Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan and Jennie Lee, respectively founders of the NHS and the Open University – as well as husband and wife – were today honoured with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at the house in Chelsea where they lived when the National Health Service Act became law in November 1946.
The Blue Plaque was unveiled by Neil Kinnock, former leader of the Labour Party, who like Bevan was born in Tredegar in Monmouthshire, Wales.
Neil Kinnock, former Leader of the Labour Party, said: “This house was the home – the lair – of the greatest ever lion and lioness of Labour, Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. They are among the most inspiring and magnetic political figures of the 20th century. The legacy of the people who lived in this house is indelible and – against all tides of attack – enduring, not only in physical reality but in the hearts and minds and hopes of millions.”
Number 23 Cliveden Place in Chelsea was home to Bevan and Lee for a decade, 1944-1954. It was a significant period in Bevan’s career, encompassing his foundation of the NHS and his authorship of In Place of Fear, an autobiographical statement of his political credo. Lee herself re-entered Parliament while they were living there.
Visitors to the mid-to-late 19th century townhouse included the late former Leader of the Labour Party, Michael Foot, who described the enjoyable occasions he spent at their homes: “No one … ever forgot the magic of those evenings. No one who was present at a session when he [Bevan] really talked ever forgot the experience … he would talk about everything and anything with varying degrees of knowledge and unvarying assurance … The food, the wine … the talk, the caprices, the wonderfully equipped brain, relaxed and yet expanded to the limit – this was a feast fit for the gods.”
Born on 15 November 1897, Bevan left school to work in the mines at the age of 14. Elected a Labour MP in 1929, he was quickly recognised as a major talent and in 1945, he became Minister of Health and Housing in Clement Attlee’s new Labour Government. Under his stewardship, over one million good quality homes were built, far more than in any comparable European country.
However, Bevan’s crowning achievement was the founding of the National Health Service (NHS). Inheriting a complex and inefficient structure of healthcare, he squared various vested interests to push through the nationalisation of the entire hospital service and stopped the sale and purchase of GPs’ practices. The National Health Service Act became law on 6 November 1946, and was fully instituted on 5 July 1948.
Jennie Lee was born in 1904 in Lochgelly in Fife, Scotland and like Bevan, came from a mining background. A compelling speaker and activist, Lee abandoned a career in teaching for politics and in 1929, at the age of 24, she was elected as an Independent Labour Party MP for North Lanarkshire, becoming the youngest woman elected up to that date. Lee lost her seat in the 1931 general election but after rejoining Labour, she won Cannock – a Midland mining constituency – in 1945, a seat she would hold until 1970.
After the 1964 general election, Lee was given general responsibility for the Arts and during her years in post the arts blossomed in Britain. Described as the “first and possibly the finest minister for the arts,” her achievements included support of the South Bank complex in London and above all, the founding of the Open University.
Bevan and Lee were married in 1934 and they remained together until Bevan died of cancer in July 1960. When Jennie Lee died in 1988, her ashes were scattered on the same Welsh hillside where Bevan’s had been strewn.
Both were exceptional politicians, brilliant orators and dedicated socialists, fighting for the underprivileged, the poor and the unemployed. The most notable element of Bevan’s legacy is undoubtedly the NHS, and many hospital wards and much local authority housing across the UK bear his name. Lee’s own most notable achievements came later in life, with her ministry of the arts and establishment of the Open University. By 1984 this was Britain’s largest university, with 100,000 students.