5 MAY 1967, Page 28

The big man

Sir: Someone must protest at the eulogising of Ernest Bevin, which has reached disgusting proportions in reviews of the second volume of Mr Bullock's biography. Mr Desmond Donnelly's review (21 April) is a particularly unpleasant example of this toadying to the dead.

No really great man, no man with the capacity of greatness, could have behaved as Bevin did to George Lansbury—a man whose integrity and devotion to the welfare of the people of England puts Bevin's swollen figure in the shade. Lansbury had to go—Bevin had to lead the movement to remove him; it is the meanness and spite which he showed on that occasion which make it jm- possible for one to regard him as anything but essentially a 'little' man.