Foreign News: Trial of Aneurin Bevan

Britain's parliamentary Labor Party expelled its leading troublemaker last week and came close to splintering itself in the process. The troublemaker was Aneurin Bevan, 57, the mischievous Welsh spellbinder and best orator under 80 in British politics. At a party "trial" in the New Palace of Westminster, Bevan was charged with flouting party discipline and insulting his leader, 72-year-old Clement Attlee, during a debate in the House of Commons (TIME, March 14).

Like Old Bailey judges, Attlee and 13 members of Labor's shadow cabinet* took their places on the platform in Committee Room 14, overlooking the Thames. All but a handful of Labor's 294 M.P.s squeezed into the stifling room, and Nye Bevan, dressed in black, took a chair in the corner to the right of the platform. The questions before the court were purely disciplinary: Had Bevan flouted the party, and if so, how should he be punished? Wispy little Clement Attlee assumed the prosecutor's role.

The Prosecution. Attlee plainly disliked it, but in his thin, waspish voice, he built up a case against the burly Welshman that could not be controverted. Bevan, said his leader, had publicly decried his party's support for the SEATO pact, West German rearmament, and disputed Attlee's endorsement of NATO's nuclear strategy.

Once. Attlee complained, Bevan "sprang to the dispatch box and gave me a public affront." Bevan had also publicly chided his party leaders for being absent from the House of Commons during one of his speeches. "That," said Attlee, "was unpardonable." Attlee's windup revealed his own misgivings over his handling of the Bevan revolt. "I have tried and failed to get unity ... I have been abused for not taking action, for weakness and dithering." Now he was taking action. He demanded the highest penalty: "Withdrawal of the whip," i.e., releasing Nye from party discipline.

No cheering sounded, either for Attlee as he sat down or for Bevan as he rose to reply. There were few men in the room who did not remember 1931, when the Labor Party under Ramsay MacDonald splintered hopelessly and left Labor in the wilderness for a decade. With Celtic scorn, Nye Bevan sought to show that other Socialists than he had insulted Clement Attlee. Manny Shinwell, for instance, said Bevan. And Dick Stokes, the burly M.P. from Ipswich; only last year he had sneered at Attlee's leadership by quoting what he said was a Chinese proverb: "A fish starts rotting at its head." Bevan accused the trade union bosses, who contribute most to Labor's treasury, of ordering his expulsion. Pudgy finger pointing at member after member, he ranged along the row of the shadow cabinet: "There are the conspirators . . . Those who hold the moneybags demand my expulsion. They have given the orders. They await the decision."

The Debate. While the Welshman's stream of words eddied around him, Clem Attlee chewed his pipe, taking it out of his mouth only to mutter: "Most embarrassing, most embarrassing." Attlee left it to his right-wing followers to tear Bevan down, and they did, though messily. "Why did you once take me for a walk down the corridor and say we must get rid of Mr. Attlee?" one woman M.P. demanded of Nye Bevan. "That's a wicked lie," Bevan shot back.