On his return to South Wales he struggled to find work, remaining unemployed for nearly three years before gaining employment as a union official, which led to him becoming a leading figure in the 1926 general strike.

Despite resistance from opposition parties and the British Medical Association, the National Health Service Act 1946 was passed and launched in 1948, nationalising more than 2,500 hospitals within the United Kingdom.

David Bevan was born in Tredegar but his family had originally hailed from Carmarthenshire, and he followed his own father into the mines, starting work at 5:30am each day and returning home late in the evening.

[8][9] He and his brother Billy did eventually leave Ty-Tryst and worked at the Bedwellty pit, but were forced to move again after a disagreement with the site's deputy manager over Bevan reporting information to the miner's inspector.

Bevan was largely responsible for the distribution of strike pay in Tredegar and the formation of the Council of Action, an organisation that helped to raise money and provide food for the miners.

[19] With his success in 1928, he was picked as the Labour Party candidate for Ebbw Vale (displacing the sitting MP Evan Davies),[20] and easily held the seat at the 1929 General Election.

[38]By March 1938, Bevan was writing in Tribune that Churchill's warnings about German intentions for Czechoslovakia were "a diapason of majestic harmony" compared to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "thin, listless trickle".

[41] The Military Training Act 1939 reintroduced conscription six months later, and Bevan joined the rest of the Labour Party in opposing it, calling it "the complete abandonment of any hope of a successful struggle against the weight of wealth in Great Britain".

Bevan opposed the heavy censorship imposed on radio and newspapers and wartime Defence Regulation 18B, which gave the Home Secretary the powers to intern citizens.

[47] His fierce opposition made him unpopular with some portions of the public at the time; his wife later described how the couple would frequently receive parcels filled with excrement at their home.

Thus, the responsibility for instituting a new and comprehensive National Health Service, as well as tackling the country's severe post-war housing shortage, was given to Bevan, the youngest member of Attlee's Cabinet in his first ministerial position at the age of 47.

[22] Although described in The Times as "an outstanding back-bench critic" and "one of (Labour's) most brilliant members in debate", his appointment was regarded as a relative surprise, given his previous disciplinary issues.

[60] He earned a rebuke from Attlee, but Bevan contended that his Welsh mining constituency did not send him to Parliament to "dress up", and he declined to wear formal attire at further Buckingham Palace functions.

[48] The collective principle asserts that ... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.On the "appointed day", 5 July 1948, Bevan's National Health Service Act 1946 came into force.

After eighteen months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, including allowing consultants to keep their own private practices and continuing to allow doctors to be paid in capitation fees rather than salaries,[67] but without compromising the fundamental principles of his National Health Service proposals.

At a dinner in late 1955 or early 1956 to celebrate the publication of the Guillebaud Report into NHS costs Bevan remarked to Julian Tudor Hart "ultimately I had to stuff their mouths with gold" about his handling of the consultants.

The former aimed to provide a uniform standard of consultant led care and expertise throughout the country and to replace the patchwork of voluntary and municipal hospitals which existed at that point.

In its early stages this proved true, as the service went vastly over budget in its inaugural year, and Attlee was forced to make a radio address to the nation in an attempt to limit the strain on the system.

[73]Substantial bombing damage, with over 700,000 homes needing repair in London alone,[75] and the continued existence of pre-war slums in many parts of the country made the task of housing reform particularly challenging for Bevan.

Bevan was also limited due to his desire for new homes to be bigger and of better quality than the ones they were being built to replace, based on the recommendations of a 1943 report by the Dudley Committee, and a shortage of skilled workers to undertake the work.

These numbers were reached by lowering the quality standards originally put forward by Bevan, with council houses featuring gardens being largely dropped in favour of tower blocks and flats.

Labour Party deputy leader Herbert Morrison complained that Bevan's attack had backfired, for his words "did much more to make the Tories work and vote ... than Conservative Central Office could have done".

[87] However, three months after his appointment, Hugh Gaitskell introduced a proposal of prescription charges for dental care and spectacles—created to save a potential £25m to meet the financial demands imposed by the Korean War.

[97] In the opening page of the book, Bevan begins: "A young miner in a South Wales colliery, my concern was with the one practical question: Where does power lie in this particular state of Great Britain, and how can it be attained by the workers?

They criticised the right-wing "Gaitskellites" high defence expenditure (especially for nuclear weapons), called for better relations with the Soviet Union, and opposed the party leader, Clement Attlee, on most issues.

[101] In April 1954, Bevan resigned from the Shadow Cabinet, having been rebuked by Attlee after accusing the Labour leader of surrendering to American pressure over a proposed multi-national defence organisation in Asia and the Pacific.

[103] In March 1955, when Britain was preparing for Operation Grapple, the testing of its first hydrogen bomb, Bevan led a revolt of 57 Labour MPs and abstained on a key vote.

[120] He checked into the Royal Free Hospital in London on 27 December 1959 to undergo surgery for an ulcer, but malignant stomach cancer was discovered instead in a major operation two days later.

[12] Sheen portrayed Bevan in Tim Price's play Nye at the National Theatre in London from March until May 2024 [140] and at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff from May until June 2024.

[citation needed] Excerpts from Bevan's speeches are included in Greg Rosen's book Old Labour to New : the dreams that inspired, the battles that divided (published by Methuen in 2005 (ISBN 978-1-84275-045-2)).