Manny Shinwell junior minister) for his lack of zeal about further nationalisation. Shinwell was demoted to Secretary of State for War (Minister for the Army, but no longer a full member of the Cabinet) a position which he held until 1950. He was a vigorous War Minister, who got on well with the Army and was seen as jingoistic. In November 1947 a report from MI5 alleged that Shinwell had passed secret information to a man named "Stanley", who had passed it on to Zionist paramilitary group, the Irgun. Shinwell knew self-styled "contact man" Sidney Stanley, whom he had approached for help
Manny Shinwell 1931, and held junior office in the minority Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31. He returned to the House of Commons in 1935, defeating his former leader Ramsay MacDonald, who by that time had been expelled from the Labour Party. During the Second World War he was a leading backbench critic of the Coalition Government. Shinwell is best remembered as the Minister of Fuel and Power in Clement Attlee's Cabinet who nationalised coal mining in 1946. He was in charge of Britain's coal supply during the extremely harsh winter of January to March 1947, during which the supply system collapsed,