Bevin left school at 11 and went to work as a labourer. He was an orphan at 12, a union leader at 25, the founder of the TGWU at 41, a leading member of the wartime coalition headed by Winston Churchill at 59 (he served with distinction as Minister of Labour), Foreign Secretary in the Atlee government at the age of 64. He died in 1951.
When appointed to Churchill's government he was not actually an MP, but a vacancy was found for him and he was elected unopposesd to the constituency of Wandsworth Central. Years later the naming of Ernest Bevin School in Tooting (where I taught science in the early 1980s) commemorated his links with that part of London.
Bevin was renowned for his championship of working people, for his patriotism, and for his courtesy and respect towards all people. His biographer, Mark Stephens, believes one of the influences that most shaped Bevin were his deep Christian convictions.
At the age of 19 he was baptised by immersion in the Bristol baptist church where he was involved in visiting the sick, helping to run the Sunday school, distributing tracts and speaking at open air meetings.
As a 26 year old man Bevin wrote in his Bible: 'This evening Sept 18th 1907 I have resolved By the Grace of God to serve him where ever he may call me, may God keep me and guard me until he shall call me home.'His daughter recalls that the Bible in which he inscribed these words was kept by his bedside throughout his life and he read from it every night.
Was that the secret of Bevin's success - this unskilled labourer who became a world statesman?
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