"He had a characteristic not common among politicians and perhaps especially unusual in the self-taught man: he was never satisfied with a debating argument or a particular train of reasoning unless he could relate it to some general principle and inform his contentions with the light which that general principle shed. For a series of years I took part in housing debates where Bevan intervened, and at times I broke a pygmy lance or two against his shield. ... The same thing was to be noticed in all Bevan's interventions: a subject had to be large, it had to have large bearings, it had (if necessary) to be given large bearings, before he could interest himself in it and feel at home with it."
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomHumanistsAtheistsLabour Party (UK) politiciansDemocratic socialists
Original Language: English
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Sources
Enoch Powell, obituary broadcast for the BBC's Overseas Service (c. July 1960), quoted in Andrew Roth, Enoch Powell: Tory Tribune (1970), p. 132
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
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Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan (15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician who is best known for overseeing the creation of the National Health Service in the Labour government after World War II. Bevan, a left-winger, was intermittently in trouble with the Labour leadership; in the 1950s he astonished his supporters by opposing unilateral nuclear disarmament. He overcame a speech impediment and was regarded as one of the most eloquent public speakers of his day.
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