Nye Bevan, Black Marketeer

In July 1948 Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Minister of Health and Housing and doyen of the Labour Left, was at the peak of his political powers: the National Health Service, which he had done much to create, opened for business, the house-building programme was gathering pace, and he secured his reputation as a socialist firebrand by condemning Conservatives as ‘lower than vermin’ in one of his speeches. Recently discovered statements and reports in a London Metropolitan Police file reveal that 1948 was also the year in which Bevan came perilously close to damaging his reputation as the ‘People’s Tribune’, and proving that his Conservative critics such as Brendan Bracken, who had dubbed him a ‘Bollinger Bolshevik’ and a ‘ritzy Robespierre’, had his measure.