Later Life
His health failing, Bevin reluctantly allowed himself to be moved to become Lord Privy Seal in March 1951. 'I am neither a Lord, nor a Privy, nor a Seal', he is said to have commented. He died the following month, still holding the key to his red box. His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.
When, on Stafford Cripps's death in 1952, Attlee (by this time Leader of the Opposition) was invited to broadcast a tribute by the BBC, he was looked after by announcer Frank Phillips. After the broadcast, Phillips took Attlee to the hospitality room for a drink and in order to make conversation said:
‘I suppose you will miss Sir Stafford, sir’.
Attlee fixed him with his eye: ’Did you know Ernie Bevin?'
‘I have met him, sir,’ Phillips replied.
‘There’s the man I miss’.
A statue commemorating Bevin stands opposite Devon Mansions and the former St Olave's Grammar School in Tooley Street, South London.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Bevin
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject.”
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Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
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