Biography

British socialist politician. In the 1945 Labour Government he was named Minister of Health and developed the National Health Service, providing free medical care for all in British society. He resigned in 1951 in protest at the introduction of charges for some health care. Branded a left-wing extremist in his lifetime, his memory is now venerated by the British Labour Party which, however, has done nothing to adopt his policies or point of view.

His famous remark about the Conservatives being "lower than vermin" is thought to have been largely responsible for Labour almost losing its majority in the General Election of February 1950.

Despite his role in creating the NHS, Bevan personally preferred to use the King's surgeon.

He was widely condemned by the left for his strong opposition to the Nasser regime's seizure of the Suez Canal in July 1956, and for reversing his opposition to the UK's independent nuclear deterrent.

On being unemployed in the Great Depression: No amount of cajolery ... can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.

[Medics Dissenting to the NHS] I stuffed their mouths with gold.

We should try to introduce in our modern villages and towns what was always the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street. I believe that is essential for the full life of citizen... to see the living tapestry of a mixed community