At the same time that Anthony Eden made Britain's commitment toward German sovereignty and rearmament, Britain's most reckless statesman made a last-ditch effort to exploit the fears and emotions aroused by that issue. Aneurin Bevan did not conceal his purpose: to wrest the Labor Party's leadership from the temperate hands of Clement Attlee.
His arena was the seaside town of Scarborough, where delegates sharing among them the proxies for more than 6,000,000 members of the Labor Party gathered for their annual conference. Nye Bevan's followers were loud and vociferous; only two weeks before, at the Trades Union Congress, they had come close to carrying the day on the German issue. At Scarborough, they expected to be stronger, felt they had Clem Attlee hanging by a thread.
On the platform, Attlee glided into the battle calmly, like a confident parson addressing his flock. The party executive had approved German rearmament only with "serious misgivings," said he, but "I know from experience that you do not get a response from Russia by conciliation." Behind him. Bevan glowered shaggily. Up hopped little, beady-eyed R. W. Casasola, head of the foundry workers, to make the Bevanites' move—a resolution to reverse the Labor executive's position and condemn any sort of German rearmament. Shouted Casasola: "Give the Germans arms, and you are on the sure road to World War III." As speaker after speaker echoed the cry, Bevan beamed and nodded his leonine head in approval. But he could not speak—as a member of the executive, he was barred from speaking against an executive-approved motion.
"Shame, Shame!" Then young (33) Laborite M. P. Desmond Donnelly rose dramatically. Donnelly had been a faithful Bevanite and opponent of German arms. But he had just returned from a trip through Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, Donnelly told the delegates. What he had seen convinced him, "sadly but definitely," that German rearmament was necessary. Said Donnelly: "If every plan for controlled German rearmament is rejected, we shall find ourselves with no controls—but with the arms." Bevanites began to boo. Shouting above the swelling uproar, Donnelly suddenly pointed an accusing finger at Bevan and cried: "Some people will bear a heavy responsibility before history for their folly." Bevan sat flushed and angry.
"Shame, shame!" bellowed outraged Bevanites. "Withdraw! Let Nye reply!" Burly Arthur Deakin, chief of the Transport and General Workers Union and Bevan's frequent antagonist, lumbered to his feet to demand that Donnelly be allowed to continue. Bevan's pent-up anger and frustration burst. "Shut up," he hissed savagely at Deakin. "Shut up yourself!" yelled Deakin. "You big bully!" cried Bevan. "You're afraid of him," snapped Deakin. "Bully yourself!"—accompanying this last thrust by what one newspaper called "a gesture not usually used in polite society."