Clement Attlee - 1883 – 1967
July 2018
Clement (“Clem”) Attlee was Prime Minister through the Post-War Labour Government in what many see as the most challenging and engaging Labour Government ever to come to power. During his premiership, the coal, steel and gas industries were nationalised as well as the Bank of England, a massive house re-building project was undertaken and, jewel in Labour’s crown, the National Health Service was introduced.
Attlee was born in Putney in 1883 and educated at Haileybury and University College, Oxford. He became a barrister in 1906. While doing voluntary work at a boys’ club in Stepney, he developed an interest in social problems and read the socialist works of William Morris and John Ruskin. In 1913 Attlee became a tutor at the London School of Economics (LSE). In 1914 he joined the British army and served in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia where he was badly wounded at El Hanna. After recovering back in England Attlee was sent to France in 1918 and served on the Western Front for the last few months of the World War I. By the end of the war Attlee had reached the rank of Major.
After the War Attlee returned to teaching at the LSE. He joined the Labour Party and became interested in local politics. In 1919 he was elected Mayor of Stepney. In the 1922 General Election he was elected MP for Limehouse in London. Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the party in the House of Commons, recruited Attlee as his parliamentary secretary (1922 -24). After the Labour Party victory in the 1929 General Election, MacDonald appointed Attlee as Post-master General.
From 1931 to 1935, MacDonald formed the National Government which was dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members. Like most ministers, Attlee refused to serve in the National Government. MacDonald was vehemently denounced for this betrayal and expelled from the party he had helped to found.
James Ramsay MacDonald, FRS was a British statesman who was the first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister, leading minority Labour governments in 1924 and in 1929–31. He headed a National Government from 1931 to 1935, dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members.
Attlee was one of the few Labour MPs to win his seat in the 1931 General Election and became Deputy Leader of the Party to George Lansbury. When Lansbury retired in 1935 Attlee became Leader of the Labour Party. In 1940 Attlee joined the coalition Government headed by Winston Churchill. He was virtually deputy Prime Minister although this post did not become his until 1942.
In the 1945 General election Attlee led the Labour Party to a great victory and majority at the polls – 395 seats to 215 for the Tories.
However, Britain was broke and deep in debt at the end of the 2nd World War. Churchill’s wife was said to have remarked that electoral defeat in 1945 for the Tories was a blessing in disguise. If so, Churchill said, the blessing was extremely well disguised. And yet, despite the financial difficulties, during 6 years in office Attlee carried through a vigorous programme of reform. The Bank of England, the coal mines civil aviation, cable and wireless services, electricity, railways, road transport and steel were all nationalised.
The National Health Service (“NHS”) was introduced in 1948 and independence was granted to India (1947) and Burma.
After being narrowly defeated in the 1951 Election (Labour got more votes, but won less seats than the Tories), Attlee led the Labour Party until resigning in 1955. He was granted a peerage and was active in the House of Lords until his death in 1967.
In his autobiography, As It Happened, Attlee describes the formative and powerful impact that working at a boys' club in Stepney had on him, particularly for its exposure to the impoverished working class:
“I became interested in the work and began making the journey from Putney to the club one evening a week. Soon my visits became more frequent. In 1907 the club manager resigned and Cecil Nussey asked me if I would take over the job. I agreed, went to live at Haileybury House and thus began fourteen years’ residence in East London. I soon began to learn many things which had hitherto been unrevealed. I found there was a different social code. Thrift, so dear to the middle classes, was not esteemed so highly as generosity. The Christian virtue of charity was practised not merely preached. I recall a boy in the club living in two rooms with his widowed mother. He earned seven schillings and sixpence a week.
A neighbouring family where there was no income coming in, were thrown on to the street by the landlord. The boy and his mother took them all into their little home. I found abundant instances of kindness and much quiet heroism in those mean streets. T
hese people were not poor through lack of fine qualities. The slums were not filled with the dregs of society. Not only did I have countless lessons in practical economics but there was kindled in me a warmth and affection for these people that has remained with me all my life. From this it was only a step to examining the whole basis of our social and economic system. I soon began to realise the curse of casual labour. I got to know what slum landlordism and sweating meant. I understood why the Poor Law was so hated. I learned why there were rebels.”
Attlee and Churchill
Clem Attlee had served in the same Government as Winston Churchill and yet Churchill did not appreciate his talents. Below is the famous quip made by Churchill about Attlee’s modesty. The modesty that quietly introduced the NHS.
By way of contrast to Attlee’s way of thinking (and an example of how Winston Churchill had profoundly misunderstood Clem), here is another quote from Churchill’s Election broadcast in May 1945 before Labour swept to power and introduced its radical reforms. With the imminent defeat of the Hitler and the Nazis, note how Churchill tried to scaremonger people by trying to associate Labour with the Gestapo.
“I must tell you that a socialist society is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State, once in power, will prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say, what views they are to hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State ration, and what education their children are to receive. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition – no socialist system can be established without a form of political police. They (the Labour Government) would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.”
Attlee, however, was just not just some sort of good guy who did kind things. Some of his actions were alternately strikingly assertive and bold, and at times ruthless. His record in dealing with the post-War Soviet threat is an example. Together with his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin he played a leading role in the formation of NATO. Like Bevin, he was convinced that the atomic bomb was crucial to the projection of British power in the world. Rather than have a showdown with Labour ministers who opposed the bomb, such as Stafford Cripps and Hugh Dalton, he formed a secret committee to push the plan through before objections could be raised. Above all, he was a ruthless but consistent proponent of a strong tradition of left-wing British patriotism, at home and abroad.
The difference between Churchill and Attlee can be summed up in the following way. Churchill was a great Leader and orator. No one can deny it. His speeches from the 2nd World War resonate now. Attlee, by contrast, looked more like a mild mannered, bank manager. However, if you ask “What was Churchill trying to win the War for?” then an immediate answer would be "to defeat Hitler and his fascist ideology". That is true, but it was more than just that. Churchill wanted to win the war ultimately so that his class could carry on their lives in Britain pretty much the same as they had done before the War. Attlee and the Labour Party did not want that. They wanted to “build a new Jerusalem” in Britain and make it fit for ordinary people to live, prosper and share in. They wanted a fundamental shift in power and wealth towards the masses of British citizens. This, I think, is the essential difference between Attlee and Churchill and this is why the great War Hero Churchill was rejected at the end of the War by a population who wanted Britain to repay its soldiers and people by building a more caring society with decent housing, an NHS and a fairer distribution of wealth. And the man they chose to usher in those changes was not Churchill, but modest Mr Attlee.
And finally… for spotters of Blue Plaques with a passing interest in local history, here are two facts: firstly, Attlee lived at 17 Monkhams Avenue (just around the corner from Woodford tube) where you can still see his Blue Plaque below and secondly, he was also MP for Walthamstow West.
