Aneurin Bevan Quotes (1897-1960)

“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.”

“Now, the vicissitudes that afflict the individual have their source in society. It is this situation that has given currency to the phrase "social forces". Personal relations have given way to impersonal ones. The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control. The study of how it is to be done is the function of politics.”

“I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.”

“The Communist Party is the sworn inveterate enemy of the Socialist and Democratic Parties. When it associates with them, it does so as a preliminary to destroying them. There is an old German aphorism which says: "To cast an enemy out it is first necessary to embrace him." That is what the Communists mean when they ask for co-operation and alliance with the Socialists... The Communist does not look upon a Socialist as an ally in a common cause. He looks upon him as a dupe, as a temporary convenience, and as something to be thrust ruthlessly to one side when he has served his purpose.”

“The Communist Party is the sworn inveterate enemy of the Socialist and Democratic Parties. When it associates with them, it does so as a preliminary to destroying them. There is an old German aphorism which says: "To cast an enemy out it is first necessary to embrace him." That is what the Communists mean when they ask for co-operation and alliance with the Socialists... The Communist does not look upon a Socialist as an ally in a common cause. He looks upon him as a dupe, as a temporary convenience, and as something to be thrust ruthlessly to one side when he has served his purpose.”

“Lloyd George was a bigger man than Churchill, and one of the biggest things about Churchill was that he knew it.”

“Lloyd George was a bigger man than Churchill, and one of the biggest things about Churchill was that he knew it.”

“He's much more dangerous than Gaitskell because he isn't honest and he isn't a man of principle but a sheer, absolute careerist, out for himself alone.”

“[Baldwin's] genius in this respect more than made up for his limitations as orator or debater. Baldwin was a master of the art of creating feeling, but an even greater one at the important art of detecting it. He would attack, not the argument being put forward, but the feeling behind it of which the case was the expression. When defending himself, he would not deploy fact after fact in skilful order, but appeal to the nobler and more humane feelings of his enemy. He was a great disarmer, though now and again he hit back like a butcher.”

“His personality and service to the public, for the good, as he saw it, for them, have been quite outstanding. He was a brilliant personality, a wonderful speaker. His writing was such that you felt bound to put him in the class of the intellectual rather than merely the expanded product of the working class. Everybody who has read his book, In Place of Fear, will agree, I think, with that statement. The constant oratory with which he was able to hold in spell—I would not say that it was equal to, but certainly it was in the region of, the spell which could be cast by Mr. Winston Churchill in another place—was quite unique.”

“Bevan was a very remarkable individual. He was a brilliant orator and debater. He proved himself during the Labour Government to be a most capable administrator and during the last few years he had matured as a statesman. His death is a great loss to the Labour and socialist movement. Although we did not always agree I had great admiration and affection for him.”

“He was a great and imaginative parliamentarian. His death has deprived public life of a warm and rewarding personality. His friends in all parties will mourn his passing.”

“The tool of Marxist analysis that Bevan employed to underpin his criticism of the social and economic system attracted many followers but he was too much of a romantic and poet to believe that the aridities of Marxism, especially as distorted by Stalin, could be a cure for our ills. In personal relations Nye emanated great charm and conversation with him was a delight. The talk bubbed and his flashing intelligence touched what he said with vividness so that new insights seemed to pour from him. At his best on the public platform or in the House of Commons he was magic. He could lift an audience so that they shared with him new heights of understanding and awareness; he could fell his enemies – and sometimes disconcert his friends – with a single devastating phrase, and disarm opponents with a droll wit if the mood was on him.”

“I say today that unless the right hon. Gentleman changes his policy and methods and moves without the slightest delay, he will be as great a curse to this country in time of peace, as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war.”

“He excelled as a critic, but, in contrast to Ernest Bevin, creative thought at that time was not his strongest characteristic. He would present any number of difficulties to any proposition which came from official sources, but seldom put forward any constructive proposals of a practical character. ... Aneurin Bevan's speech [to the Trades Union Congress at Brighton in 1933] was typical of him as he was at that time—well-phrased, fluent, tricky, and entirely unconvincing. Bevan was a politician by instinct and temperament and he rightly concentrated his main activities in that sphere. In my experience he exercised a negligible influence on trade union policy and action. How different from Ernest Bevin!”

“The P.M. [Winston Churchill] received, very formally, a Labour Deputation about Greece. He insisted on my having them all seated in the Cabinet Room before he came up from luncheon so that he might avoid shaking hands with Aneurin Bevan.”

“He was, in sympathy, the fellow countryman of any man of any nation throughout the world, ever ready to defend that man, whatever his race, his colour, or his creed, and demand for him equality of rights with all his fellow beings on earth. He hated suffering. He hated inequality. He hated injustice. He hated domination, however and by whomsoever exercised. But, above all, he hated hypocrisy. Aneurin Bevan's supreme qualities were superb, unflinching moral courage, deep sincerity, and complete selflessness. That was his supreme strength. ... There was nothing mean or petty about Aneurin Bevan. He was upright; he was downright; he was forthright. Statesman, administrator, Parliamentarian, orator, incomparable advocate for the weak and the suffering and for justice everywhere, he was, at the same time, a true, sincere, lovable friend, whose memory every one of us will long cherish.”