Editing Hugh Gaitskell (section)

=== Analysis ===
[[Edmund Dell]] argues that neither Bevan nor Gaitskell emerge with much credit from the affair. "Gaitskell was obsessed by Bevan and by the need to establish his authority over him". Charges on false teeth and spectacles were "insignificant" in the context of the greater budget and "financially were neither here nor there" ... but Bevan was "impatient and arrogant and noisy and apparently intent on exhausting the tolerance of his cabinet colleagues". Gaitskell agreed to limit health charges to three years (subject to Parliament voting to extend them), made concessions on pensions to the Trade Union Group of MPs, and a diary entry suggests he was not happy about dividend constraints – yet he was not prepared to make significant concessions to Bevan. However, Dell argues that all chancellors have to make sticking points or they would have to give in to everybody. Gaitskell saw himself as defending the country and wanted to prove Labour a "responsible party of government", but the public were not yet aware of the looming inflation problem. Gaitskell told [[George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown]] in 1960: "It was a battle between us for power – he knew it and so did I".<ref>Dell 1997, p.148, 155-7</ref>

[[John Campbell (biographer)|John Campbell]] agrees that Bevan may have been partly right that Gaitskell, abetted by Morrison, was deliberately trying to drive him out of the Cabinet. Gaitskell believed that Labour had to be seen to govern with fiscal responsibility, telling Dalton on 4 May 1951 that he and Bevan were engaged in a battle for the soul of the Labour Party, and that if Bevan won Labour would be out for many years (although, ironically, Gaitskell won but they were out of power for many years anyway). Had Attlee not been sick, he might have been able to patch up a compromise.<ref>Campbell 2010, p213-5</ref>

Historian [[Brian Brivati]] believes that the importance of the charges was "irrelevant" to the huge cost of rearmament, which damaged Britain's recovery in the years which followed by absorbing earnings from exports.<ref>Matthew 2004, p.288-9</ref>