Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds - Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan

NICKLAUS THOMAS-SYMONDS is Lecturer in Politics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a practising barrister. He is the author of Attlee: A Life in Politics (I.B.Tauris).

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Nye Bevan was a political colossus, a passionate voice of socialist protest who was also a great creative statesman, an artist in the uses of power whose career fundamentally transformed our society. All these aspects of his career are admirably dealt with by Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds in a balanced lucid work based on a wide range of sources. It is equally strong on Bevans background in the Welsh mining valleys, his triumph in launching the National Health Service, his role in the internecine wars that beset Labour in the fifties, and his abiding legacy for radicals and socialists at the present time. This is a gripping new analysis of one of the most controversial, but also one of the most charismatic, figures in recent British history.

Kenneth O. Morgan

[Thomas-Symondss] research is admirably thorough, his approach is candid and free of hagiography, his treatment of personalities and events swirling around Bevan is illuminating, and his perceptions are incisive and fluently expressed. But what marks this book out from many other Bevan biographies is the intimacy of this young South Walian lawyers understanding of Nyes background, which so profoundly shaped his values and purposes throughout his life. Above all, Nick Thomas-Symonds comprehends Bevans central, propelling quality of audacity.

Neil Kinnock

Nye is a timely biography. It is over half a century since Michael Foot published the first of his two volumes on Aneurin Bevan which set such a high standard in biographical writing. Not until Nicklaus Thomas-Symondss new volume has anyone approached Foots masterpiece in political analysis and historical scholarship. It is timely for two other reasons. Firstly, the biography uses new sources to explore Bevans working class origins in the valleys of South Wales, giving new importance to his local government experience alongside the more generally accepted and recognised formative influences of his union, the Fed, of independent working class education and of the community enterprise of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society. And secondly, this is a reminder to our new generation of activists and leaders that the collectivist inspiration for Nyes National Health Service and all the radical and reforming spirit of 1945, from legal aid to the culture of the South Bank, should be an enduring inheritance and Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds captures this beautifully. This is essential reading for everyone who wishes to understand the quintessentially benign but audacious rooted character of Nyes generation of organic working class intellectuals who helped civilise our postwar world, and who should continue to inspire us today.

Hywel Francis MP

Nick Thomas-Symonds has set out to explain the whole trajectory of Aneurin Bevans political life, from its crucial nurturing in the South Wales coalfield to his purposeful use of power through the Labour Party in government. With balanced judgement, based on wide research, he succeeds triumphantly in giving us the real Nye: principled and pragmatic, frustrated and fulfilled, a unique fusion of strategy and tactics deployed to empower the British working class he represented brilliantly and served unremittingly. If you only read one book on Nye Bevan then, for its objectivity and illumination, make it this one.

Dai Smith, Raymond Williams Research Chair
in Cultural History, Swansea University

A very readable and well researched study of one of the true political giants of the twentieth century. This book will be a useful addition to the canon of labour history and British political history more generally.

Matthew Worley,
Professor of Modern History, University of Reading

A lively account of Bevans political career that is well written and carefully researched.

Paul Corthorn,
Senior Lecturer in Modern British History, Queens University Belfast

Published in 2015 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
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Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
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Copyright 2015 Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds

The right of Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978 1 78076 209
eISBN: 978 0 85773 499

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

eBook by Tetragon, London

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For my grandparents, my parents, Rebecca, Matilda Olwyn, Florence Elizabeth Mary, and Ellie.