Winston Churchill, looking for big men for the big job of boosting Great Britain's war-industries output, picked shovel-blunt, beefy Ernest Bevin to be his Minister of Labor. Ever since he had fought Bevin during the General Strike of 1936, it had been plain to Churchill that the strongest man in the British Labor movement was this publicity-shy union official who preferred not to sit in Parliament but wielded enough power to make Laborite Leaders Attlee, Greenwood and Dalton jump when he yanked strings.
"Ernie" Bevin was a callow carter's apprentice at Bristol when famed Ben Tillett, hero of the Dockers' Strike of...