Born March 9, 1881, and orphaned at age 8, Bevin left school at 11, taking a series of odd jobs to support himself. He became involved in labor rights, first as the unpaid secretary of the Bristol Right to Work Committee (1905), then formed a branch of the Docker's Union in Bristol (1910). He continued to rise through the union, and in 1921 he merged 45 unions into the Transport and General Workers' Union. Bevin has been called the "architect of modern trade unions."

During World War I, Bevin sat on many government committees organizing transport workers for the war. During World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked him to join the war cabinet as minister of labor to organize the country's manpower (1940). His immense experience and reputation enabled him to obtain voluntary waivers of normal safeguards from unions to assist the war effort and, after the war, ensure smooth demobilization. In July 1945, he became Prime Minister Clement Attlee's foreign minister and went with Attlee to the Allies' final conference at Potsdam (July 17-August 2, 1945).

Bevin favored close Western cooperation economically, socially and militarily. He believed the large-scale economic decline of Europe was a "looming social catastrophe" and compared U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall's announcement of support for Europe in his June 5, 1947, Harvard commencement speech to "a lifeline to sinking men." After the speech he moved quickly to coordinate a Western European response and was instrumental in the implementation of the Marshall Plan. Militarily he worked for Western European and transatlantic military cooperation: negotiating the Brussels Pact (March 17, 1948) and helping secure American commitment to European security that resulted in the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty (April 4, 1949) in Washington, D.C. (NATO). He played a key role in the development of Western containment strategy toward the U.S.S.R.

Under his tenure, Britain, however, also recognized the communist People's Republic of China (January 6, 1950). He resigned March 10, 1950, was appointed Lord Privy Seal in Attlee's government and died April 14, 1951, at home of a heart attack at age 70.