MI5 Tracked NHS Founder Bevan for 27 Years

Newly released MI5 files show the service opened a personal file on Labour politician Nye Bevan in 1933 and monitored him until his death in 1960. Bevan later served as health minister and founded the NHS. In May 1949 director general Percy Sillitoe warned Prime Minister Clement Attlee about Bevan's ties to Wilfred Macartney, convicted of spying for Russia in 1928. Attlee agreed to warn Bevan in general terms without alluding to the conversation. A 1955 note stated that Communist Party and Trotskyist efforts since 1943 to work with Bevan had not succeeded. A 1943 officer note said Bevan's activities were not a security-service matter because he made the same remarks in Parliament. A 1954 lunch with Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik went off very badly. A 1962 review called the file remarkably tame. The file closed in 1975. Outlets differ on duration: Financial Times says 27 years; Mirror and Mail say more than 20 years; Reuters says three decades. Left-rated coverage centers the NHS-founder frame and internal doubts about the watch. Right-rated coverage centers suspected Soviet sympathies and the 1961 Labour request for help against communist MPs.