Changes

In 1945 Bevan was made Minister of Health in the new Labour government, an onerous role that included responsibility for housing as well as health matters. He is remembered partly for his work in bringing about the construction of some hundreds of thousands of municipal houses despite severe shortages of materials, but mainly for his role in creating the [[National Health Service]], which was inaugurated on 5 July 1948. Bevan was made Minister of Labour in 1951 but resigned from the cabinet, with [[Harold Wilson]] and John Freeman, in protest at the decision by [[Chancellor of the Exchequer]] [[Hugh Gaitskell]] to impose charges for spectacles and dentures.

In 1945 Bevan was made Minister of Health in the new Labour government, an onerous role that included responsibility for housing as well as health matters. He is remembered partly for his work in bringing about the construction of some hundreds of thousands of municipal houses despite severe shortages of materials, but mainly for his role in creating the [[National Health Service]], which was inaugurated on 5 July 1948. Bevan was made Minister of Labour in 1951 but resigned from the cabinet, with [[Harold Wilson]] and John Freeman, in protest at the decision by [[Chancellor of the Exchequer]] [[Hugh Gaitskell]] to impose charges for spectacles and dentures.

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As a [[back-bencher]], Bevan was the leader of a clique of left-wing Labour MPs who became known as 'Bevanites'; their opposition to party policy, coupled with Bevan's increaingly rancorous temperament, brought increasing splits to the Parliamentary party, from which Bevan was briefly suspended in 1955. However, following the resignation of Clement Atlee as Labour leader in 1955, his replacement, Gaitskell, appointed Bevan to the [[Shadow Cabinet]] as Shadow Colonial Secretary; and a year later, as Shadow Foreign Secretary. In this role Bevan outraged many of his former left-wing supporters when, at the 1957 Labour Party conference, he denounced calls for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the [[United Kingdom]], saying famously that such a policy would send him, as a putative future Labour Foreign Secretary, "naked into the conference chamber."

 

 

[[Category:Politics]]

[[Category:Politics]]