Nick Thomas-Symonds: History lesson tells Labour that unity is strength

The lessons for Labour remain profound. The government was rocked to its foundations: despite making fundamental changes to post-war British society, Labour found itself back in opposition within six months.

The immediate cause of the resignations was the introduction of charges for dentures and spectacles in the National Health Service which Bevan, as Minister of Health and Housing, had established in July 1948. The proposals were contained in the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, delivered on April 10, 1951. Gaitskell, a Leeds MP, needed money to fund the rearmament programme deemed necessary in the light of the Korean War.

The Cabinet disagreement was so heated that the Cabinet Secretary, Norman Brook, did not initially include the discussion in the minutes and only later included them in a more moderate tone.That such a division occurred under the then Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, is a surprise in itself. For Attlee was the quiet, modest, effective chair of Cabinet who could find consensus amongst his colleagues even when deep personal enmities existed between them. Yet here even he could not maintain unity. Attlee thought that the issue was a matter of personality rather than politics and there was some support for this. The amount saved by introducing charging was tiny, only £13m in an overall budget of £4,000m. Bevan himself had accepted legislative provisions and prescription charges up to a shilling in December 1949, though he later argued in his resignation speech that he thought they would never be introduced due to impracticability.

There was also an element of thwarted ambition: Bevan had been passed over for the jobs of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Colonial Secretary before being sent to the Ministry of Labour in January 1951. Gaitskell, in contrast, was one of the youngest Chancellors of the Exchequer.

In Attlee’s defence, he was in hospital with a duodenal ulcer when the crisis developed. But that is not to say that he was not closely involved in events. On the morning of the Budget, the key protagonists also went to see him in hospital. Attlee, in his hospital bed, saw Bevan and Wilson at 10.30am and Gaitskell at 11.15am. Gaitskell had made up his mind that he would not budge. He would announce the charges and refuse to give way. He offered his resignation several times and finally Attlee murmured what Gaitskell thought to be: “Very well, you will have to go.”

A brief moment later, he realised his mistake. Attlee had actually said: “I am afraid they will have to go.” Gaitskell presented the Budget that afternoon. Bevan remained in a dilemma. That same day, James Callaghan and other junior ministers wrote to Bevan to ask him to delay his resignation. Callaghan saw Bevan in person and observed that he was “tormented” as to whether he was taking the right course.

Bevan’s period on the brink ended on April 23. His departure had deep significance. His resignation crystallised the division in the Labour Party in the later days of the Attlee government of “advance” versus “consolidation”: whether to take the nationalisation programme even further or to build on what had already been achieved, to try to increase private consumer affluence to win middle class votes. In 2011, the Labour Party is in the fortunate position of not having had any resignation in government which had the impact of that of Bevan.

This crisis reverberated into the politics of the 1950s. In the House of Commons on December 6, 1951, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister for the second time, teased the Labour opposition that Bevan had been right since all the money on rearmament that Gaitskell sought to raise could not even be spent. It was only after the Tory victory in the 1955 election, and Gaitskell’s victory in the subsequent Labour leadership contest, that Bevan returned to the frontline. Later, in the final year of his life, from 1959, be became deputy leader of the party.

Of course, there was something unique about the Bevan-Gaitskell spilt, since the two men were the standard bearers of the next generation from the Left and Right of the party, exemplifying the underlying difference to what the Labour Party strategy should be post-Attlee.

The Labour Party of 2011 must be thankful that no such division exists within its ranks. Indeed, the marked feature of Labour in opposition post-May 2010 has been the unity with which the Parliamentary party has sought to oppose the coalition. That unity must be a central Labour priority in opposition for the great lesson of the 1950s is that disunity is the surest way of remaining in opposition for a long time.

Nick Thomas-Symonds is a barrister and author of Attlee: A Life In Politics. He is currently working on a biography of Aneurin Bevan.