Minister of Labor Aneurin Bevan blustered at a Labor meeting early this month: "I will never be a member of a government which makes charges on the National Health Service for the patient." The words were aimed at Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell, who proposed to tamper with Bevan's onetime baby—the free dentures, spectacles and other medical services which last year cost the Treasury a whopping $1.1 billion.
Last week, among Labor leaders crowding the government's front bench to support the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his budget address, Bevan was conspicuously absent. Gaitskell had won Prime Minister Clement Attlee...
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