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Aneurin Bevan
104 quotes
“The Labour Party should oppose the Government arms plan root and branch.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune, 19 February 1937.
“Economics, said Mr Stanley, is 50% psychology … What we need, apparently, is not statesman but hypnotists, not scientists, but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political Confidence Trick. There is nothing surprising in this. It is the kind of mystic Mumbo-Jumbo to which capitalism is driven when austere reason pronounces sentence of death upon it. It is the primitive recoil from reality and the burdens of reality which lies at the root of Fascist psychology.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (5 November 1937)
“The fear of Hitler is to be used to frighten the workers of Britain into silence. In short Hitler is to rule Britain by proxy. If we accept the contention that the common enemy is Hitler and not the British capitalist class, then certainly Churchill is right. But it means abandonment of the class struggle and the subservience of the British workers to their own employers.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (19 November 1937), quoted in John Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), p. 77
“What argument have they to persuade the young men to fight except merely in another squalid attempt to defend themselves against a redistribution of the international swag?”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on 4 May 1939 opposing conscription.
“[T]he country is now more concerned with the Prime Minister winning the war than with his winning a Debate in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister wins Debate after Debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights Debates like a war and the war like a Debate.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 July 1942)
“We have in this country five or six generals, members of other nations, Czechs, Poles and French, all of them trained in the use of these German weapons and this German technique. I know it is hurtful to our pride, but would it not be possible to put some of those men temporarily in charge in the field, until we can produce trained men of our own? ... [Y]ou have to purge the Army at the top. It will have to be a drastic purge, because the spirit of the British Army has to be regained.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 July 1942)
“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.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 July 1942)
“By refusing the state effective intervention in the economic activities of society, the Tory is a potential Fascist element in the community. By denying Parliament a vigorous economic life he condemns it to death.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Not Trust the Tories? (1944), p. 84
“I do not represent the big bosses at the top; I represent the people at the bottom, the individual men and women, and I say that this Regulation is the enfranchisment of the corporate society and the disfranchisment of the individual.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (28 April 1944) against regulation 1AA, which restricted the right to strike
“I will go so far as to say that if the implications of the [Employment] White Paper are sound, there is no longer any justification for this party existing at all. We think that we represent a fundamental body of doctrine which is conducive to the welfare of the State, and which subsequently the State will have to adopt if it is to be saved. Therefore, I do not see for the life of me—and I am putting a serious proposition to the House—how a Coalition Government can pretend to be able to examine a situation of this sort and put an intelligible series of propositions to the House.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 June 1944)
“Apparently some fire-eaters to-day have been saying "Never again must we allow ourselves to get into the same condition of military unpreparedness, so we are going to build up a vast war machine in this country in order to surround defeated Germany with a sea of peaceful tranquillity..." It looks as though the consequences of defeat will be more desirable than those of victory.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1559 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 402, col. 1559.
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Daily Herald, 25 May 1945
“[For Winston Churchill], democracy is a state in which the people acquiesce in the rule of property. Democracy is an admirable institution so long as the poor continue to carry the rich on their backs. When the poor decide to change places, democracy falls into disrepute. That is why, whenever you scratch a Tory, you find a Fascist.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (13 July 1945), quoted in John Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), p. 142
“Although I am not myself a devotee of bigness for bigness sake, I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: speaking in the House of Commons during the reading of the NHS Bill (30 April 1946)
“He is a man suffering from petrified adolescence....He is an extrovert, a picture thinker. He has intelligence but no intellect....He really has the values of a boy of seventeen to eighteen but he makes them sound like mature judgments by his sophisticated speech.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In conversation with Vincent Brome, late summer 1947. On Winston Churchill. Quoted in Vincent Brome, Aneurin Bevan (1953), ch. 11
“I deplore the letter today in The Times from a distinguished orthopaedist, who talked about private practice as though it should be the glory of the profession. What should be the glory of the profession is that a doctor should be able to meet his patients with no financial anxiety.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1948)
“[W]e ought to take pride in the fact that, despite our financial and economic anxieties, we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world—put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1948)
“Why should we, who are clearing up the muddle, allow ourselves to be scared by headlines in the capitalist Press? It is the most prostituted Press in the world, most of it owned by a gang of millionaires.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Scarborough (16 May 1948), quoted in The Times (17 May 1948), p. 3
“In 1945 and 1946 we were attacked on our housing policy by every spiv in the country—for what is Toryism except organised spivery? They wanted to let the spivs loose.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Belle Vue Hotel, Manchester (4 July 1948), quoted in The Times (5 July 1948), p. 4
“I may be ready to be polite 20 years from now, when we are able to look back on 25 years of Socialist government. Then maybe I won't have enough energy to be rude. But while we have the energy to be rude let us be rude to the right people.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Durham (24 July 1948), quoted in The Times (26 July 1948), p. 6
“[T]he kind of society which we envisage and which we shall have to live in will be a mixed society, a mixed economy, in which all the essential instruments of planning are in the hands of the State, in which the characteristic form of employment will be by the community in one form or another but where we shall have for a very long time the light cavalry of private, competitive industry.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (8 June 1949), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1949, p. 171 and The Times (9 June 1949), p. 2
“Never in the history of mankind have the best religious ideas found greater expression than in the programme we have carried out. “Suffer little children to come unto Me” is now not something said just from the pulpit. We have weaved it into the woof and warp of the national life.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (8 June 1949), quoted in The Times (9 June 1949), p. 2
“The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (8 June 1949), quoted in The Times (9 June 1949), p. 2
“I welcome this opportunity of pricking the bloated bladder of lies with the poniard of truth.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons, answering the Conservatives' amendment that criticised the government for the devaluation of the pound (29 September 1949)
“It has been suggested, I think by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) that the most constructive suggestion he could make was to urge an early General Election and a return of a Tory Government in Britain. Why on earth should he want to prophesy what might result from a Tory Government when history has the record for him? Why read the crystal when he can read the book?”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons, 29 September 1949.
“The liberal never knew what kind of society he intended until he had, in fact, made it. If we, on the other hand, accept the obligation of planning the direction of economic activity, then we accept with it the burden of deciding who and what must first be served. ... This is the complex answer to those who think socialism is merely a matter of appetite. On the contrary, it is the first time in human history that mankind will have accepted the obligation of free collective moral choice as the ultimate arbiter in social affairs. This, in truth, is the People's Coming of Age.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article in Tribune shortly before the 1950 general election, quoted in Alan Budd, The Politics of Economic Planning (1978), p. 78
“A very large part of the population of Wales was English-speaking, and the English-speaking part had a contribution just as big, if not bigger, to make towards Welsh cultural life than the Welsh-speaking part. A great deal of the literature of which Welshmen were proud and a great deal of the poetry for which this generation would be noted had been written in English by Welshmen.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Tredegar Orpheus male voice party after the Eisteddfod ruled that set pieces were to be sung in Welsh (24 March 1951), quoted in The Times (26 March 1951), p. 4
“There is only one hope for mankind, and that hope still remains in this little island. It is from here that we tell the world where to go and how to go there, but we must not follow behind the anarchy of American competitive capitalism which is unable to restrain itself at all, as is seen in the stockpiling that is now going on, and which denies to the economy of Great Britain even the means of carrying on our civil production.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Resignation speech in the House of Commons (23 April 1951)
“There is only one hope for mankind — and that is democratic Socialism.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Resignation speech in the House of Commons (23 April 1951)
“[I]t is seriously suggested that before this nation has shown its capacity to manage democratic institutions peacefully we should allow it to rearm. I say to America and the people of the world that we are not yet feeling safe enough to allow another German rearmament to take place.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Huyton, Lancashire (21 July 1951), quoted in The Times (23 July 1951), p. 4
“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.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Foreword', Denis Healey, The Curtain Falls: The Story of the Socialists in Eastern Europe (1951), p. 6
“I am not anti-American...but I do not believe that the American nation has the experience, sagacity, or the self-restraint necessary for world leadership at this time. They are engaged in the most tremendous rearmament programme the world has ever seen, and I cannot see any sense in it, and no one has yet tried to put any sense in it. ... When are we going to have some sense of national pride and tell the United States that she cannot have Great Britain on any terms? The Americans would understand us. They like plain speaking. Why do we not speak plainly to them?”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Jarrow (16 March 1952), quoted in The Times (17 March 1952), p. 4
“Now that we are engaged once more in policy-making it is essential that we should keep clear before us that one of the central principles of Socialism is the substitution of public for private ownership. There is no way round this.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘The Fatuity of Coalition’, Tribune (13 June 1952), p. 2, quoted in Notes on Current Politics (1952), p. 31 and W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage (1983), p. 471
“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Observer, 6 December 1953.
“It is not necessary to spend time in formal greetings. Our presence is itself sufficient to show our support for the Chinese people’s revolution. As Mr Attlee has already said, the Labour movement’s reaction to the Chinese Revolution followed the example it set after the first world war when it rallied to the support of the Russian Revolution. It follows naturally that the struggle of the British workers in their own country against the forces of capitalism causes them to sympathise immediately with the struggles of the workers in other countries.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpt from a speech Bevan made at reception organised by the Chinese people’s Consultative Conference (18 August 1954), as quoted in This is My Truth Aneurin Bevan in Tribune (2023), edited by Nye Davies.
“The day of imperial power is over. We are ashamed of our imperial past in Great Britain, and you have a lot to be ashamed of, too.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Tokyo, Japan (3 September 1954), quoted in The Times (4 September 1954), p. 5
“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.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune Rally, 29 September 1954, in response to Clement Attlee's wish for a non-emotional response to German rearmament. The remark 'desiccated calculating-machine' is often taken as a Bevan jibe against Hugh Gaitskell…
“Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his position in the Labour Party (c. 1956), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography, Volume 2 (1973), p. 503
“If the Labour Party is not going to be a Socialist Party, I don't want to lead it.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Albert Hall, Manchester (4 February 1956), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, Volume Two: 1945–1960 [1973] (1975), p. 498
“Nasser's a thug. He needs to be taught a lesson.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to Ian Mikardo after Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal (August 1956), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 214
“Bevan described the proposal for a free trade market for Europe as a "will-of-the-wisp" which they were expected to spend their time following in Westminster. The whole idea was purely a nineteenth-century conception.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bristol (20 October 1956), quoted in The Times (22 October 1956), p. 2
“We say that Great Britain has always stood for civilised principles, and for humanity and justice. How do we answer now, when we drop bombs on helpless people? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, when we drop bombs. How do we answer now at whatever judgment seat any hon. Member likes to mention? A nation more powerful than us may drop even worse bombs on British cities. How answer that? With bombs? Bombs with bombs? That is the bankruptcy of statesmanship. The world has travelled that way in my own lifetime twice. We dare not travel that way again, because this time there will be no return.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (1 November 1956)
“Sir Anthony Eden has been pretending that he is now invading Egypt in order to strengthen the United Nations. Every burglar of course could say the same thing, he could argue that he was entering the house in order to train the police. So, if Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying, and he may be, he may be, then if he is sincere in what he is saying then he is too stupid to be a prime minister.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on November 4th at "Law not War" rally in Trafalgar Square, London, during the Suez crisis of 1956.
“The social furniture of modern society is so complicated and fragile that it cannot support the jackboot. We cannot run the processes of modern society by attempting to impose our will upon nations by armed force. If we have not learned that we have learned nothing.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (5 December 1956)
“I have never been able to reconcile the obscene conduct of the Russian Communists under Stalin—the assassinations, tortures, imprisonments and the impounding of helpless people in camps—with their philosophy, and I have never understood how the Russians could do so. The only explanation is that it is not part of their Communism at all, but of Byzantinism.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (19 December 1956)
“I do not take the view that Great Britain is a second-class Power. On the contrary, I take the view that this country is a depository of probably more concentrated experience and skill than any other country in the world.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (19 December 1956)
“The great Powers of the world today as they look at the armaments they have built up, find themselves hopelessly frustrated. If that be the case, what is the use of speaking about first-class, second-class and third-class Powers? That is surely the wrong language to use. It does not comply with contemporary reality. What we have to seek is new ways of being great, new modes of pioneering, new fashions of thought, new means of inspiring and igniting the minds of mankind. We can do so.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1404 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 562, cols. 1404-5.
“The collective psychology of the Moslem states is definitely repulsive to me. It is so morbid and wildly irrational that I am conscious of an abiding sense of unease when I am in one of them.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Jennie Lee during his visit to Asia (April 1957), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, Volume Two: 1945–1960 [1973] (1975), pp. 545–546
“[The Common Market is not] a blueprint for European prosperity and stability. ...[it is] the result of a political malaise following upon the failure of Socialists to use the sovereign power of their Parliaments to plan their economic life. ... Socialists cannot at one and the same time call for economic planning and accept the verdict of free competition, no matter how extensive the area it covers. The jungle is not made more acceptable just because it is almost limitless.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article in Tribune, quoted in The Times (31 August 1957), p. 7 and The Times (14 October 1957), p. 8
“Just consider, all the little nations running for shelter here and there, one running to Russia and another to the United States. In that situation before anything else would happen, the world will have been polarised between the Soviet Union and the United States. It is against that negative polarisation we have been fighting for years. We want to have the opportunity to interpose between these two giants a moderating, modifying and mitigating diplomacy.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Labour Party Conference (4 October 1957), on unilateral nuclear disarmament.