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► Clement Attlee

Clement Richard Attlee     <--back-

Clement Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was one of the most influential Labour leaders in history. He implemeneted the policies that until then had only been theoretical, including most famously the NHS and the Welfare State. His legacy forms the centre of modern British politics, and now the debate is not whether Attlee was successful, but how to live up to his own high standards of success.

Early life and history

Attlee was born in London and is of middle-class origins. His father was a solicitor, and he himself trained to be a lawyer at Oxford. He worked with small orphaned children in London and gradually became more socialist, joining the Independent Labour Party (not the same as the LP) in 1908. The ILP was a more radical party which had become less important after 1900. He fought for Britain during WW1, and was seriously injured at Gallipoli, where he insisted on delaying until his men were safe from harm. During the war he rose to the rank of Major. After the war ended, he took up lecturing at the Fabian-founded London School of Economics.

Political Beginnings

Attlee ran for Mayor of Stepney as the Labour candidate in 1919, winning the borough. He later ran as the member of parliament for Limehouse constituency, and won that as well. He became a Labour minister in Ramsay MacDonald's first government in 1924 as Under-Secretary of State for War. He spent the next several years as part of a commission looking into granting India it's independence, before returning to government in 1930 as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was briefly Post-Master General in 1931 before becoming the Labour Party Deputy leader after Labour's defeat in '31. Attlee fiercely opposed the policy of appeasement, and after the resignation of the Labour leader (and pacifist) George Lansbury he would also support re-armament of the nation in preparation for war. Attlee succeeded Lansbury as Labour leader in 1935, and eventually served twenty years in that role.

Leader

As Attlee became leader Britain faced the oncoming threat of Nazi Germany and was unready to fight. Chamberlain was failing to meet the threat, and so at party conference Attlee proposed a coalition government with the Liberals and with Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. The Labour Party was hostile towards Chamberlain, and saw Churchill as being an anchor against The Gathering Storm. During the war Attlee deputised Churchill on the War and Defence committees, and also served in the roles of Lord Privy Seal (1940-42), Deputy Prime Minister (1940-45), Dominions Secretary (1942-43) and Lord President of the Council (1943-45). Attlee was loyal to Churchill throughout, and only he (apart from Churchill) remained in the war cabinet from 1940-45.

Prime Minister

After the War, the British public felt an urgent desire for modernisation and reform. Attlee stood on a platform of radical reform and a dismantling of the Empire. He won a landslide against Churchill in 1945, and began to institute the reforms the Fabians had been talking about since the last century. Aneurin Bevan introduced the NHS, and Attlee oversaw the nationalisation of major industries and utilities. Britain was bankrupt, and for Attlee planned economics was the only way to secure it's future. The pound was devalued, rationing extended and new links established with the USA. Attlee began to attempt to rebuild relationships with a shattered Europe, and also began to shed the colonies in an attempt to maintain the economy. The creation of the UN allowed new possibilities in international democracy, but the beginning of the Cold War cast a shadow over the feeling of success. Ernest Bevin, a former trade union leader, was anti communist and wary of the USSR. Along with Attlee he was instrumental in the creation of NATO as a protection against Soviet aggression. Attlee continued to work with America in Europe until, with the party splitting and exhausted, they were defeated by Churchill's Conservatives in 1951.

Late life and Legacy

Attlee continued to lead the party in opposition until 1955, before retiring and being made an Earl. He died two years after Churchill in 1967. His legacy is the most far reaching of any Prime Minister of the twentieth century. Every government since 1945 had been defined by his policies on NATO, the Commonwealth, the NHS and nationalised industry. Even Thatcher said:

"Of Clement Attlee, however, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot... he was all substance and no show"

He is seen today as being more a statesman than a politician, and perhaps this is the greatest legacy of all.

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