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Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, FRS, PC (3 January 1883–8 October 1967) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1945 to 1951. Despite his natural modesty and laconic style of speaking, he won a landslide election victory over Winston Churchill immediately after Churchill had led Britain through World War II. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve for a full Parliamentary term, and the first to have a majority in Parliament. He was the longest-serving Labour Party leader in history.

The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that an improved system of social services would be created - aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. This consensus was by and large accepted by both parties until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.

His government also presided over the decolonisation of a large part of the British Empire, in which India, Burma, Ceylon, and Pakistan obtained independence.

In 2004 he was voted as the most effective (Non-Wartime) British Prime Minister in the 20th century in a poll* of political academics organised by MORI.

Birth and Early Life

Born in Putney in London into a middle-class family, and educated at Northaw School, Haileybury and University College, Oxford, Attlee trained as a lawyer. He turned to socialism after working with slum children in the East End of London. Good works for the poor did not attract him; he did not want there to be any poor. He left the Fabian Society and joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908. Attlee became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1913, but enlisted promptly for World War I.

Early Political Career

During the war Attlee served in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, where he was badly wounded at El Hanna. He recovered back in England, and was sent to France in 1918 and served on the Western Front for the last few months of the war. By the end of the First World War he had reached the rank of major. After the war, he returned to teaching at the London School of Economics and became involved in local politics, becoming mayor of the London borough of Stepney in 1919. At the 1922 general election Atlee became the MP for the constituency of Limehouse in Stepney. He was Ramsay MacDonald's parliamentary private secretary for the brief 1922 parliament.

His first taste of ministerial office came in 1924, when he served as Under-Secretary of State for War in the short lived First Labour Government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald,

In 1926, he actively supported the General Strike, and, in 1928, reluctantly joined the Simon Commission, a royal commission on India. As a result of the time he had to devote to this, he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the Second Labour Government.

In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley attacked his own government favouring Keynesian action against unemployment, and lost. Attlee got Mosley's old job as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was Postmaster General at the time of the 1931 crisis, when most of the party's leaders lost their seats.

Opposition

In the aftermath of this electoral disaster, his calibre and experience helped him win the deputy leadership under George Lansbury.

Like MacDonald and Lansbury (who was a committed pacifist), Attlee and most Labour MPs (in concert with the Liberal Party) opposed rearmament in the interwar period, a position criticised by Churchill in The Gathering Storm. However, the rise of Hitler changed this. Attlee, and most of the Labour Party, vigorously opposed appeasement, a position that was helped when Lansbury resigned the leadership in 1935.

Attlee was appointed as an interim leader until after the general election that year. In the post election leadership contest Attlee was elected, beating both Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood, and remained leader of the party until 1955 - to date, Labour's longest-serving party leader.

Deputy Prime Minister

Attlee remained opposition leader when war broke out in 1939. The disastrous Norway campaign resulted in a vote of no confidence in the government, and it was clear that a coalition government was the only way forward. The crisis coincided with the Labour Party Conference. Even if Attlee had been prepared to serve under Chamberlain (in a national emergency, since the Nazis had just attacked in the West), he would not have been able to carry the party with him. Consequently, Labour and the Liberals entered a coalition government led by Churchill.

In the World War II coalition government, three interconnected committees ran the war. Churchill chaired the War Cabinet and the Defence Committee. Attlee was his regular deputy in these committees, and answered for the government in parliament, when Churchill was absent. Attlee chaired the third body, the Lord President's Committee, which ran the civil side of the war. As Churchill was more concerned with military matters, and expressed little interest in social issues at that time, this suited Attlee and like-minded advocates of reform.

Only he and Churchill remained in the war cabinet throughout. Attlee was Lord Privy Seal (1940-1942), Deputy Prime Minister (1942-1945), Dominions Secretary (1942-1943), and Lord President of the Council (1943-1945).

He was a loyal ally of Churchill, and helped him scotch any moves to make a peace with Hitler in the aftermath of the French capitulation.

Memoirs from this period agree that Attlee was the ideal committee chairman. It was said that under Churchill there was more fun, but a cabinet committee chaired by Attlee got more work done.

Prime Minister

The experience of war produced profound social changes within Britain, and led to a desire on the part of the population to create a better society when peace was obtained. This mood was epitomised in the reception given to the Beveridge Report. This assumed that the maintenance of full employment would be the aim of postwar governments, and that this would provide the basis for a welfare state. It is true to say that all the parties were committed to this aim, but perhaps Attlee and Labour were seen by the electorate as the people most likely to deliver these things.

The landslide 1945 Election returned Labour to power and Attlee became prime minister. In domestic policy, the party had clear aims. Attlee's first Health Secretary, Aneurin Bevan, fought against general medical disapproval, to create the British National Health Service that still survives today. Although there are often disputes about its organisation and funding, British parties must still subscribe to its general principles in order to remain electable.

Attlee's government was also responsible for the nationalisation of utilities such as coal mining, the steel industry, and the creation of British Railways. There were a variety of other reforms, including such things as the creation of a system of National Parks.

Nevertheless, the most significant problem to be faced was that of the economy. Britain was practically bankrupt. During the period of transition to a peacetime economy, while important strategic commitments remained to be fulfilled, the adverse balance of trade led to a dollar gap. This was mitigated by an American loan negotiated by John Maynard Keynes and the (reluctant) devaluation of the pound by Stafford Cripps. With hindsight, the economic recovery was rapid, but rationing and coal shortages characterised the immediate postwar years. The government was also involved in a corruption scandal. Despite this, Attlee remained personally popular with the electorate.

Whilst Attlee remained popular with the electorate, however, his relations with the Royal Family were more strained. A letter from Queen Elizabeth (George VI's wife, not the current Elizabeth II), dated May 17th 1947, shows "her decided lack of enthusiasm for the socialist government" and describes the British electorate as "poor people, so many half-educated and bemused" for electing Attlee over war hero Winston Churchill. That said, this was to be expected since, as Lord Wyatt argues, the Queen Mother was "the most right-wing member of the Royal Family." (Andrew Pierce, What Queen Mother really thought of Attlee's socialist 'heaven on earth', The Times, 13/5/06, p.9)

In foreign affairs, Attlee's cabinet was concerned with three issues: postwar Europe, the onset of the cold war, and decolonisation. The first two were closely related, and Attlee was assisted in these matters by Ernest Bevin. Attlee attended the later stages of the Potsdam Conference in the company of Truman and Stalin. His cabinet was instrumental in promoting the Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Europe. Nevertheless, he and Bevin began to distrust Soviet intentions and were instrumental in the creation of NATO. Attlee also shepherded Britain's successful development of a nuclear weapon, although the first successful test occurred in 1952, after he left office.

One of the most urgent problems was the future of the Palestine Mandate. This was a very unpopular commitment, and most people were glad when the problem was turned over to the UN for a solution, and British forces were evacuated.

Attlee's cabinet was responsible for the first, and greatest act of decolonisation in the British Empire. India became independent, along with Ceylon. The partition of India created Pakistan, which then incorporated East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The independence of Burma was also negotiated. All these new countries became British Dominions, and this is the genesis of the British Commonwealth.

The Labour Party was returned to power in the general election of 1950. The large reduction that it suffered in its parliamentary majority was mostly due to the vagaries of the first past the post voting system, plus a degree of Conservative opposition recovering support at the expense of the Liberal Party.

Labour lost the General Election of 1951 despite polling more votes than in the 1945 election, and indeed more votes than the Conservative Party. Labour had also been internally weakened by splits exacerbated by the strain of financing British involvement in the Korean War.

Return to Opposition and Retirement

Attlee led the party in opposition until 1955, when he retired from the Commons and was elevated to the peerage to take his seat in the House of Lords as Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood on 16 December 1955. He died in 1967 and the title passed to his son Martin Richard Attlee, 2nd Earl Attlee (1927 - 1991). The title is now held by Clement Attlee's grandson John Richard Attlee, 3rd Earl Attlee. The third earl (a member of the Conservative Party) retained his seat in the Lords as one of the few hereditary peers elected to the House under an amendment to the 1999 House of Lords Act.

When Attlee died his estate was sworn for probate purposes at a value of £7,295, a relatively modest sum for so prominent a figure.

Evaluation

"A modest man, who has much to be modest about." This was Churchill's comment. Attlee's modesty and quiet manner hid a great deal that has only come to light with historical reappraisal. In terms of the machinery of government, he was one of the most business like and effective of all the British prime ministers. Indeed he is widely praised by his successors, both Labour and Conservative.

His leadership style, of consensual government, acting as a chairman rather than a president, won him much praise from historians and politicians alike. Even Thatcherites confess to admiring him. Christopher Soames, a Cabinet Minister under Thatcher, remarked that "Mrs Thatcher was not really running a team. Every time you have a Prime Minister who wants to make all the decisions, it mainly leads to bad results. Attlee didn't. That's why he was so damn good." (Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945, Chapter 7, p.150)

His administration presided over the successful transition from a wartime economy to peacetime, tackling problems of demobilisation, shortages of foreign currency, and adverse deficits in trade balances and government expenditure. Perhaps his greatest achievement in domestic politics was the establishment of the National Health Service.

In foreign affairs, he did much to assist with the post-war economic recovery of Europe, though this did not lead to a realisation that this was where Britain's future might lie. He proved a loyal ally of America at the onset of the cold war. Because of his style of leadership it was not he but Ernest Bevin who masterminded foreign policy, a man of whom A. J. P. Taylor said: "he objected to ideas only when others had them". (English History, 1914-1945)

Though a socialist, Attlee still believed in the British Empire of his youth, an institution that, on the whole, he thought was a power for good in the world. Nevertheless, he saw that a large part of it needed to be self-governing. Using the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as a model, he began the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth.

His greatest achievement, surpassing many of these, was, perhaps, the establishment of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all parties subscribed to, fixing the arena of political discourse until the 1970's. Despite a severe battering, some observers might say that it remains yet.

Attlee's Cabinet 1945-1950

Changes

Attlee's Cabinet 1950-1951

February 1950: A substantial reshuffle takes place following the General Election:

Changes

  • October 1950: Hugh Gaitskell succeeds Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  • January 1951: Aneurin Bevan succeeds George Isaacs as Minister of Labour and National Service. Bevan's successor as Minister of Health is not in the cabinet. Hugh Dalton's post is renamed Minister of Local Government and Planning.
  • March 1951: Herbert Morrison succeeds Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary. Lord Addison succeeds Morrison as Lord President. Bevin succeeds Addison as Lord Privy Seal. James Chuter Ede succeeds Morrison as Leader of the House of Commons whilst remaining Home Secretary.
  • April 1951: Richard Stokes succeeds Ernest Bevin as Lord Privy Seal. Alf Robens succeeds Aneurin Bevan (resigned) as Minister of Labour and National Service. Sir Hartley Shawcross succeeds Harold Wilson (resigned) as President of the Board of Trade.

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom | Leaders of the British Labour Party | Deputy Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom | United Kingdom Postmasters General | Lord Presidents of the Council | Lords Privy Seal | Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster | British Secretaries of State | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | British MPs | Labour MPs (UK) | Councillors in Greater London | Academics of the London School of Economics | British Army officers | British World War I veterans | Former students of University College, Oxford | Members of the Order of Merit | Old Haileyburians | Earls in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | Knights of the Garter | Companions of Honour | Londoners | 1883 births | 1967 deaths

Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | קלמנט אטלי | Klementas Etlis | Clement Attlee | クレメント・アトリー | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Richard Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Clement Attlee | Атлі Клемент Ричард | کلیمنٹ ایٹلی | 克莱门特·艾德礼

 

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