Talk:Ernest Bevin

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anyone want to incorporate the famous quote "we have got to have this thing over here whatever it costs... we have got to have [a] bloody Union Jack on top of it..." , [1], [2], [3] also quoted in the TUBE ALLOYS arricle Pickle 17:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Ernest Bevin and Palestine

It's fairly widely-agreed (even by some of those who are no means enthusiastic supporters of Israel) that he messed up Britain's Palestine policy, partly by allowing free reign to some of his less endearing personality characteristics (which may have served him well in British trade-union politics, but which very conspicuously failed to accomplish anything whatsoever productive or constructive in the realm of mid-east diplomacy). To be brief, he caused many Jews to hate him passionately and intensely with some of his tactless remarks (such as accusing Jews of "jumping the queue"), and by pursuing certain highly controversial policies (such as returning attempted Jewish immigrants to Palestine to European refugee camps) far beyond the point of diminishing political returns -- but without thereby making the Arabs in the slightest degree more cooperative, or any more likely to agree to any compromise of any kind. It's hard to characterize this particular result as anything more than a personal failure on Bevin's part. Furthermore, he gratuitously (pointlessly and unnecessarily) offended and disgusted many politically-active people in America, at a time when the United States was beginning to take a more active role in middle eastern affairs... AnonMoos 00:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Some scholars have suggested that his Palestine policy was a 'failure', notably Harris in his biography of Attlee, but not his seminal biographer Bullock. My (soon to be published) research, partly from material unavailable to either of these academics shows why Bevin foresaw the unhappy consequences of creating an apartheid style state of foreigners in Arab land (though he always believed that Palestine would have a special role in the future of the Jewish people). As John Campbell, author of a 1980's biography of Anuerin Bevan (Bevin's pro-Zionist cabinet rival) conceded
Admittedly it [Bevin’s Palestine policy] achieved no settlement and led only to ignominious withdrawal, leaving the protagonists to fight it out. Nevertheless from the perspective of the 1980s Bevin’s policy looks to have been based on a much shrewder appreciation of the realities on the ground than Bevan’s
To correctly predict the consequences of a course of action decades after ones own death is not failure, but the mark of a great statesman. To refer to it as such is an abuse of language.
When you say he 'gratuitously (pointlessly and unnecessarily) offended and disgusted many politically-active people in America' what you mean is he told American's truths about themselves they did not want to hear, such as when he commented on the American determination to open Palestine to Jewish immigration, whilst keeping the doors of the US firmly shut in the following terms
I hope I will not be misunderstood in America if I say that this was proposed with the purest motives. They do not want too many Jews in New York.
to which the British Ambassador in Washington remarked
Your criticism of New York has, of course, not only hit the nail on the head but driven it woundingly deep
The importance of periodically telling Americans things they don't want to hear is something the present British leadership would have done well to remember.
So your paragraph on Bevin and Palestine is, I submit, a highly subjective point of view, not a reasonable factual piece on Bevin's 'Attitudes' -User:Sirtoyou
First off, the mini-political-propaganda-tirade about "stealing Palestine" which you include in your version of the article is far more "subjective" than anything I have ever done in any of my edits to this article. Second, I'll thank you not to arbitrarily mutilate my past comments on this page (as I warned you on your user talk page).
Third, the very quotes which you included in your comment above only prove my point for me -- 99% of the time, the role of a diplomat is not to publicly agitate to make his personal political preferences become official government policy, nor to offend people by telling them alleged woundingly deep "truths" which they don't want to hear, but rather to follow the stated policies of his government in smoothing the way for a settlement or agreement which will be at least minimally tolerable to all parties in a dispute. In gratuitously offending many Americans, at a time when United States cooperation was becoming increasingly necessary to arrive at a political agreement for the future of Palestine, Bevin was hardly acting as a wise diplomat. The same could be said for his remarks and policies which infuriated and inspired wide passionate loathing among Jews, without rendering Arabs any more amenable to a compromise agreement. Bevin may have succeeded as a political agitator and long-term prophet, but his job wasn't to be a political agitator and long-term prophet, his job was to be a DIPLOMAT, and it's fairly widely agreed that he was an overall FAILURE in his job as diplomat with respect to the Palestine situation.
Again, the very quotes which you included above prove this very point: Admittedly it achieved no settlement and led only to ignominious withdrawal, leaving the protagonists to fight it out. At the time, Bevin's JOB, for which he was being paid a salary by His Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was exactly to arrive at such a settlement, and to avoid such fighting. Therefore he was objectively a failure at the job he was hired to do (a difficult job, certainly, but the point is that he didn't do anything to make it any easier) -- and if he placed personal political agitating above implementing the official policies of the government of which he was a part, then he was accepting his salary from His Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under false pretences.
Fourth, your original research in primary sources is not really suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia articles according to Wikipedia policies -- see WP:OR. AnonMoos 14:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I didn't add the header "attitudes", and I agree it may not be the most suitable sub-title (though Palestine is an area where it has been argued that his personal characteristics impacted his job performance). Also, some might say that if Bevin hadn't done his little bit to pointlessly sour the overall atmosphere, then a settlement between Jews and Arabs could have been more likely -- and if an agreement had been arrived at, then many of the negative long-term consequences which Bevin predicted would possibly have been avoided. In this case, Bevin's prophecies were largely self-fulfilling prophecies... AnonMoos 17:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The article doesn't score very highly on the verifiability front as is. I don't see any references. It's not as if it's especially difficult to find them. Bullock's biography was reprinted recently for example. While it would be a Bad Thing to inject original research, there's no reason why the work which produced the original research should not be used to improve the article. Angus McLellan (Talk) 15:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Well if you, Mr. Moos, read the whole of my dissertation (which you haven't asked for a copy of) you would know that I do suggest that Bevin's Palestine policy did indeed have the potential to undermine his wider policy in respect of, arguably, more important things. His relationship with Truman and Secretary of States' Byrnes and Marshall was strained by his position on Palestine, but they left him no alternative. Nevertheless this clearly wasn't fatal, as the Marshall plan did happen, the US did step into the breach in Greece when the UK could no longer continue, NATO was established and the influence of the Soviet Union was circumscribed.

What you fail to appreciate is that the Foreign Secretary is not simply a diplomat, but the author national of strategy (particularly when supported by the Prime Minister; which he was). Both Bevin and Attlee correctly foresaw where the creation of a Zionist citadel on Arab land would lead. Both Bevin and Attlee were further infuriated by Truman's repeated attempts to bounce them into accepting mass Jewish immigration into Palestine. There exists in the UK's national archive a telegram of the most perfect understated fury from Attlee (normally the very personification of diplomatic calm) to Truman, sent in response to one of Truman's particularly unhelpful interventions. The US position was intolerable, both because of its hypocrisy, and because of the US refusal to back their rhetoric (however wrong headed) with resources. To wit, if the US really wanted Palestine to accommodate the overwhelming majority of Jewish displaced persons then they really ought to have sent a sufficient military force to suppress the inevitable Arab uprising that would have followed; because Britain was bankrupt and could not do it alone, even if it had wanted to. This is a mark of their perceptiveness as statesmen. Therefore the policy was not a failure, but the least worst course of action available. Add to this the trivial consideration that it was right in principle.

As to the point about no original research, this is a tricky one. Whilst you obviously can't have every whack ball peddling their own theories, there must come a point at which new perspectives are generally held to be accepted as correct, or wiki would still hold that the world is flat. The generally accepted scientific method on this is publication and peer review. As I state on http://www.richardhall.org.uk my dis has been accepted for publication by an academic journal, and therefore one may reasonably infer that its editors believe it to be a valid piece of scholarship. If you would like to verify this please feel free.Sirtoyou 18:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The responsibility of the foreign minister is to implement the overall policies set by the cabinet (with many lesser uncontroversial details left to his own personal discretion, of course). If the prime minister was going behind the cabinet's back, and urging the foreign minister not to give high priority to the goals agreed to by the cabinet, then that's interesting information about the labyrinthine political manoeuvrings within the Labour Party during the second half of the 1940's, but I don't see how it serves to place Ernest Bevin in any positive light. Furthermore, it's rather interesting that what you characterize as the best available course of action which was also "right in principle" was one which lead to the nakba ("Catastrophe"). If the best available course of action which was also "right in principle" led to a catastrophe and 70 years of strife, then I'd really like to see what the outcome of a so-called "bad" or "unprincipled" decision would have been!!
Bevin's overall actions may have had the ephemeral and transient result that certain Arab states continued to look more to Britain (rather than to the U.S. or Soviet Union) for a little while (until Suez 1956 put an abrupt end to most of that), but his actions conspicuously failed to accomplish any positive or constructive results whatsoever in Palestine, and to the extent that this article glosses over the fact, the article is dishonest by omission.
Truman had political pressures and constraints on his own actions, the same as the British government, and his main proposal was a one-off one-time immediate migration of 100,000 Jewish refugees from European displaced person camps to Palestine, without thereby creating future entitlements or pre-determining the outcome of future political negotiations on Palestine. That would have had several possible benefits -- it would have relieved the humanitarian situation in European displaced person camps, cleared the air of much of the ill-will dating back to British decisions of the 1930's (and only exacerbated by Bevin's tactless remarks and reckless policies), and gained much support in the United States. And it could hardly have made the Arabs any more intransigent, dogmatically inflexible, and absolute in their refusal to seriously negotiate than they already were -- and it could have taught the Arabs a salutary lesson, namely that maintaining an immobile static rigidly-inflexible absolutist maximalist position and refusing to negotiate would not in fact always bring further British appeasement concessions (which was the main lesson that the Arabs had brought away from the 1930's).
However, most of the above comments of mine and yours are really just bantering; here are my actual main objections to your edits of the article: AnonMoos 17:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Objections to Sirtoyou's edits

1) Sirtoyou's edits gloss over the obvious fact that Bevin was an objective failure in not achieving the UK government's publicly-stated goals of arriving at a political settlement in Palestine and avoiding major Arab-Jewish fighting there. (Whether or not these were also Bevin's personal goals doesn't change the aforementioned fact.)

2) Sirtoyou's edits ignore the conspicuous fact that by his gratuitously tactless remarks and obstinacy in sticking to unproductive high-negative-publicity policies (things which he no doubt saw as West-country bluntness and steely resolve, but which many others saw as at best surly boorish churlishness, and at worst as motivated by racist bigotry), Bevin offended and alienated many of those whose support and goodwill could have facilitated Palestine political negotiations. AnonMoos 17:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further general comment

Feel free to add any valid relevant information about Bevin's attitudes and motivations (which throws light on why he did what he did), but please do not remove well-founded information about his failure to achieve the publicly-stated diplomatic goals of the British government, and the widespread negative reactions of many at the time to certain of his statements and actions -- statements and actions which appear to have made it even more difficult to achieve the publicly-stated diplomatic goals of the British government. Of course, not everybody had a negative reaction, so if you have information on positive reactions, you could add that as well (without removing information on negative reactions). AnonMoos 09:36, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bevin's failure in Palestine

He failed to achieve just about all of the British government's publicly-stated policy goals in Palestine (it's hard to think of one he did manage to attain). Of course, a person would not ordinarily be called a "failure" for not accomplishing an impossible task -- but Bevin gratuitously chose to make his task (however difficult it may have been to start with) even more difficult than it needed to be, so the label sticks. AnonMoos 22:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would dispute that it was a failure. Do you think the phrasing "he opposed the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state" may imply that the Zionist movement was alone - as you probably know, at that time the creation of Israel was supported by many states/organizations (notably the US & USSR), for various reasons. ←Humus sapiens ну? 00:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
AnonMoos: Your statement ("One of Bevin's prominent failures was in the British Mandated Territory of Palestine, where he opposed the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state") implies that Britain's failure in Palestine rests solely or mostly on Bevin shoulders, when historians argue that the foundations of Britain's failure were laid decades earlier. You yourself have stated that "a person would not ordinarily be called a "failure" for not accomplishing an impossible task," and you are right. The article on Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, does not blame Mountbatten for the "failure" of British policies or even the unbelievably violent Partition of India. --(Ptah, the El Daoud 18:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC))
There was (and is) a fairly widespread perception that Bevin took on an (admittedly) tough job, and gratuitously and pointlessly made it even tougher by repeatedly making ill-chosen abrasive remarks and insisting on sticking with high-negative-publicity policies far past their point of diminishing political returns. Furthermore, Mountbatten's Viceroyalty had a lot of fiascos, but he more or less achieved the main goal he was originally sent out to do -- namely, give British India independence -- while it's hard to enumerate one single publicly-stated British government policy goal which Bevin managed to achieve in Palestine. And in the Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma article there ARE in fact statements about his "foreseeing vast disruption and loss of life and not wanting this to occur on the British watch, but thereby actually causing it to occur" and "a particularly harsh critic of Mountbatten in this regard...The horrific casualties of the partition of the Punjab" etc. AnonMoos 03:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore, you attempt to equate opposition to Zionism with failure by merely stating "...he opposed the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state"--as opposed to "he opposed the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state, and supported the creation of an independent Palestine." The sentence that I proposed is a simple substitution: "Bevin opposed the plans of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state in the British Mandated Territory of Palestine." It avoids both editorializing and pro-Zionist/pro-Palestinian politics; it also leaves plenty of room for the body of the sub-section to illustrate how this opposition was ultimately ineffective. --(Ptah, the El Daoud 18:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC))
Please don't put words into my mouth!!!! I was not actually the one who first united those two clauses into a sentence, and the sentence doesn't necessarily imply any logical connection between the two clauses (I have no objection to breaking it up into two sepearate sentences). Bevin was not a failure because of any political position that he took, but rather because he conspicuously failed to achieve any single one of the British government's publicly-stated policy goals for Palestine (and even seemed to go out of his way to take actions which made it even more difficult than it already otherwise might have been to achieve the British government's publicly-stated policy goals for Palestine). I object to your substitute because it obscures or whitewashes over the fact that Bevin conspicuously failed to achieve any single one of the British government's publicly-stated policy goals for Palestine. AnonMoos 03:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. What do you think of my new proposal? --(Ptah, the El Daoud 03:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC))

[edit] The issue in a nutshell

If as a result of his tactless boorish remarks ("queue-jumping" etc.) Bevin had managed to get the Arabs to agree to a compromise plan, then he would be remembered today as a brilliant manoeuvering diplomatic strategist. However, since instead the result was that he caused many Jews to intensely hate him, and offended many Americans, without thereby making the Arabs at all more likely to assent to any proposal which included any element of Jewish sovereignty whatsoever, therefore he is now largely remembered as an overall failure who took an already-screwed up Middle East situation, and gratuitously screwed it up even further through his inability to restrain some of his less endearing personality characteristics. AnonMoos 04:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

This is editorializing. Even if Bevin had acted like the proper English gentleman who led his party, he would have been hated by Zionists of all backgrounds (be they judged by nationality, race and/or religion) because of his fundamental political stance on the issue. The Foreign Office (let alone the ruling Labour Party) was split on the issue, and there is every reason to believe that a Zionist Labour representative would have riled as many feathers by positively infuriating the (already furious) Palestinians (as well as the neighboring Arab states). Did Bevin fail at his mission? Yes. Is there any reason to believe that a polite Zionist or a two-stater with genuine sympathy for both sides of the mother of all arguments would have succeeded where Bevin failed? No. Consequently, while we should recognize that Bevin failed at his mission, and we should recognize that he was dangerously divisive, we should not pretend that his failure is the sole defining element of his career. Historians who specialize in Labour politics or even British politics in the first half of the last century will argue that Bevin played a vital role in the establishment of the Labour party as a vibrant political force. --(Ptah, the El Daoud 05:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC))
Another person might not have succeeded, but another person might not have gratuitously pointlessly and unnecessarily inflamed the situation by his undiplomatic behavior, either. You can call it "editorializing", but it has a lot to do with why his name is execrated in circles where the internal history of the British Labour Party is not of much interest. AnonMoos 06:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Where do you think that his name is 'execrated'? Certainly not in Britain, where he is considered by both historians and more general commentators as a statesman and one of the greatest Foreign Secretaries that the country has ever had. There is a celebrated three volume biography by Alan Bullock, considered to be one of the best pieces of modern historical writing. If you read that, you will find that Bevin was an outstanding trade union leader, the 'Docker's Q.C.' (after a high profile court case in which he argued the claims of the dock workers for a living wage) and the founder of the Transport and General Workers Union. He was a far sighted man, who grasped the importance of Keynsian economics before many economists, and gave evidence to the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry. Bevin, more than anyone else, organised the British economy for total war, and can be regarded as one of the architects of victory. As Foreign Secretary, Bevin was responsible for helping to bring about Marshall Aid, for helping to set up Nato, for helping to defuse the problems of postwar Europe. For that alone, he deserves to be remembered. Yes, he was blunt. Yes, he did not suffer fools gladly. Yes, he told people things that they did not want to hear. So why has this article been hijacked, to some extent, by American zionists with an axe to grind?--Train guard (talk) 14:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

He may have been a very fine political trade-union organizer within the British Labor party, but he was was an overwhelming objective failure as a diplomat in middle-eastern affairs (considering that he ignominiously failed to achieve any single one of the British government's publicly-stated goals in that region), and he was widely "execrated" at the time by a very large number of Jews (in Palestine and elsewhere), and by many Americans who had an interest in the region at the time -- and he continues to be execrated by those who did not find his brutal tactlessness or surly boorish churlishness to be endearing, and who remember (or have been told by those who remember) how his failures negatively impacted on them or their families. AnonMoos (talk) 21:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

But this is an encyclopeadia article about Ernest Bevin....and a very poor one at that. You simply cannot concentrate upon one issue to the exclusion of anything else. Look, the majority of British historians (and people who are aware of him) couldn't really give a toss about what Americans thought of him at the time, or what some Zionists think of him, except in passing. This is not an article about Bevin and Palestine. Please stop treating it as if it was.--Train guard (talk) 11:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

{{sofixit}}. As for AnonMoos, the comment above is difficult to square with WP:NPOV and can be ignored. Anyway, here's some of the great heap of published material *about* Bevin. Anyone who cared to do the necessary research could write a quality article on Bevin which didn't give undue weight to any part of his career or any single viewpoint. Have fun, Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:45, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Whatever -- my comments directly above could not be incorporated into the article in that particular form (and I was not proposing that they be incorporated into the article in that particular form), but nevertheless they are a basically factual explanation of why it is that Bevin's memory is far from being universally venerated (and it's an objective fact that his memory IS far from being universally venerated). We can discuss his trade union and internal labor party successes in the sections devoted to those aspects of his career, and can discuss his middle-eastern diplomacy failures in the section devoted to that particular aspect of his career, without any necessary conflict between the two. AnonMoos (talk) 00:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

And his foreign policy successes? If I, and others, expand these sections, will you and your friends leave well enough alone? (I also propose to add material from Bullock to the section dealing with Palestine.)--Train guard (talk) 11:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Palmach??

Who put the text in this article about the Palmach? It was NOT an American Zionist organization, as the text implied, but a military unit of the Haganah.Scott Adler 23:13, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request details of the Mandate Collapse: Who gave the orders?

1. Has it been established who in the British government allowed al-Kaukji's army into Palestine in February, 1948? 2. Who was responsible for the transfer of the Arab Legion to "Transjordanian" control, with its British personnel infrastructure in place? Was the Imperial General Staff still in control during the Battle of Latrun? 3. Who ordered the RAF to intervene in unmarked aircraft in the later stages of the war? 4. Who was responsibile for isolatint UN representatives and preventing them from doing their jobs? 5. Who ordered "Operation Chaos" -- the British government's policy of shutting down the mandate by ripping out phones, burning files, and doing whatever it could to prevent an orderly transfer of power to any successor state?

Was Bevin responsible for any of this? And does Bevin share any blame for the Indian partition disaster?

When I have time, I'll add some text regarding the amusing behavior of UK diplomats at the UN following the withdrawal. It demonstrated remarkably childish stubbornness. Scott Adler 00:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)