In January 1946, the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, stared into the geopolitical fog. The second world war had only just ended. The cold war, which would last more than four decades, was only just beginning. It was hard to see six months, let alone six years ahead.
But Bevin did not sit waiting for the fog to clear. He was a minister of action, who saw that what matters is not just what Britain says, but what it does. What matters is not just what Britain wants, but what it builds. What matters is having a strategy. This is why Clement Attlee’s 1945 general election manifesto was called Let Us Face the Future.
