The NHS will turn 75 this year, a considerable legacy for the person responsible for establishing the service, Aneurin Bevan. But Bevan’s political career encompassed far more than this one achievement.
When today’s politicians talk about Bevan’s values or principles, these references often do not go beyond his ambition to make the NHS free at the point of delivery. While this was essential to Bevan, there is a tendency to overlook his wider principles. And by only focusing on the NHS, we run the risk of oversimplifying a complex figure.
One way of uncovering Bevan’s wider political philosophy is to explore his voluminous writings in the socialist magazine, Tribune, for which he wrote more than 300 articles between 1937 and 1960. My new book, This Is My Truth: Aneurin Bevan in Tribune, includes 72 of these articles. It provides an opportunity to delve deeper into Bevan’s philosophy and to critically engage with his ideas and their relevance to contemporary politics.
