MI5 file on Nye Bevan remained open until 1975

Newly released MI5 files show the security service opened a personal file on Labour politician Aneurin “Nye” Bevan in 1933 and did not close it until 1975, 15 years after his death. The records document years of attention to Bevan, who later became health minister and helped establish the National Health Service, while also recording doubts inside MI5 about whether his activities warranted its involvement. An officer wrote in 1943 that Bevan’s activities were not a matter for the Security Service because he made similar remarks openly in Parliament. The released papers do not indicate that MI5 tapped his telephone or intercepted his mail. They describe reports on his political associations and meetings, but the file’s long administrative lifespan does not by itself establish how long active monitoring continued. MI5 first took an interest in Bevan, then a backbench MP for Ebbw Vale, amid concerns about his links to Communist Party figures. A report on an anti-Nazi rally Bevan addressed in Montreal in 1934 characterized his speech as serving the Communist cause. In a 1943 summary, future MI5 director general Roger Hollis wrote that Bevan had been in close contact with Communist...