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
Left communist who broke from her mother's WSPU to stand with East End working women, buried among Ethiopian patriots
"The Bolsheviks have begun to desert communism." In her 1922 Open Letter to Lenin, Pankhurst broke with Moscow. Expelled from the CPGB for refusing to surrender the Workers' Dreadnought, she chose free debate over party discipline.
British suffragette, left communist and anti-colonial activist. Breaking from her mother Emmeline's WSPU to organise working-class women in the East End, she debated Lenin and turned council communist before devoting her final decades to Ethiopia's anti-fascist struggle.
Career timeline
- 1882Born in Manchester to Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst
- 1903–1914Full-time WSPU organiser — designed logo and banners, witnessed Black Friday 1910, organised nationwide suffrage campaign
- 1914–1918Founded ELFS, launched Woman's Dreadnought — anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, rent strikes and cost-price canteens
- 1918–1920Founded WSF, published Workers' Dreadnought — attended 2nd Comintern Congress, debated Lenin directly
- 1921–1924Expelled from CPGB; published Open Letter to Lenin — turned council communist, formed Communist Workers' Party
- 1935–1956Founded and edited New Times and Ethiopia News — opposed fascist invasion, shaped pan-African and anti-colonial opinion
- 1956–1960Moved to Ethiopia — adviser to Haile Selassie, fundraised for first teaching hospital, wrote Ethiopia: A Cultural History
- 1960Died aged 78 in Addis Ababa — Ethiopian state funeral, buried among patriots at Holy Trinity Cathedral
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
