Extracts from a letter from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)¹
(Secret)

Aneurin Bevan,² together with his wife, Jennie Lee,³ and some of his close associates (Messrs. Michael Foot, Ian Mikardo,⁴ J.P.W. Mallalieu⁵ and Hugh Delargy) spent an evening at the Embassy recently. Discussion went on into the early hours of the morning and covered a great variety of topics, including Ireland and Partition. The occasion furnishes me with an opportunity of giving you a general account of Mr. Bevan and what he stands for in British politics; and the subject is not without importance – even from our point of view – because most people here consider that Bevanism, as it has come to be called, is not only the most significant development in British politics in recent years: it is also one which promises to exert a vital influence on British policy in the future.

2. As you know, Aneurin Bevan, who is now 55, is the son of a Welsh coal-miner. Beginning at the age of 13, he worked four years in the pits himself, until he fell ill, won a scholarship and left the mines for a Labour college. He is left-handed and, like Mr. Churchill, suffers from a stammer which, however, nowadays bothers him only very rarely. Although he was brought up in a Welsh-speaking home, he has little or no Welsh national sense and in his heart, rather despises modern Welsh nationalism.

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4. Mr. Bevan was for some time a lecturer in philosophy and industrial history at the Labour College at which he was educated. He has always been a voracious reader. Someone described him once as a ‘graduate of the Tredegar Public Library’.⁶ His reading embraces a good deal of the literature of Ireland’s national struggle, particularly the writings of Michael Davitt, James Connolly and Terence MacSwiney. He has a retentive memory, a sharp intelligence and a remarkable quickness and resource in argument. Like many theoretical Socialists, however, he has a predilection for pseudo-philosophical, in preference to common-sense, attitudes and explanations.

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7. He has another failing which is worth mentioning as bearing on his character. For a man who refuses to wear an evening suit even at Buckingham Palace, he has a strange fondness for luxury. The description ‘the Bollinger Bolshevik’⁷ which has been applied to him, is unfair because he seems rarely if ever to drink to excess; but he certainly has a fastidious and, indeed, sybaritic taste in wines, cigars and food which he never loses an opportunity of indulging. There are disturbing rumours that he is happier and more at home at the dinner tables of various wealthy capitalists than at the rather grim, if wholesome, week-end ‘study parties’ which the Bevanites hold from time to time at the country house of Lord Farrington.⁸
8. Aneurin Bevan’s greatest asset is his oratorical prowess. It is of inestimable value in a country in which political reputations are made by parliamentary performances. Many consider him the best debater in the House, not excluding Churchill. He knows his House of Commons, and has developed a mastery of the particular kind of style and phrasing which appeals to it most. His conversation doesn’t match his speeches in brilliance – which suggests that his speeches are carefully rehearsed efforts. When he rises to speak, the House fills up at once, and Churchill – who is credited with a sneaking admiration for Bevan – invariably comes in to hear him.

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13. En principe, Mr. Bevan and his friends are sympathetic towards Ireland and anti-Partitionist. The group comprises practically all the active anti-Partitionists in the House of Commons including Bing,⁹ Delargy, Desmond Donnelly, etc. as well as such members of the former ‘Friends of Ireland’ group as Mikardo, Silverman,¹⁰ McGovern,¹¹ Brockway,¹² etc. Aneurin Bevan himself, although a member of the Cabinet at the time, refrained from voting on the Ireland Bill, and has on several occasions made public references to Partition in terms helpful and sympathetic to us. In 1950, the ‘Tribune’¹³ pamphlet ‘Full Speed Ahead’ instanced the Ireland Bill as a betrayal of traditional Labour policies by the official leadership and, a little later, the pamphlet ‘John Bull’s other Ireland’¹⁴ gave the Partition issue the best airing it has had in this country in recent years. Up to date, we have certainly no cause to complain about the Bevanite attitude towards Partition. The group has identified itself openly and boldly with the view that Partition is one of Toryism’s crimes and should be ended.
14. To my mind, however, Aneurin Bevan himself is not the most sincere anti-Partitionist in the group. He is certainly interested in Ireland, and he seems to have a genuine admiration (of a somewhat sentimental order, perhaps) for our struggle for independence. I heard him, at a political evening party one night, extolling the courage and political insight of the 1916 Leaders in terms of great eloquence and apparently deep sincerity. He delights in telling the story that Sir John Lavery¹⁵ saw a close resemblance between him and Michael Collins and actually asked him to ‘sit’ for the completion of Lavery’s portrait of the latter, which he did – (the explanation perhaps why the portrait in question is so bad). Moreover, Mr. Bevan has a deep detestation of Toryism and he sees Ireland in terms of a victim – and a traditional antagonist – of Tory misrule and injustice, of which Partition is an example. From this, he derives a certain sense of solidarity and common feeling with us.
15. But having said this, I must say I doubt whether we can ever reckon Mr. Bevan as being a genuine and dependable friend. I can’t help feeling that, for all his theoretical anti-imperialism and socialist idealism, Bevan is at heart as British as the best of them. I am afraid he is not the man to allow championship of a just Irish claim to prejudice his political chances; if the need arose, he would abandon his former attitude on Partition overnight – and adduce excellent and eloquent reasons for his change of front. The more I hear him discoursing on the subject, the more I am convinced that his opposition to Partition has its roots, not in the moral aspects of the case – to which, indeed, I would say that he is quite insensitive – but in his personal hatred of Toryism and the rage he feels at the thought that Partition gives the Tories nine seats in the House to which they are not entitled. Indeed, when it comes to discussing the merits of Partition, Bevan’s mind reveals wide areas of active hostility to us which must disconcert even some of his own followers. For one thing, like his wife, he is almost fanatically anti-Catholic. He has the idea that the Church exercises a constant and irresistible pressure on the Government of the Twenty-six Counties, and he quotes the Dr. Browne¹⁶ episode freely as proof of his belief – never failing to add that he was on the point of sending a public message of encouragement to Dr. Browne at the height of the crisis when Hugh Delargy dissuaded from the idea. (Incidentally, he has nothing good to say about Mr. MacBride).¹⁷ He is also given to arguing with some vehemence, that we ourselves have made the task of ending Partition infinitely more difficult by our neutrality in the war and our subsequent repeal of the External Relations Act. He is not well-disposed to the Taoiseach, whom he blames for not having accepted the views he put before him when he visited Dublin during the war, and, on a characteristic note of self-righteousness, he complains that his efforts to persuade the British government to retain the reciprocal citizenship arrangement after the enactment of the Republic of Ireland Act were made immensely more difficult by our refusal to give the vote to British subjects, as Irish citizens are given the vote here! He regards the British effort to retain the Crown as the link of Commonwealth as being stupid and absurd, and he is utterly opposed, on principle, to the North Atlantic Pact; he is inclined to applaud our non-participation in the Pact rather than otherwise; but, on the other hand, he constantly harps on the comparison between the social services in the Twenty-six Counties and the rest of Ireland – asking how we expect, with our standards of welfare benefits, to attract in people already enjoying the best social services in the world! He takes a close interest in Irish agriculture, the expansion of which he considers to be a vital British interest. He thinks our agriculture hasn’t expanded as much as it should and attributes this partly to the price policies followed by the Ministry of Food and partly to the fact that, under our land system, the farmer hasn’t the incentive of adequate rent obligations. He cites the neglect of our grasslands as an example of the lack of progress in Irish agriculture and he actually referred to this in a recent debate in the House on the calf subsidy scheme.
16. Of course, there is nothing new in these arguments. Every Britisher who discusses Partition uses them. And to my mind, in his attitude towards Partition, Bevan is fundamentally just that – a typical Britisher. I expect he will continue to make favourable noises on the issue and from our point of view, no doubt, that is something to the good. But he is not deeply moved about it; he didn’t even mention it in his book ‘In Place of Fear’,¹⁸ (the sales of which, I am told, have only reached the relatively disappointing total of 42,000 copies). On the contrary, he would be as emphatic as any Tory in asserting that no British Government could do anything to ‘pressurize’ the North into union with us. Unlike Morrison,¹⁹ he would readily agree that, if the North decided in favour of unity, Britain would have nothing more to say. But then I suspect that – unlike Morrison – he regards the possibility of the North deciding in favour of unity as being utterly outside the bounds of probability. From something Bevan said the other night, I gathered that the reason why Morrison always insists that Britain would still have a say, even if the North and the South reached an agreement, is that Morrison does not regard such an eventuality as being so widely improbable at all!