Given Mr. Aneurin Bevan╒s case on the National Health Service Act and the great advantage he had of opening to-day╒s Commons debate and the rest followed inevitably ╤ a brilliant performance which sent the Labour benches wild with delight. He sat down at the end of it to one of those long, sustained cheers that parties in the House of Commons reserve for in unusual gladiatorial triumph. What could not be foreseen was whether Mr. Bevan was going to play from strength a conciliatory card.
The House was not left in doubt many minutes. Conciliation was decidedly not his line. He had decided to attack the B.M.A. without mercy. He loosed one fierce charge after another at them. According to him they were a small body of raucous-voiced politically poisoned people who completely misrepresented the medical profession as they had misrepresented the National Health Act. They were engaged in ╥a squalid political conspiracy.╙ They were ╥organising sabotage of an Act of Parliament.╙ They had always been reactionary. They resisted Lloyd George years ago. They had fallen foul of Mr. Ernest Brown and Mr. Willink just as much as they had of him (Mr. Bevan). The Labour benches cheered him furiously again and again as the invective mounted.
Mr. R. A. Butler, who followed him, remarked that Mr. Bevan╒s speech had done nothing to promote a settlement. That may be so. But whether it is to prove true or the reverse will largely depend on whether Mr. Bevan╒s obvious tactics succeed ╤ that is, to discredit the B.M.A. in the eyes of the bulk of the doctors. He seems to have risked all on that.
