| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Aneurin Bevan's 'In Place of Fear' is indeed , as it's back cover claims , as relevant today as it was when it was written in the early 1950s. Atlee's great reforming postwar Labour government , in which Bevan held a key cabinet post , lost power to Churchill's Conservatives , despite outpolling Churchill , and getting more votes than they had got in 1945. Bevan's key theme in this book is the necessity of organised political parties to bring about the alleviation of poverty and unemployment worldwide. He shows how 19th and early 20th century attempts by trade unions to gain reform by direct industrial action failed - because they did not have the political legitimacy that a democratic political party has in a political system where elected governments are the only acceptable rulers. Just like the late John Smith , leader of the British Labour party until his death in 1994 , Bevan believed that Democracy and Socialism (not Communism) go hand in hand. The unrestrained free-market , by taking away employment , income and housing from a small but constantly growing proportion of the population undermines democracy. What is the use of the right to vote if you are starving ? This is expressed most eloquently in his claim that 'Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the " greatest good of the greatest number " can excuse indifference to individual suffering'. Rather than an economy based on the attempt to frighten people into working harder by allowing many to fall into unemployment , poverty and homelessness pour les encouragement des outres , Bevan proposes that government provide for the basic needs of all through a comprehensive welfare system , motivating ourselves and others to achieve greater feats by a culture of mutual support and encouragement led by government action. The governments of the world must also co-operate to prevent the anarchy , instability and insecurity inherent in a purely free-market system. This is what the great architect of the British National Health Service proposed in place of the fear and insecurity produced by government non-interventionism and the resulting mass unemployment which took place between the wars and led to the rise to power of the Communists and Fascists - and so to the Second World War. Just as the British National Health Service which Bevan founded still survives and cares for it's patients , so also in the aftermath of the Cold War this book has much to say that is still relevant today if we wish to create a fairer world and avoid the rise of new Hitlers and Stalins.
1 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Some cracking one liners that are still pertinent today. I little on the rambling side though.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
