The Essential Philosophy

It was natural that Bevan’s wife, the left-wing firebrand Jennie Lee, would become the keeper of the flame of Bevanism. Lee was a campaigner who galvanized support for the International Brigades in Spain and an orator who spoke out against the degradation of the poor under capitalism. As a Labour government minister, she was responsible for enhancing working-class education prospects through the foundation of the so-called “University of the Air” — better known as the Open University — which enabled people to study through programs aired on the BBC.

Lee composed a foreword to the 1976 edition of the book, which was published amid a changing of the guard in the Labour Party, with former Bevanite Harold Wilson stepping down as its leader. She described in intimate terms how Bevan “regarded In Place of Fear as a series of shorthand notes on themes he planned to write about at greater length” and gave a sense of his underlying instincts: “Private living he adored. Public chores he detested.”

Lee emphasized the scope of Bevan’s worldview, which has often been overshadowed by his colossal contribution to the development of public health care. Aspects that she drew attention to included his internationalism — “I was sometimes astonished by the extent and diversity of the lines of communication Nye somehow maintained with rebel movements all over the world” — and his wide-ranging taste in literature. She also noted his commitment to battling the forces of reaction in the very seat of power at Westminster: “A lifelong duel was fought between Conservative traditionalists and this socialist concept of the new functions of parliament.”

The crimson thread that ran throughout Lee’s foreword was her belief in the universality and timelessness of the principles that Bevan espoused. She began by proclaiming that In Place of Fear “remains urgently contemporary. Indeed we have a long way to go before we catch up,” and concluded with the following assertion of its value: “It is the essential philosophy set out in the following chapters with its relevance to present-day problems that makes this new edition worthwhile.”

Lee knew that Bevan’s words had to stand or fall on their own merits. She was confident that the foundations he had laid would hold.

Reading It Ever Since

Five years before he became the leader of the Labour Party in 1983, Neil Kinnock composed a foreword of his own to In Place of Fear. In contrast with Jennie Lee’s longstanding role as Bevan’s partner and comrade, Kinnock was, as he informed us, just “ten years old when In Place of Fear was first published in 1952. . . . I read it four years later, and I have been reading it ever since.”

Kinnock sought to associate himself with the Bevanite lineage, recalling that his first encounter with In Place of Fear came when he saw it on display in the Industrial and Cooperative Society of Tredegar, Bevan’s stomping ground in South Wales. He placed great emphasis on Bevan’s assertion that there was “no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.” In fact, Bevanism did contain a streak of libertarian socialism, but this never came at the expense of wider collectivist principles, as Kinnock appeared to suggest.

Kinnock’s foreword contained a greater sense of urgency than that of Lee. He saw the central arguments of In Place of Fear as a tangible map for the New Jerusalem that socialists in Britain sought to reach. Kinnock noted that the book, “like Bevan himself, maintains the resonant theme of exposing capitalist incompetence, inhumanity and dishonesty, advocating collectively accomplished change and universally distributed reward.”

He went on to chide “the self-proclaimed democrats in Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties” who “quail at the very thought of anything more radical than an ameliorating rearrangement of society.” This is the Kinnock who as a backbench Labour MP once lambasted his own colleagues in the party leadership for viewing “the City of London as if it were some kind of winnable Tory marginal constituency.”

From Bevan to Brown

However, Kinnock’s own tenure as party leader was guided by a very different political spirit and paved the way for the subsequent rise of New Labour under the stewardship of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Brown in particular did everything he could to win over the City by stressing his belief in “light-touch regulation,” right up to the crash of 2008.

After replacing Blair in Downing Street, Brown drafted another foreword to In Place of Fear. Brown did not share his predecessor’s dismissive, Year Zero approach to the history of the Labour Party and had once authored a biography of James Maxton, the Independent Labour Party leader whose comrade Lee had been in her youth. The Labour prime minister spoke of feeling “honoured and delighted to have been asked to contribute.”

The purpose of the new edition was, Brown explained, “to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Aneurin Bevan’s greatest achievement, the creation of Britain’s National Health Service.” Bevan’s public reputation was by this stage inextricably bound up with the NHS. Brown clearly felt the need to link various achievements of New Labour with Bevan’s principles, suggesting that public sector investment, overhauls of education, and government employment schemes were in line with the freedom that Bevan advocated.

I was on one of Brown’s “New Deal” workfare programs myself for a time and found little Bevanite spirit in its operation. Instead, it bore the stamp of means testing, which Bevan hated and railed against with a passion born from personal experience.

However, there were in fairness some echoes of Bevan’s outlook in Brown’s defense of NHS spending. Bevan had been at great pains to show that the act of identifying who might “deserve” free care at the point of use was irksome, costly, and to the detriment of all patients. By the same token, Brown resolutely defended the principle of publicly funded health care:

Such a system is also efficient, because it is comprehensive, and for the same reason it is also cost effective. And the care we get is the care we need, not just the care we can afford or the care our own insurance will allow.

Socialism in Action

Some notable figures have never attempted their own foreword to In Place of Fear, including the Labour leaders Michael Foot — author of a massive two-volume biography of Bevan, his political hero — and Tony Blair. The most recent commentary came from another MP who grew up in South Wales, Nick Thomas-Symonds.

The foreword for this edition appeared in 2020, with the Labour Party once more in a state of flux. The left-wing standard-bearer, Jeremy Corbyn, had quit as Labour leader after a resounding electoral defeat in December 2019. Corbyn was unable to capitalize on the significant gains that the party had made under his leadership in the 2017 general election.

In 2015, Thomas-Symonds had published an enthralling, well-researched biography of Bevan, so we cannot call his knowledge of the subject into question. He began his 2020 foreword by noting without any caveats that “Bevan’s starting point was that private property, poverty and democracy were the main conflicting forces in society.”

He went on to explain that for Bevan, the establishment of the NHS was not an isolated objective but rather formed part of a much larger whole, by serving as an example of the socialist approach to society:

Bevan offers the NHS as proof that this approach works: “A free Health Service is a triumphant example of the superiority of collective action and public initiative applied to a segment of society where commercial principles are seen at their worst.”

However, Thomas-Symonds concentrated on his belief that “the value of compassion” lay at the heart of In Place of Fear. It is this key value that drives Bevan and those who would follow in his wake, campaigning for a world free of poverty, hunger, and discrimination.

While some people wish to characterize the British left as preferring protest to power, Bevan placed a great emphasis on securing power in both political and industrial spheres. It was therefore entirely in keeping with the spirit of Bevan for Thomas-Symond to conclude with the following line: “Bevan’s message for today’s generation of progressive politicians would be the same now as then: secure power and use it for the benefit of your fellow citizens.”

While some (including myself) would balk at his use of the term “progressive” in preference to “socialist,” I still agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

A Distinctive Vision

Bevan’s somewhat apolitical apotheosis as the founder of the National Health Service ensures that his appeal remains strong across all wings of the Labour Party. Yet it is notable that everyone who has engaged with Bevan’s writings found his innate socialism coursing through his work.

Both politically and personally, Aneurin Bevan is not a figure beyond reproach. However, it speaks to the character and clarity of his work that while In Place of Fear can be viewed and used in different ways by those who cite it, Bevan’s distinctive socialism ultimately shines through. It stands as Bevan’s truth, and this is mine — now tell me yours.