NHS founder Aneurin “Nye” Bevan was spied on by MI5 for more than 20 years, according to newly released files.
Papers given to the National Archives show he first came to the attention of the security service in the 1930s when he was considered a firebrand left-winger linked to prominent communists.
Monitoring continued after Bevan, from Tredegar, Blaenau Gwent, became a minister in the post-war Labour government when he drove through the creation of the NHS in the face of opposition from doctors.
At one stage the then MI5 director general became so concerned about his links to a Russian spy that he went to see Prime Minister Clement Attlee in No 10 to warn him.
But some in the service questioned why it was taking an interest in him, given everything he did was in the open.
After his death in 1960, one MI5 officer called the content of the file “remarkably tame”.
The papers show MI5 first opened a file on Bevan when he was backbench Labour MP for Ebbw Vale in 1933.
One of the first reports included an account of an anti-Nazi rally in Montreal, Canada, which Bevan addressed in 1934.
“Bevan has inherited the evangelical fervour of his Welsh forebears and knows how to use it in the Communist cause,” it said.
In 1943, Roger Hollis, future director general, summarised what they knew of Bevan’s activities.
In 1933 he said the MP had been “in close touch” with Communist Party of Great Britain general secretary Harry Pollitt and party members who backed his plan to organise “workers’ freedom groups” to defend against “capitalists”.
Although there was nothing in the files to indicate MI5 tapped his phone or intercepted his mail, some wondered why they were watching him at all.
