MI5 spied on NHS founder Nye Bevan for more than 20 years, newly released files say
MI5, the UK's domestic security service, spied on Aneurin "Nye" Bevan for more than 20 years, according to newly released files. Bevan was the Labour politician who drove through the creation of the NHS, the health service.
Papers documenting MI5's monitoring of Bevan have been given to the National Archives, which holds government records. The Times reported that MI5 gathered hundreds of documents about him, according to the same release. The files contain nothing to suggest that MI5 tapped his phone or intercepted his post.
MI5 first opened a file on Bevan in 1933, when he was a backbench Labour MP (one who did not hold government office) for Ebbw Vale. He was from Tredegar, in Blaenau Gwent. In the 1930s he came to the service's attention as a fiery left-winger with links to prominent communists. In 1934 he addressed an anti-Nazi rally in Montreal, Canada.
In 1943 Roger Hollis, who later became MI5's director general, summarised what the service knew of Bevan's activities. The monitoring continued after Bevan became a minister in the post-war Labour government.
In May 1949 MI5's chief, Sir Percy Sillitoe, took evidence about Bevan to Prime Minister Clement Attlee at No 10 Downing Street. The concern centred on Bevan's friendship with Wilfred Macartney, who had been convicted of spying for Russia in 1928. Attlee dismissed Macartney's claims about Bevan as a "tissue of lies", but agreed to warn Bevan about Macartney.
In 1954 Bevan was invited to meet the Soviet ambassador, Yakov Malik, at London's Polish embassy.
MI5 did not close its file on Bevan until 1975, 15 years after he died in 1960. Shortly after his death, one MI5 officer described the content of the file as "remarkably tame".
