Manny Shinwell leaving Britain to freeze and close down. He became unpopular with the public and was sacked in October 1947. He then served as Secretary of State for War and then as Minister of Defence in 1950-51. The high defence spending which he demanded, partly to pay for Britain's involvement in the Korean War, was a major factor causing Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell to impose NHS charges, prompting the resignation of Aneurin Bevan from the Cabinet. After Labour's defeat in 1951, Shinwell continued to serve in the Shadow Cabinet in Opposition until he stepped down in 1955. Thereafter he
Manny Shinwell Seaham Harbour, County Durham (later renamed Easington after boundary changes in the late 1940s). He campaigned vigorously, along with left-wingers such as Aneurin Bevan, for Britain to support the Popular Front government in Spain against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. On 4 April 1938, during a heated House of Commons debate in which he had been criticising the government's foreign policy, he struck Conservative MP Commander Robert Tatton Bower in the face- causing internal bleeding and a burst eardrum- after Bower told him to "go back to Poland!". Shinwell said he had taken this to be an anti-semitic remark.