Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan review – lucid account of a flawed hero

Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan review – lucid account of a flawed hero


As Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds’s warts-and-all biography reveals, the father of the NHS was far from being a team player

In the pantheon of Labour heroes, indeed among 20th-century politicians as a whole, Aneurin Bevan enjoys one of the foremost places. His towering achievement was the creation of the National Health Service, which he drove through in the teeth of bitter opposition from both the medical profession and the Tories. To this day his legacy – a health service available to all, free at the point of use – is the one part of the postwar consensus that has survived more or less intact the ravages of Thatcherism and the global market.

But all great men have their flaws and, as this lucid, well-researched biography concedes, Bevan’s were considerable. Although capable of pragmatism and at times courageous he could also be fractious, disloyal and self-indulgent. Arguably, his 1950 resignation from the government over the issue of charges for false teeth and spectacles contributed to the defeat of 1951 and helped to ignite a civil war that rendered Labour impotent in the early 50s. Bevan, according to one of his close friends, was not a team player. Guardian

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