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Clement Attlee

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The Rt Hon. Clement Attlee
Image:Clement Attlee.PNG

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In office
27 July 1945 – 26 October 1951
Deputy Herbert Morrison
Preceded by Winston Churchill
Succeeded by Sir Winston Churchill
Born 3 January 1883
Putney, London
Died 8 October 1967
London
Political party Labour

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. The Labour Party under Attlee 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 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 a greatly enlarged 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 all parties [citation needed] until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in the election of 1979.

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 professors organised by MORI.<ref>[1]</ref>

Contents

[edit] 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. 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 in 1914 for World War I.

[edit] Early political career

During the World War I, 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 to serve on the Western Front for the last few months of the war. By the end of World War I, 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, Attlee 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, led by MacDonald.

In 1926, he actively supported the General Strike, and, in 1927, reluctantly joined the royal Simon Commission, set up to examine the possibility for granting self-rule to India. As a result of the time needed to devote to the commission he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the Second Labour Government.

In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem. Attlee was given Mosley's post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was Postmaster General at the time of the 1931 crisis, during which most of the party's leaders lost their seats.

[edit] Opposition

Attlee was given the deputy leadership under George Lansbury in the aftermath of 1931.

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 Winston Churchill in his book The Gathering Storm. However, after the rise of Adolf Hitler Attlee and most of the Labour Party would come to oppose appeasement, especially after the pacifist Lansbury's resignation 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 out both Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood, and remained leader of the party until 1955 -- to date, Labour's longest-serving party leader.

[edit] 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 [2], and it was clear that a coalition government was necessary. The crisis coincided with the Labour Party Conference. Even if Attlee had been prepared to serve under Chamberlain (in a "national emergency government"), 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 most concerned with prosecuting the war, the arrangement suited civil-minded Attlee.

Only he and Churchill remained in the war cabinet throughout World War II. Attlee was Lord Privy Seal (1940–1942), Deputy Prime Minister (1942–1945), Dominions Secretary (1942–1943), and Lord President of the Council (1943–1945). Throughout the conflict Attlee would prove to be a loyal ally of Churchill, and supported the latter in his continuation of Britain's resistance after the French capitulation in 1940.

[edit] Prime Minister

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The war set in motion profound social changes within Britain, and led to a popular desire for social reform. This mood was epitomised in the Beveridge Report. The report assumed that the maintenance of full employment would be the aim of postwar governments, and that this would provide the basis for the welfare state. All major parties were committed to this aim, but perhaps Attlee and Labour were seen by the electorate as the best candidates to follow through with their program.

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 the general disapproval of the medical establishment in creating the British National Health Service. Although there are often disputes about its organisation and funding, British parties to this day must still voice their general support for the NHS in order to remain electable.[citation needed]

Attlee's government was also responsible for the nationalisation of basic industries such as coal mining and the steel industry, and for the creation of the state-owned British Railways. Other reforms included the creation of a National Parks system.

Nevertheless, the most significant problem remained the economy; the war effort had left Britain practically bankrupt. During the period of transition to a peacetime economy, the maintaining of strategic military commitments created an imbalance of trade, and the dollar gap. This was mitigated by an American loan negotiated by John Maynard Keynes and the (reluctant) devaluation of the pound in 1949 by Stafford Cripps. With hindsight, the economic recovery was relatively rapid, yet rationing and coal shortages would continue in the postwar years. Despite an ensuing corruption scandal Attlee remained personally popular with the electorate.

Relations with the Royal Family, on the other hand, were more strained. A letter from Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), dated May 17th 1947, showed "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 [3])

In foreign affairs, Attlee's cabinet was concerned with four issues: postwar Europe, the onset of the cold war, the establishment of the United Nations, 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.

Under Attlee, the British government made immediate efforts to improve relations with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. In 1946, Attlee invited a Soviet team of scientists and engineers to the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union had expressed a desire to visit the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine factory and examine the Nene jet engine designed by Frank Whittle (on hearing the proposal from Soviet aircraft design bureau staff, Stalin is said to have replied "What fool will sell us his secrets?"). Against advice from RAF officials, arrangements were made by Sir Stafford Cripps, the far-left Labour Minister of Trade, for the Soviets to acquire details on the design and manufacture of the Nene jet engine. Attlee even approved a gift of 40 Nene engines to the Soviet Union. The Soviets promptly used the Nene jet design as a model to secretly reverse-engineer their own improved jet engine, the Klimov VK-1 (after discovery of the theft, the Soviets refused to pay license fees as well). The Klimov engine was installed in the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, an advanced jet interceptor that soon appeared over North Korea, forcing American B-29 bombers from the skies and threatening UN control of Korean airspace.<ref>Gordon, Yefim, Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-15: The Soviet Union's Long-Lived Korean War Fighter, Midland Press (2001)</ref>

Attlee's cabinet was instrumental in promoting the American Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Europe. After Stalin de facto occupied most of Eastern Europe and began to subvert other governments in the Balkans, Attlee 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.

Image:Potsdam.jpg

One of the most urgent problems concerned the future of the Palestine Mandate. This was a very unpopular commitment and the evacuation of British troops and subsequent handing over of the issue to the UN was widely supported by the public.

Attlee's cabinet was responsible for the first and greatest act of decolonisation in the British Empire -- India. The partition of India soon created Pakistan, which then incorporated East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The independence of Burma and Ceylon was also negotiated around this time. Some of the new countries became British Dominions, the genesis of the modern Commonwealth of Nations.

The Labour Party was returned to power in the general election of 1950, albeit with a much reduced majority in the first past the post voting system; it was at this time that a degree of Conservative opposition recovered at the expense of the slowly dying Liberal Party.

Labour lost the General Election of 1951 to Churchill's renewed Conservatives, despite polling more votes than in the 1945 election and indeed more votes nationwide than the Conservative Party. It should be mentioned that Labour by this time had been quite internally weakened and split over the strain of financing British involvement in the Korean War.

[edit] Return to opposition and retirement

Attlee led the party in opposition until December 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 attended Churchill's funeral in January 1965 and died on 8 October 1967. The title then passed to his son Martin Richard Attlee, 2nd Earl Attlee (1927 - 1991). It 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 hereditary peers to remain under an amendment to Labour's 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.

[edit] Legacy

"A modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about," was Churchill's comment. <ref>Walter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present, Chapter 19, p.363</ref> 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."<ref>Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945, Chapter 7, p.150</ref> Even Thatcher herself wrote in her 1995 memoirs, which charted her beginnings in Grantham to her election as Prime Minister, that she admired Attlee saying "Of Clement Attlee, however, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show".

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 and post-war Welfare State.

Image:Clement Attlee statue - Limehouse library.jpg 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 1970s. Despite a severe battering, some observers might say that it remains yet.

[edit] Attlee's cabinet 1945-1950

Arms of Clement Attlee

[edit] Changes

[edit] Attlee's cabinet 1950-1951

In February 1950, a substantial reshuffle took place following the General Election:

[edit] 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.

[edit] Trivia

  • Attlee's interests outside of politics included chess, crossword puzzles, gardening, and ball games.
  • Attlee's portrait hangs in the dining hall (also known as the Great Hall) of University College, Oxford in recognition of his services to Britain.

[edit] References

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Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by:
Sir William Pearce 		Member of Parliament for Limehouse
1922–1950 		Succeeded by:
(constituency abolished)
Preceded by:
Valentine McEntee 		Member of Parliament for Walthamstow West
1950–1956 		Succeeded by:
Edward Redhead
Political offices
Preceded by:
Sir Oswald Mosley 		Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
1930–1931 		Succeeded by:
The Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede
Preceded by:
Hastings Lees-Smith 		Postmaster General
1931 		Succeeded by:
Sir William Ormsby-Gore
Preceded by:
George Lansbury 		Leader of the British Labour Party
1935–1955 		Succeeded by:
Hugh Gaitskell
Leader of the Opposition
1935–1940 		Succeeded by:
Hastings Lees-Smith
Preceded by:
Sir Kingsley Wood 		Lord Privy Seal
1940–1942 		Succeeded by:
Sir Stafford Cripps
Preceded by:
New Office 		Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1942–1945 		Succeeded by:
Herbert Stanley Morrison
Preceded by:
Viscount Cranborne 		Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs
1942–1943 		Succeeded by:
Viscount Cranborne
Preceded by:
Sir John Anderson 		Lord President of the Council
1943–1945 		Succeeded by:
The Lord Woolton
Preceded by:
Arthur Greenwood 		Leader of the Opposition
1945 		Succeeded by:
Winston Churchill
Preceded by:
Winston Churchill 		Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1945–1951 		Succeeded by:
Winston Churchill
Minister of Defence
1945–1946 		Succeeded by:
A. V. Alexander
Preceded by:
Winston Churchill 		Leader of the Opposition
1951–1955 		Succeeded by:
Hugh Gaitskell
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by:
New Creation 		Earl Attlee
1955–1967 		Succeeded by:
Martin Attlee


Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom

<td style="vertical-align: middle; width: 1px" rowspan="2"> Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg </td>

Walpole, Wilmington, Pelham, Newcastle, Devonshire, Newcastle, Bute, G Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham (Pitt the Elder), Grafton, North, Rockingham, Shelburne, Portland, Pitt the Younger, Addington, Pitt the Younger, W Grenville, Portland, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Melbourne, Peel, Melbourne, Peel, Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, Palmerston, Derby, Palmerston, Russell, Derby, Disraeli, Gladstone, Disraeli, Gladstone, Salisbury, Gladstone, Salisbury, Gladstone, Rosebery, Salisbury, Balfour, Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair


Deputy Prime Ministers and First Secretaries of State of the United Kingdom
Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Anthony Eden, Rab Butler, George Brown, Michael Stewart, Barbara Castle, William Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, John Prescott
Leaders of the Labour Party
Keir Hardie, Arthur Henderson, George Nicoll Barnes, Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson, William Adamson, John Robert Clynes, Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Hugh Gaitskell, George Alfred Brown, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Margaret Beckett, Tony Blair
Cold War
Main events (1945–1961) Main events (1962–1991) Specific articles Primary participants and other events

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1940s:

1950s:

1960s:

1960s (continued):

1970s:

1980s:

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Concepts:

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