LAURENCE REES: And the single best decision in the war?

JULIET GARDINER: In an odd way again I’m going to stick with the home front and I think one of the best decisions of the war was to bring Ernie Bevin into the cabinet. It was one of Churchill’s most imaginative appointments, it’s not an obvious one and he had absolutely no political experience. He was the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union but he turned out to be a titan, an outstandingly good figure. He was a very wise man, he went along with voluntarism; never forgot that he was a union leader. As I said to you before, 70 percent of the population were working class people, and what was really needed in the war on the home front was to raise production. Ernie Bevin knew that if you didn’t have the co-operation of the workers, and you didn’t have the co-operation of the unions it would have been a disaster, and Ernie Bevin managed to do this.

He never forgot that there was a long term, you’d pull people in and you’d have to push them hard and in the end have to drop voluntarism, you’ll have to direct people in conscription, but you’d never forget that at the end of the war they’ve got to have a better deal. They had to have better working conditions, they had to have better social conditions, and I think that was one of the really inspired decisions of the war.