© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated Press
British spies monitored Nye Bevan, the much lauded architect of the National Health Service, for three decades because of his links to the Communist Party and criticism of Britain’s government in World War Two, newly released papers show.
Declassified secret documents from MI5 made public by the National Archives on Thursday reveal that Bevan’s activities in parliament, and his movements and meetings outside, were closely watched by MI5 from 1933 until his death in 1960.
MI5 had suspected that Bevan, a committed socialist and one of the most prominent parliamentary critics of Winston Churchill and his wartime coalition, was a communist sympathiser.
However, the agency’s investigations seem to have determined that there was nothing to worry about.
“What information we have on Bevan’s relations with the Communist Party since 1943 show that from time to time both the Communist Party and the Trotskyists have made attempts to get him to work with them without success,” a 1955 note said.
Bevan, who died in 1960, became health secretary after the war and is credited with founding the state-funded NHS in 1948.
While the one-time Welsh coal miner was heralded for his oratory skills, he was also seen as a highly divisive figure, not just within the Labour Party but the country as whole.
Two years after his death, a review of his MI5 case file stated: “Considering what a controversial character Nye Bevan was, the file is remarkably tame.”
The other newly material released also included MI5 files about Wolfgang zu Putlitz, a German diplomat who leaked information about Hitler’s plans to Britain, and Soviet agents and suspected operatives such as Frank Bossard who was jailed for 21 years for passing defence material to Russian spies.
King Charles, accompanied by his wife and son, will visit south Wales on Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster which killed 144 people, a tragedy which had a deep impact on his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth.
Charles, Queen Camilla and heir to the throne Prince William will lay wreaths at a memorial garden, a rare outing together for the three senior royals who often attend events separately, showing the importance attached to the disaster by the family.
After days of heavy rain in 1966, a coal tip collapsed sending a landslide into Aberfan which buried the village school and surrounding houses. Of those killed, 116 were children, mostly aged between seven and 10.
Queen Elizabeth visited eight days later and was visibly moved as she met the parents of children who had died, returning to the village on several occasions.
“I well remember my own visit with Prince Philip after the disaster and the posy I was given by a young girl which bore the heartbreaking inscription ‘from the remaining children of Aberfan’,” she said on the 50th anniversary.
Marking the 60th anniversary of the landslide on Wednesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said his thoughts were with the people of the village.
Charles, Camilla and William, will meet survivors and bereaved parents to pay tribute to those who lost their lives.
At a community centre in the village, Jeff Edwards, who as an eight-year old survived the landslide, will speak. He and Elizabeth got to know each other well over the years. She referred to him as “the little boy with the blond hair”.
Charles will also make a speech, before the trio head to the village’s new school to unveil a commemoration sculpture.
Britain on Wednesday approved the Jackdaw North Sea gas field, ending years of legal and political wrangling that had pitted the Labour government’s climate commitments against its push to bolster energy security.
Britain’s energy minister, Miatta Fahnbulleh, said the project will start to supply gas to British homes and businesses from as early as the end of this month.
At the same time, she said a new Energy Wealth Fund would be established by the government with a £2 billion downpayment to reinvest oil and gas revenues into the climate transition.
Fahnbulleh said Jackdaw was expected to increase domestic gas production by around 6% at its peak and support the country’s gas supply over its lifespan of up to 11 years, boosting energy security and protecting hundreds of jobs.
“At a time when people are really struggling, it’s right that we look in a responsible way at maximising the existing energy reserves we have in Britain that could help,” said Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
“Even on our ambitious climate path, we’ll still require oil and gas as part of our energy needs for decades to come. That’s why we’re taking a pragmatic approach to the North Sea.”
Adura, the joint venture between energy giants Shell SHEL.L and Norway’s Equinor EQNR.OL that operates the project, has said Jackdaw will produce up to 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent of natural gas per day at peak output.
The previous Conservative government approved the project in 2022, but climate activists challenged the decision in court alongside approval for the Rosebank oil and gas field. A 2025 ruling barred operators from extracting oil or gas until they received fresh government consent that takes into account emissions from the burning of the fields’ hydrocarbons.
The decision has taken on added significance for Burnham since he took office in July.
Britain’s high energy costs for households and industry have weighed on the economy, while US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Burnham to expand drilling in the North Sea to help lower prices.
At the same time, the issue has become a rallying point for climate activists, who say approving new fossil fuel projects undermines Labour’s green pledges and ignores warnings from a summer of record-breaking heat across Europe.
© Hannah McKay/Reuters
© Toby Shepheard/Reuters
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Prince Harry has said he hoped to reconcile with King Charles and the rest of his family with whom he fell out when he moved to the United States six years ago.
Harry, 42, the king’s younger son, caused a huge rupture in the British royal family when he and his wife Meghan quit royal duties and moved to California in 2020 from where they were highly critical of the institution.
He has barely spoken to his older brother, heir Prince William, for years, and his family has only recently met up again with his father. In an interview with GQ magazine, Harry, who recently relocated back to Britain with Meghan and their two children, said he wanted to patch things up.
“With everything else that’s going on in the world, the most important thing is to reconcile,” he told GQ.
He said he could understand the fascination with his family’s situation as people could relate to it.
“There’s sibling disagreements, there’s broken relationships between kids and their parents, kids and one parent,” he said.
Some people might be inspired by efforts to reconcile and this could help their own relationships.
“And some people don’t want it to work out. I want it to work out,” he added.
Harry’s spokesperson said those latter comments were not meant as a swipe at William or any other family members.
Harry, the Duke of Sussex, went on to tell GQ that while “scars stick around forever”, he wanted to encourage everybody to let go of the past.
“For me, there’s enough drama in the world and enough drama in people’s lives than to continue with issues with family,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”
In the lengthy interview, Harry also discussed themes he has previously talked about, such as the impact of losing his mother Princess Diana when he was 12 and his mental health struggles.
But he also talked about why he had returned to Britain, saying that being able to put his children in a British school “has meant a lot to me”.
“I didn’t know how important it was to me. I always thought it was going to be something that we would try and do, but now they’ve been in school for two weeks. They’re loving it and it’s just giving them a whole different experience.”
He also said he hoped that his fraught relationship with the British press, which partly led to him leaving in the first place and has led to a number of lawsuits against newspaper groups, would now be better.
“My hope is that it will change,” he said. “There have been some battles that have been fought, necessarily so. But hopefully we can all draw a line under that.
“As with everything else that’s going on in the world, there’s aspects of the past that I’m sure all of us, me, my family, some of the British press, that we’d all like to leave behind us and work for the greater good.”
© Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
The prime minister tells MPs the next summit with the EU will be held on 20 November
Burnham to urge MPs to embrace closer ties with EU
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.
He said:
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.
And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.
I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.
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© Photograph: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA
© Photograph: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA
© Photograph: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA
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