Aneurin Bevan Quotes
There has never been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man is the greatest protection against war.
Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1960, British Minister of Health (Socialist), 1945
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was the week after he returned from his meeting with Hitler in Munich where he appeased the German Dictator. See {585941} for his famous naive statement.
The documentation of this quotation comes from a memorandum summarizing the meeting written by Presidential aide Harry Hopkins.
Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. Johnson was a leader of some members of Congress some of whom were extreme isolationists and some of whom were Nazi sympathizers and Hitler admirers. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor later that year, Germany, fulfilling its treaty with Japan, declared war on America, Johnson’s group no longer mattered. Before WWII most Republicans were opposed to Defense Spending and accused the Democrats of being war hawks. After WWII, they flip flopped and became more hawkish than the Democrats who they accused of being soft on defense for years thereafter. See {631380} for President Roosevelt’s different view.
Aneurin Bevan PC, often known as Nye Bevan, was a Welsh Labour Party politician. Born into a working-class family in South Wales, he was the son of a coal miner. He left school at 13 and worked as a miner during his teens where he became involved in local union politics. He was named head of his Miners' Lodge when aged 19, where he frequently railed against management. He joined the Labour Party and attended Central Labour College in London. On his return to south Wales he struggled to find work, remaining unemployed for nearly three years before gaining employment as a union official, which led to him becoming a leading figure in the 1926 general strike.
