[14], Upon returning home in 1921, he found that the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company refused to re-employ him. Bevan, however, became an atheist. At a dinner in late 1955 or early 1956 to celebrate the publication of the Guillebaud Report into NHS costs Bevan remarked to Julian Tudor Hart "ultimately I had to stuff their mouths with gold" about his handling of the consultants. His parents had ten children togetherfour died in infancy and one died at the age of eight. Nonetheless, for the next few years, Bevan was at the centre of controversy within the party earning the nickname Nye the Rhetorician and ultimately gave his name to the partys more left-leaning radical wing, which included campaigning for nuclear disarmament. Aneurin Bevan While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Aneurin Bevan Facts: Aneurin Bevan was a Welsh Labour politician widely considered the architect of the National Health Service. Soon, thereafter became an activist and initially, a supporter of syndicalism. Nye Bevan Speech (1946) - YouTube 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. Bevan had said "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". The three won their case, and obtained financial damages of 2,500 each. His autobiography, In Place of Fear, appeared in 1952. [6] He worked at the butcher's for several months before leaving school, instead working in the local Ty-Trist Colliery. Bevan argues that the percentage of tax from personal incomes rose from 9% in 1938 to 15% in 1949. He was no calculating machine. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. They criticised the right-wing "Gaitskellites" high defence expenditure (especially for nuclear weapons), called for better relations with the Soviet Union, and opposed the party leader, Clement Attlee, on most issues. A colourful public personality and a brilliant spontaneous debater, he had great personal charm but was sometimes so rude to opponents that Churchill once called him a merchant of discourtesy. After his defeat as party leader by Hugh Gaitskell (1955), he accepted his partys policies and became shadow foreign secretary.