MI5 MONITORED NHS FOUNDER NYE BEVAN FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS

MI5 monitored Aneurin “Nye” Bevan for more than 20 years, according to files released to the National Archives. The security service opened a file on Bevan in 1933, when he was a backbench Labour MP for Ebbw Vale. It continued to gather information after he became health minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war government and led the creation of the NHS. In 1949, MI5 director general Sir Percy Sillitoe went to see Attlee at No 10 over Bevan’s association with a man convicted of spying for Russia.

The file includes an account of an anti-Nazi rally in Montreal that Bevan addressed in 1934. In a 1943 summary, MI5 officer Roger Hollis said Bevan had been “in close touch” with Communist Party of Great Britain general secretary Harry Pollitt in 1933. MI5 later focused on Bevan’s friendship with Wilfred Macartney, who had been convicted of spying for Russia in 1928. Recordings of conversations suggested Macartney passed information obtained from Bevan to Pollitt, according to the files.

Sillitoe took the evidence to Attlee in May 1949. Attlee dismissed Macartney’s claims as a “tissue of lies”. Within MI5, an officer had questioned the service’s interest in Bevan in 1943, noting that he frequently made the same remarks in Parliament. The files contain no indication that MI5 tapped Bevan’s phone or intercepted his mail. Reviewing the file after Bevan’s death in 1960, another officer wrote: “Considering what a controversial character Nye Bevan was, the file is remarkably tame.”