Evening star., 1946-10-06
,Bevin, the Symbol,
Appraised by a
Labor Editor
BEVIN OF BRITAIN
By Trevor EUans. Morton; 49,
Reviewed by
CRESTON B. MULLINS.

Reviewed by
CRESTON B. MULLINS.
2 Few more timely and rich bio
graphical subjects could be foun
than the tough minded British For
eign Secretary, who has occupies
the center of the postwar stage il
London and Paris, and few NOR
competent biographers than tn
chief labor editor of the Londol
Daily Express, whose ACQUAINTANCE
with Ernest Bevin goes back man.
years, and who writes much abou
his subject from personal contact.
Bevin of Britain-who is as clos
to being the symbol and incarnation
of Laborite Britain as any othel
member of the Attlee government
holds his position of influence II
world affairs more through chanc,
and the timing of the British cleo
ton with the Potsdam Conference
than he does to his Laborite back.
ground. He had hoped to become
Chancellor of the Exchequer ane
direct Britain's reconstruction; but
Clement Attlee, returning to Pots
dam to take Winston Churchill's
place, needed him. there, and there
he went.
Bevin's career was founded on the
Bristol Dockers' Union and the crea-
ton of the giant Transport and Gen.
erai Workers Union from the 20
independent organizations after
World War I. From an under
privileged and depressed childhood
he passed to a struggling and
despair ridden adolescence in Bris-
tol, where, he frankly admits, he
was forced to steal to keep body
and soul together.
Genius for Organization.
It was in Bristol that he first
became endeared of the labor move
ment. and early displayed his genius
for organization by conducting a
dignif1ed mass protest against un-
employment in the depressed era
that followed the Boer War. He
formed the Garments {water dis
pensers) branch of the Dockers'
Union and became its chairman, his
first fulltime trade union job.
He attended his first conference
of the Trades Union Congress in
1915, as a delegate of the Dockers'
Union, and played his part in World
War I as member of the important
Port and Transit Executive Com
mittee. His star began rising to its
greatest brilliance early in the post
war era, when he made a distin-
guished presentation of the dockers
case for higher wages in Britain's
first public inquiry into wage claims.
He grew in stature through the great
London transport strike of 1925 and
the general strike of 1926, his chair
manship of the Trades Union Con-
gress in 1887 and, after Churchill
became Prime Minister in 1910, as
Minister of Labor and National
Service. He was near retirement
as general secretary of the Trades
Union Congress when he was called
to the Foreign Office, taking up a
new career of world craftsmanship.
OF perhaps greatest interest in
connection with his present posi-
tion-and the thing one watches
for in reading the biography-is the
development of his views regarding
Russia, for he has traded tough
punches more consistently with Rus
slams than any other statesman.
Two Moral Standards.
Bevin, one clearly understands, is
no lover of communism, and 1t was
his closing address to the TUG con-
ference at Edinburgh in 1927 which
drove the last nail in the coffin of
the Anglo-Russian Joint Advisory
Committee which the TUG had
launched several years previously.
Bevin differentiated the two moral
standards of the Russians and the
British: lone is the moral standard
accepted by the British movement:
To differ, but to hammer out their
differences, and when decision is
arrived at to Loyalty and honorably
abide by it. That is the British
standard. The Russian standard,
as I see it, is that the end justifles
the means" These two standards,
he contended, could not be recon-
ciled in promotion of unified labor
movement. Nor, apparently, does
he believe they can be reconciled in
a unified peace movement now.
Later, when it was proposed that
British labor resume relations with
Russia, it was Beyin who pointed out
that Russia's business with Britain
seemed to be 80 per cent propaganda
and 10 per cent goods.
Bevin was not always so critical
of Russia as in the later years Of
his life. Within two years after the
end of World War I he was en-
broiled with David Lloyd George,
then Prime Minister, over British
opposition to the Soviet regime. He
defended Russia's right to decide for
herself the type of government she
must have and charged the exist
ence of reactionary forces in Britain
which sought an excuse for war
against Russia over Poland.
On Popular Side.
If Bevin became more critical Of
Russia as he grew older he also
became more closely associated with
Churchill, whom he little more
than despised in his earlier years.
Perhaps there is connection be-
tween the two changes. Certainly
Bevin and Churchill found an at
traction in their hatred for the
Nazis, and this enabled them to
fight through the war shoulder to
shoulder.
Bevin's success as a labor leader,
his biographer believes, is due to
his knack for crystallizing and ex-
pressing the prevailing mood of the
majority, and thereby finding him
self consistently on the popular side.
Where does Bevin go from here?
Is he waiting merely the realization
OF formula for peace before re-
tiring-as he so long hoped-to
the back country of his birth? His
biographer writes with the touch of
a prophet, with sense of bigger
things to come for the iIlustrio1Is