Ernest Bevin
British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
1881 CE to 1951 CE
Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881 – 14 April 1951) is a British statesman, trade union leader, and Labour politician.
He co-founds and serves as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1940, and as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government.
He succeeds in maximizing the British labor supply for both the services and domestic industry, with a minimum of strikes and disruption.
His most important role comes as Foreign Secretary in the postwar Labour Government, 1945-51.
He gains American financial support, withdraws from India and much of the Middle East, strongly opposes Communism, and aids in the creation of NATO.
According to his biographer, Alan Bullock, Bevin "stands as the last of the line of foreign secretaries in the tradition created by Casterleagh, Canning and Palmerston in the first half of the 19th century, with Salisbury, Grey and Austin Chamberlain as his predecessors in the 20th century, and (thanks to the reduction in British power) with no successors."
World
The Atlantic Lands
View →Related Events
Showing 2 events out of 2 total
The Jewish negotiators at the reconvened London Conference in January 1947 are prepared to accept only partition and the Arab negotiators only a unitary state, which would automatically have an Arab majority.
Neither will accept limited autonomy under British rule.
"His Majesty's Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles. There are in Palestine about twelve hundred thousand Arabs and six hundred thousand Jews. For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine."
—British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, address to the House of Commons in February 1947.