AHC: Make Aneurin Bevan a Tory

OTL Quote:

Aneurin Bevan said:
That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.

You read the title correctly, try to make him a Tory
 
OTL Quote:



You read the title correctly, try to make him a Tory

Nye Bevan. A Tory?
(Door closes. Hysterical laughter can be heard faintly, a long, long, way away. Door opens again.)
No. That would need fundamental and massive changes to Welsh political history. Now, a Liberal, say if the Liberal Party never collapses the way that it did in 1923-29, that's a different matter.
But a Tory? That would need a hell of a POD, possibly the kind that doesn't make him Nye Bevan at all.
 
You read the title correctly, try to make him a Tory

What Cymraeg said. But - forgive me for asking - why? Bevan wasn't a maverick swimming against the tide, like Sanders or Corbyn. He came from a place where dyed-in-the-wool socialism was a way of life. There isn't much of Bevan as we know him if you take away his socialism, and a working-class Tory from South Wales is not exactly going to have many career options in the Conservative Party of that era. So what purpose does this serve, beyond 'lol irony'? It's like me asking 'WI George Bush was a socialist'.

That was a rather vehement response; lest this post degenerate entirely into excretus ex altitudina, it would be eminently possible to have Bevan give much the same quote but have it refer to the Labour Party instead. That opens up a whole can of possibilities: a split between Bevan and the Labour Party, in which the latter has moved much more to the right and abandoned socialism; or a TL in which Bevan has become, for whatever reason, disillusioned with socialism; or something else entirely. It has a lot of the same connotations as your original post, but doesn't require Bevan to essentially be eradicated and replaced with someone else entirely, just with the same name, for it to happen.
 
Somehow, Labour membets get the nickname "Tory".
Easy enough; 'Tory' originates from an Irish word for peasants dispossessed by English settlers and forced to live as outlaws. IOTL it came to be applied to supporters of the Catholic King James II (in opposition to the Whigs, themselves named for Scottish cattle drivers) and hence to loyalists of the crown; the Conservatives arose from a faction of the Tory party after its' demise in the 1830s. Ironically, the Conservative party actually came to English landowners, including those in Ireland - the antithesis of the original Tories.

If you can avoid that association, it's just conceivable that someone decides that since the Labour party is either interested in
  • The poor dispossessed working class taking its' due from those who deprived it of the benefits of its' labour, or
  • The unsuccessful and unscrupulous stealing the income of those who rightfully earned it
and therefore the original Irish Tories are a good nickname, either as a badge of honour or pejoratively. It's a long string of consequences, but might just be possible.

For what little it's worth, calling the Conservative Party 'Tories' is about as accurate as calling the Labour Party 'Chartists' or 'Luddites', or the Liberal Democrats 'Whigs' or 'Radicals'.
 
Some sort of severe, personality shifting, brain injury?

Note: I'm not suggesting that conservatism requires brain damage but it's the only way (short of alien/time travel mind control) to shift his personality that much.
 
Nye Bevan. A Tory?
(Door closes. Hysterical laughter can be heard faintly, a long, long, way away. Door opens again.)
No. That would need fundamental and massive changes to Welsh political history. Now, a Liberal, say if the Liberal Party never collapses the way that it did in 1923-29, that's a different matter.
But a Tory? That would need a hell of a POD, possibly the kind that doesn't make him Nye Bevan at all.
His father had been a Liberal, maybe if he hadn't changed his son might have followed him? That'd require a surviving Liberal party though.
 
Have him make such a major gaffe that someone makes a Manchurian Candidate-esque statement that he couldn't do more damage to his party unless he was a Tory?
 
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