Labour’s Persistent Rebels: the cases of Nye Bevan & Michael Foot. A history of expulsion & losing the Whip
Keir Starmer has suspended four Labour MPs for being ‘persistent rebels.
Labour PMs in recent times don’t tend to have much sense of the history of their own party but the cases of two of the best known figures from the left suggest that persistent rebels have been essential to the Labour Party.
Nye Bevan was expelled from the Labour Party between March 1939 and November 1939 for supporting, in effect, a popular front of the left including the Communist Party against fascism. During the war Bevan led opposition to the Wartime Coalition earning praise from Churchill who called him a ‘squalid nuisance’.
Out of Office again after the 1951 Election, Bevan led the Labour left- the Bevanites. In March 1955 he led 57 MPs to abstain on the testing of a hydrogen bomb. Labour MPs voted 141-113 to suspend the whip although it was restored after a month.
After Bevan’s death Michael Foot became the MP for his Welsh Constituency. He lost the Whip in March 1961 for opposing AirForce estimates. It was not restored until Harold Wilson became leader in 1963.
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