "the power and the glory" (Glenys the power), and they married on 25 March 1967.^[47] Previously living together in Peterston-Super-Ely, a village near the western outskirts of Cardiff, in 2008 they moved to Tufnell Park, London, to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.^[48]

They have a son, Stephen and a daughter, Rachel.^[49] Stephen is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Prime Minister of Denmark and leader of the Danish Social Democrats political party. He is assistant director of the British Council in Sierra Leone. Rachel worked in the Political Office at 10 Downing Street under Gordon Brown.

In 1984, Kinnock appeared in the video for the Tracey Ullman song "My Guy" (his daughter was a fan) as a someone with a clipboard canvassing on a council estate. The record reached #23 in the charts.

On 26 April 2006, Neil Kinnock was given a six-month driving ban after being found guilty of two speeding offences along the M4 motorway, west of London.^[50]

Neil Kinnock is a lifelong Cardiff City F.C. fan and regularly attends matches.^[51]

Kinnock is an agnostic.^[52]

In 2011 Kinnock took part in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home about his Welsh family history, the programme was broadcast on 30 November 2011.

Kinnock had a cameo role in Sky1's Stella (Episode 3, Series one), first broadcast 19 January 2012.

Satire[link]

The character Paris Geller in popular 2000's U.S. TV programme The Gilmore Girls referred to Kinnock's voice as something she swooned over in her younger days; this may have been a tongue-in-cheek remark. The professor she dated in the series was Michael York who spoke with a strong English accent; Kinnock speaks with a distinct Welsh accent.

In Episode 4 ("Animals") of the British sitcom Men Behaving Badly, Series 1, Dermot (played by Harry Enfield) says to Gary (played by Martin Clunes), "There she was, just standing there, making Michelle Pfeiffer look like Neil Kinnock." He was referring to Kate (played by Louise Hunt).

In 2012 Kinnock made a cameo appearance as himself in an episode of the UK TV comedy drama Stella.

Styles and titles[link]

• Neil Kinnock MP (1970–1983)
• The Rt. Hon. Neil Kinnock MP (1983–1995)
• The Rt. Hon. Neil Kinnock (1995–2005)
• The Rt. Hon. The Lord Kinnock PC (2005–)

See also[link]

• Sustrans

References[link]