My mum and Nye

VNot only did Aneurin Bevan approve of Zionism, he also approved of Jews in general — and one in particular. As teenagers, my mother, Becky Goldman and her pal Pearl Binder had run away from home in Manchester finding employment with the communist Daily Worker newspaper in London. Sometime in the late 1920s they made up a foursome with a couple of ex Welsh miners. Pearl married hers, Elwyn Jones, who became the Lord Chancellor. But Becky turned down Aneurin’s proposal because, she told me, she decided not to marry out. Instead, she returned to Manchester and married my Dad, Phill Casket. History could have been different.

Prof Joan Freeman