"We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs," Labour's then foreign secretary Ernest Bevin reportedly said in the 1940s, and "we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it".

Lammy opened his speech in the Locarno room by praising Ernest Bevin, Labour’s post-war foreign secretary and co-architect, with Clement Attlee, of Nato and the British nuclear deterrent.

The ashes of trade unionist Ernest Bevin were buried in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey on 8th June 1951. The address was given by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. A memorial service ...