A pragmatic statesman who carried trade-union power into postwar diplomacy
At the 1946 Moscow conference, after Molotov’s repeated attacks, Bevin rose and shouted, “I've had enough of this I 'ave!”
Ernest Bevin was a Labour politician and trade-union organizer who rose from poverty to lead Britain’s largest union. His wartime management of labour shaped a postwar diplomacy that treated reconstruction as a question of organized work and state capacity. As Foreign Secretary, he and Georges Bidault organized the European response to Marshall’s Harvard speech, linking British security and western European cooperation to American aid and an Atlantic alliance. His firm anti-communism and defence of imperial interests also show how the postwar international order combined reconstruction with continuing forms of power.
Career timeline
- 1910Secretary, Bristol branch of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union
- 1914National organiser, Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union
- 1922–1940General Secretary, Transport and General Workers’ Union
- 1940–1945Minister of Labour and National Service, wartime coalition government
- 1945–1951Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Attlee government
- 1947Organized the CEEC with Georges Bidault and led Britain’s response to Marshall aid
- 1949Contributed to the creation of NATO
The laconic reformer who replaced Churchill mid-Potsdam and built Britain's postwar welfare state
After winning the 1945 election, Attlee stood in silence with George VI at Buckingham Palace before volunteering, "I've won the election." The King replied, "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News."
Clement Attlee was the man who replaced Winston Churchill as British prime minister in the middle of the Potsdam Conference, after Labour's landslide victory in July 1945. He had served loyally as Churchill's deputy in the wartime coalition, but voters chose the unassuming reformer over the war hero and his promise of a welfare state. His government created the National Health Service, nationalised major industries, and began dismantling the British Empire by granting independence to India and Pakistan. Abroad, he championed the Marshall Plan and NATO, aligning Britain firmly with the United States as the Cold War took shape.
Career timeline
- 1935–1955Leader of the Labour Party
- 1940–1942Lord Privy Seal (wartime coalition)
- 1942–1945Deputy Prime Minister (wartime coalition)
- 1945–1951Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 1951–1955Leader of the Opposition
Australia's Foreign Minister who led the small and medium powers' fight against the great-power veto at San Francisco
On the emergency subcommittee with Stettinius and Gromyko, Evatt displayed 'an attitude of conciliation' and proposed the draft that on 20 June broke the deadlock over the General Assembly's powers of discussion.
An Australian Labor politician and jurist, Evatt was appointed the youngest-ever High Court justice at 36 and later served as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs under the Curtin and Chifley governments. At the 1945 San Francisco Conference he led the small and medium powers' resistance to the Security Council veto, submitting 38 amendments, and sat on the emergency subcommittee with Stettinius and Gromyko that resolved the deadlock over the General Assembly's powers of discussion. As President of the UN General Assembly in 1948 he guided the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine that paved the way for the partition plan. He became Labor leader in 1951 but the party split over communism and three successive election defeats drove him from politics in 1960.
Career timeline
- 1925–1930MLA for Balmain, New South Wales Legislative Assembly
- 1930–1940Justice of the High Court of Australia
- 1941–1949Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs
- 1948–1949President of the UN General Assembly
- 1951–1960ALP Leader and Leader of the Opposition
- 1960–1962Chief Justice of New South Wales
A British diplomat of war and decolonisation
At the 1945 San Francisco Conference, the foreign ministers of the four sponsoring Allied powers took turns chairing the plenary sessions, with Eden among them.
Anthony Eden was a British Conservative statesman whose First World War service reinforced his commitment to the League of Nations and collective security. He served three times as foreign secretary amid the rise of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and during the Second World War acted as Winston Churchill’s principal diplomatic lieutenant in negotiations with the Soviet Union and the other Allies over the postwar order. Representing Britain at Yalta and at the 1945 San Francisco Conference, he helped shape the emerging international institutions, yet as prime minister he pursued the Suez invasion, exposing both the limits of British imperial power and Britain’s dependence on the United States.
Career timeline
- 1915–1919British Army officer, Western Front
- 1923–1957MP for Warwick and Leamington
- 1931–1934Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs
- 1935–1938Foreign Secretary
- 1940–1945Foreign Secretary and War Cabinet minister
- 1945British representative at Yalta and the San Francisco Conference
- 1951–1955Foreign Secretary
- 1955–1957Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Conservative Party leader
A practical architect of nuclear diplomacy
With Kissinger, he turned the Soviet draft into a counterproposal that preserved alliance obligations.
Thomas Brimelow was a British diplomat and Soviet specialist who worked where Cold War alliance politics met arms diplomacy. During the negotiation of the 1973 Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, he helped Henry Kissinger reshape the Soviet proposal for an unconditional renunciation of nuclear weapons into a narrower text preserving alliance obligations and covering third countries. His role showed British Foreign Office expertise entering the heart of American strategy toward the USSR, while also revealing how the language of détente could preserve nuclear deterrence and great-power realpolitik.
Career timeline
- 1938Entered the Foreign Office
- 1966–1969British Ambassador to Poland
- 1969–1973Deputy to the Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office
- 1972Jointly drafted a counterproposal with Kissinger on preventing nuclear war
- 1973–1975Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office
- 1976Created Baron Brimelow
- 1977–1978Member of the European Parliament
A communist journalist who chose the scene over the party line
At a workers’ council election, hearing “we have absolutely no experience of electing people,” he thought: “So much for ‘people’s democracy.”
Peter Fryer was an English Marxist writer and journalist who sought both truth within the communist movement and international solidarity. In Hungary in 1956 he reported a workers’ and students’ uprising, but the Daily Worker censored or suppressed his dispatches, and he answered with Hungarian Tragedy. The conflict led to his expulsion from the Communist Party and contributed to the crisis that split British communism, after which he became a major historian of Black Britain.
Career timeline
- 1942Joined the Young Communist League
- 1943–1947Reporter, Yorkshire Post
- 1945Joined the Communist Party of Great Britain
- 1948–1956Parliamentary and foreign correspondent, Daily Worker
- 1956Covered the Hungarian Revolution and wrote Hungarian Tragedy
- 1957–1959Editor of The Newsletter and founding member of the Socialist Labour League
- 1984Published Staying Power
- 2006Died in London
From ambassador to Moscow during perestroika to author of Afgantsy, the British diplomat who knew Russia from the inside
'On Christmas Day 1991 we were still wearing our funny hats and eating our mince pies when Mikhail Gorbachev came on television to tell the world that he had resigned as President of the Soviet Union,' recalling the end from Moscow.
British diplomat and author who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union (1988–1991) and then to the Russian Federation (1991–1992), witnessing perestroika, the August 1991 coup, the rise of Yeltsin, and the Soviet collapse from the inside. On close personal terms with Gorbachev, he later served as foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister John Major and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. His 2011 book Afgantsy, the key revisionist account of the Soviet-Afghan War, argues that the Soviet 40th Army was never defeated on the battlefield and withdrew in good order, challenging the Western 'Soviet Vietnam' narrative and recasting the war as a failure of intelligence and political judgment, not of arms.
Career timeline
- 1951–1952Served in military intelligence, Vienna
- 1955Joined HM Diplomatic Service
- 1963–1966Posted to British Embassy Moscow (first tour)
- 1975–1978UK Permanent Representation to the EC, Brussels
- 1982–1984Minister for Trade, British Embassy Washington
- 1984–1988Deputy Under-Secretary, FCO; G7 Sherpa team
- 1988–1992British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, then Russia
- 1992–1993Foreign Policy Adviser to PM; Chairman, JIC
