ABSTRACT
Ernest Bevin was probably the greatest British trade union leader of the twentieth century. He was also a prominent member of the Trades Union Congress at the time of the General Strike in 1926 and an influential figure in the reshaping of Labour Party policy during the 1930s. Yet his greatest claim to fame is that he was Minister of Labour between 1940 and 1945, overseeing the organization of labour resources in Winston Churchill’s wartime government, and was Foreign Secretary in Clement Attlee’s Labour governments of 1945-50. It was in this last role that he was instrumental in forcing through the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, thus helping to shape international politics for the next fifty years.
