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During the early years of the Great Depression he criticized Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government (1929-31) for failing to enact radical measures to relieve unemployment, and he refused to support MacDonald's national coalition ministry (1931-35).
 Through the 1930s he advocated British rearmament and a firm foreign policy to counteract the growing threat of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In May 1940, when Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition government, Bevin was appointed minister of Labour and National Service and was included in the War Cabinet. When Clement Attlee formed his government on July 26, 1945, he chose Bevin as his Foreign Secretary. Quickly losing his optimism about the Soviet Union, he argued against recognition of new Soviet-sponsored governments in the Balkans. To facilitate the economic and defensive rebuilding of western Europe, which was then the main theatre of the Cold War, he helped establish the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in April 1948 and signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington April 1949. On 6 January 1950, the United Kingdom offered recognition to the People's Republic of China, contrary to United States policy. Before ill health forced his resignation on his 70th birthday, March 9, 1951, Bevin initiated the Colombo Plan for economic development of South and Southeast Asia. For the last five weeks of his life he was lord privy seal.
He died on April 14, 1951, having been one of the most powerful British union leaders in the first half of the 20th century. He had proved to be a forceful minister during World War II and an effective foreign secretary in the immediate postwar period.
In April this year the Devon History Society has mounted a plaque at Lee Mount in Copplestone.
 When King George VI asked Bevin where he had gained his knowledge, he replied 'from the hedgerows of experience'. He is almost certainly the only Cabinet Minister ever to have lived in the village of Copplestone.
Roger Steer
First published in Devon Life, July 2002
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