Clement Atlee

10 Key excerpts on "Clement Atlee"

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  British Prime Ministers and Democracy

  From Disraeli to Blair

  • Roland Quinault(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  156 157 8 Clement Attlee The real function of a British Prime Minister is not to be a superman; he is the servant of the greatest democracy in the world. – CLEMENT ATTLEE, 1938 1 Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. – CLEMENT ATTLEE, 1957 2 Clement Attlee – widely called ‘Clem’ by his associates – played a major role in British politics in the mid-twentieth century. He was the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 1935 until 1955, Deputy Prime Minister from 1942 until May 1945 and Prime Minister from July 1945 until October 1951. As the first Labour Prime Minister with a majority in the House of Commons, Attlee was able to implement extensive reforms at home and major changes to Britain’s position abroad. Yet his personal impact was limited because he was a modest and unas-suming man, wholly lacking in charisma. His character, however, helped his political rise because he appealed to those in the Labour Party who wanted a leader without vanity – one who would not distract public attention from the party’s programme. 3 As Deputy Prime Minister during the Second World War, Attlee was overshadowed not only by Churchill but also by his Labour colleagues, Bevin, Cripps and Morrison. In 1944 he was described as ‘the forgotten Minister . . . the first-class captain of a first-class cricket side who is not himself a headliner’. 4 Even after four years as Prime Minister, Attlee was described as ‘an eminently forgettable man’, but also as a successful premier who had made socialism respectable. 5 He certainly proved to be a tough and generally effective Prime Minister. In the half-century since Attlee’s premiership, his reputation has remained remarkably high. In 1999 a poll conducted by New Statesman and Society voted Attlee the outstanding premier of the century, with Churchill trailing as a poor second.

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  Leaders of the Opposition

  From Churchill to Cameron

  • T. Heppell(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  He aimed to defuse tension and maintain order, while reflecting the will of the party. He also proved a formidable opponent to Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. Attlee remained leader of the party until 1955, when he was succeeded by Hugh Gaitskell, a man who did not enter Parliament until 1945, ten years after Attlee was elected leader. During this twenty-year period, in addition to his six-year tenure as Prime Minister (1945–51), Attlee also served as Deputy Prime Minister (1940–5) in the wartime coalition administration. Before and after those terms in office, Attlee served as Leader of the Opposition, first in the period between 1937 and 1940, when the role was more explicitly formalised, and second in the aftermath of office between 1951 and 1955. Given the parameters of this edited collection, and its focus on post-war Opposition leadership, this chapter will offer an explicit examination of the performance of Attlee in the 1951 to 1955 period. Public policy platform The Attlee years would constitute an era of considerable policy achievement. As such the 1945 to 1951 Government has tended to be regarded within the Labour movement as the high point of Labour. As a consequence it has been subject to considerable (and mostly sympathetic) academic appraisal (see, for example, Hennessy, 1992; Jefferys, 1992; K. Morgan, 1984; and Pelling, 1984). Attlee’s administrations would shape the contours of policy for a generation, and would embed the pillars of what became defined as the post-war consensus (see, for example, Addison, 1975; Kavanagh, 1987, 1992). Domestic policy involved an extensive programme of nationalisation that placed one-fifth of the economy under public ownership, while the 22 Clement Attlee establishment of the National Health Service was the jewel in the crown of the new welfare state ( Jefferys, 1993: 8–10).

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  Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers

  • Robert Eccleshall, Graham Walker(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Clement Richard Attlee, First Earl of Prestwood Born 4 January 1883, son of Henry Attlee and Ellen Watson. Educated at Haileybury and University College, Oxford. Married 1922 Violet Millar. MP for Limehouse 1922–50, West Walthamstow 1950–5. Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party 1931–5; Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party 1935–55. Mayor of Stepney 1919; Under-Secretary of State for War 1924; Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster 1930; Postmaster-General 1931; Lord Privy Seal 1940–2; Deputy Prime Minister 1942–5; Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs 1942–3; Lord President of the Council 1943–5; Minister of Defence 1945–6; Prime Minister 1945–51; Leader of the Opposition 1951–5. Left Commons 1955, ennobled the same year. Died 8 October 1967. ‘His limitations are obvious. His virtues and his powers are hidden and unexpected’ (Durbin 1945). Attlee stole upon greatness quietly. As The Times suggested in its obituary, there was an obvious contrast between the scale of the 1945–50 Labour government’s achievements and the diminutive character of its leader: ‘one of the least colourful and most effective of the British Prime Ministers of this century’ (The Times 1967). Attlee’s tenure in Downing Street saw the structure of British domestic and foreign policy transformed, whether through the independence of India, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or domestic achievements such as the maintenance of full employment and the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). In the Labour party—which he led for a record twenty years— there was a similar discrepancy between contemporary impact and retrospective judgement. Some, like Richard Crossman, complained that ‘the cult of personality was replaced by the cult of anonymity’ (Crossman 1961). In an unlikely fashion, however, Attlee became the Keir Hardie of the late-twentieth-century Labour party, the centre of what has been called the ‘deeply-entrenched Attlee myth’ (Morgan 1988:773)

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  Labour in Crisis

  Clement Attlee and the Labour Party in Opposition, 1931-40

  • J. Swift(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Attlee clearly played an extremely important role as the party began its recovery. So effective was that recovery that in 1940 Churchill invited the Labour leaders to enter his wartime coalition – he felt that their services were vital to the war effort. In 1945 Labour won 1 J. Swift, Labour in Crisis © John Swift 2001 a resounding election victory under Attlee’s leadership, whose govern- ment became renowned especially for its nationalization of industry, establishment of the welfare state, and independence for India. Clearly the 1930s was a momentous decade for both Attlee and the Labour Party. Naturally, a certain amount of scholarly work in this area has been undertaken. Attlee himself has been the subject of investigations of varying standards of scholarship. In the wake of Labour’s 1945 election victory a minor flurry of biographical works concerning the new prime minister appeared. Among these was Cyril Clemens, The Man from Limehouse: Clement Richard Attlee (1946). Written by an American, for an American readership, this showed little understanding of either the Labour Party or the complexities of British politics. Roy Jenkins, Mr Attlee: an Interim Biography (1948), is some- what more satisfying. Based on Attlee’s own autobiographical notes, it was, however, never intended to be a definitive biography, but was a propaganda piece for the party. The tendency to be uncritical, and to brush past awkward questions, is unmistakable. A further study of this period, Vincent Brome, Clement Attlee (1949), yet another propagandist work, was, in fact, little more than a picture book. Attlee’s own auto- biography, As it happened (1954), is an excellent example of how unrevealing a memoir can be, when written by one determined to reveal nothing. There were also two works published from interviews: Francis Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers (1961) and C.R. Attlee, Clem Attlee: the Granada Historical Records Interview (1967).

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  British Prime Ministers From Balfour to Brown

  • Robert Pearce, Graham Goodlad(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  10  Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Prime Minister: July 1945–October 1951

  ‘People are ceasing to think of him as a “dear little man”. They realise that he has vision and courage and integrity so compelling that it is a force in itself.’

  Diary of Harold Nicolson, 27 April 1949.1

  During the Second World War Conservative MP Walter Elliot remarked that there should be an ‘Attlee Calendar’, with every day of the year accompanied by one of Clement Attlee’s huge store of platitudes, beginning on 1 January with ‘Every avenue will be explored’.2 One might cavil that this form of words was more hackneyed phrase or cliché than platitude, but it is easy to understand what Elliot meant. The Deputy Prime Minister was an exceedingly poor wordsmith. In one speech, he managed to include almost as many clichés as sentences, including ‘socialism without tears’, ‘put first things first’ and ‘strike whilst the iron is hot’.3 On other, more venturesome occasions he did indeed advance into the realm of platitudes. ‘You don’t keep a dog and bark yourself’ was one of his favourites. When questioned about Christianity, he responded curtly that he could not believe in its mumbo-jumbo, but then added the well-used formulaic phrase that he nevertheless ‘believed in the ethics of Christianity’.4

  It is perhaps not surprising that an American journalist described Attlee in 1941 as ‘the dullest man in English politics’.5 As a speaker he compared to Churchill as ‘a village fiddler after Paganini’.6 At key moments during the war Attlee ‘succeeded where lesser men would have failed’ – in making dramatic episodes seem dull and victories sound like defeats.7 If Churchill was ‘the glittering bird of paradise’, noted a colleague, Attlee was ‘a sparrow’,8 though most observers thought of him merely as a mouse. Nevertheless Attlee and the Labour Party beat Churchill and the Conservatives in the 1945 election by a huge majority, and over the next six years Attlee’s administration made fundamental changes in Britain’s society, economy and external policy. Attlee was described in his Times obituary in 1967 as ‘one of the least colourful and most effective of British Prime Ministers of this century’.9

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  A Century of Premiers

  Salisbury to Blair

  • D. Leonard(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  It gained over 200,000 more votes than the Tories, but the result, in terms of seats, was as shown in the table below. Clement Attlee 191 Conservative 321 Labour 295 Liberal 6 Others 3 Conservative majority 17 Attlee was then 68, and worn out by ten continuous years of high office. The time had surely come to bow out, but he lingered on in the party leadership for four more years, including the 1955 general elec- tion, in the pious hope of mending the deep split in his party. It was also widely suspected that part of his motivation was to hang on until Morrison, only five years his junior, would be seen as too old to succeed him. If so, he succeeded in his objective, as his unfortunate deputy polled only 40 votes to 157 for Gaitskell and 70 for Bevan, when he finally stood down in December 1955. He then retired to the House of Lords, where his reputation as a wise and benign, if taciturn, elder statesman continued to increase until his death 12 years later. For the Labour Party, he remains to this day an iconic figure, though – if truth be told – he served his country rather bet- ter than his party. In his quiet way, he was every bit as much a patriot as Churchill, as the final words of his typically low key autobiography, As It Happened, reveal: I have been a happy and fortunate man, in having lived so long in the greatest country in the world, in having a happy family life and in having been given the opportunity of serving in a state of life to which I never expected to be called. (Attlee 1954) A kindly, unassuming and extremely shy man, with an exceptionally well-organised mind and a quiet determination to pursue the issues in which he believed, Attlee was not the person to write his own epitaph. The best he could manage was a rather smug limerick which he composed for the amusement of Tom Attlee: Few thought he was even a starter There were many who thought themselves smarter But he ended PM CH and OM An earl and a knight of the garter.

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  Great Figures in the Labour Movement

  The Commonwealth and International Library: History Division

  • J. N. Evans, G. M. D. Howat(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  He watched the development of his protege, Hugh Gaitskell, with pride, and it was a great blow to him when the new Leader died in 1963. As a distinguished elder statesman, Attlee was the recipient of many honours from cities and universities both at home and abroad, and was a frequent contributor to the national Press, radio and T.V. on important topics. He contributed to the General Election cam-paign that resulted in the return of a Labour Government in 1964, after thirteen years in Opposition, and this victory delighted him and in itself was a tribute to the hard patient work that he had done during his many years of leadership. To the general public Attlee represented the solid qualities of the common man; his quiet efficiency and personal integrity were in tune with the image of a political leader that the British people respected. From the point of view of the Labour Movement, the assessment of his role depends upon the position from which one views it; from the Right he can be seen as the Leader who failed to crush the Socialist rebels ; from the Left as the Leader who failed to develop the Socialist Revolution following upon the landslide victory of 1945. But, to the large mass in the Centre he was the kind of leader they wanted : one who could steer the Party on a middle course. Above all, Attlee was probably the only leader who could have prevented a split in the Labour Party during the 1950's. He epitomized the Chairman rather than the Leader. As it Happened. C. ATTLEE. W. Heinemann. A Prime Minister Remembers. F. WILLIAMS. W. Heinemann. Attlee. V. BROOME. Lincolns Prager. Mr. Attlee. R. JENKINS. W. Heinemann.

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  Attlee's Labour Governments 1945-51

  • Robert Pearce(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It is often said that Attlee lacked any real understanding of economics. This was true (and equally true of most of his predecessors as premier, and not a few of his successors); but at least he had the humility to recognise deficiencies and take the advice of those better qualified than himself. He was in this, as in so many respects, the antithesis of Ramsay MacDonald. He once mused that it is always a mistake to think yourself bigger than you are. Attlee's self-knowledge ruled out this error. He combined considerable abilities with habits of hard work. As a result he was always well-informed, and everyone recognised that he was solid and efficient. Above all, he was an excellent chairman of cabinet with a remarkable ability to get through an agenda and, when necessary, to silence over-talkative colleagues. Democracy means government by discussion; but Attlee was aware that unless people know when to stop talking democracy can degenerate into discussion without government.

  Attlee's political position tended to be in the centre of his party. Certainly he was a reformer, with a genuine concern to improve the lot of the poor. He had entered politics by way of social work in the East End of London; appalled at avoidable poverty, he wished to see a more caring and more equal society. Yet while wanting change, he was also in many ways a conservative figure, a product of public school and Oxford and of the late-Victorian era. He was even said to shudder when the port was passed round the dining table the wrong way. He therefore stood for stability as well as reform and may be seen as personifying Labour's essential ambiguity of aim and outlook.

  Attlee proved the doubters wrong. He survived as Prime Minister for six years, and his reputation stood much higher at the end of this period than at the beginning. The teacher had been promoted in popular esteem: the Observer

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  After Number 10

  Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

  • K. Theakston(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The handover from Churchill to the 57 years old Eden in April 1955 underlined the 72 years old Attlee’s status as a member of a political gen- eration whose time had passed. His health was not good: he needed an appen- dix operation in 1953; in February 1955 he fainted into Churchill’s arms (‘some of the others are not lasting as well as I am’, remarked the 81 years old Churchill, with grim satisfaction 2 ); and in August 1955 he had a slight stroke. 149 Attlee stayed on as Labour leader in the 1950s ‘long beyond the time when he could make any positive contribution in that role’. He showed little interest in the necessary task of rethinking social democratic policy and doctrine. Aloof and distant, he lacked ‘the inspirational and innovative power to rally his forces’. Outstanding in government, he underwhelmed (as in the 1930s) in opposition: ‘he was too reasonable, and too little the partisan … he was as poor as ever at courting publicity’. 3 Personality clashes and factional infighting had been starting to pull Labour apart while still in government, and the splits, divisions and policy differences (often over foreign policy and defence) intensified in opposition. Attlee had survived so long as leader by having an acute sense of the balance of party opinion, and often by following rather than leading his party. After 1951 it became more difficult to paper over the cracks, hold the party together and broker compromises. Internal Labour politics became exceptionally bitter, with much bloodletting at the 1952 party conference and an attempt (headed off by Attlee at the last minute) by the hardliners on the right to expel from the party the leader of the left, Aneurin Bevan, just before the 1955 elec- tion. Attlee often seemed weak and vacillating – hoping that somehow the party would pull itself together – and his critics wanted him to come down off the fence and give a stronger lead. He ‘doodled where he ought to have led’, complained Herbert Morrison.

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  From New Jerusalem to New Labour

  British Prime Ministers from Attlee to Blair

  • V. Bogdanor(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  7 To continue to serve these causes in 1951 seemed to require, first, an end to the period of upheaval that had marked the Attlee government, and, second, a reassertion of British power. Churchill appreciated, however, that his electoral mandate in 1951 was an extremely narrow one. The Conservatives had an overall majority of just 17 seats, but had gained fewer votes than Labour in the general election. Labour, indeed, was relieved that it had not been defeated more heavily, and looked forward to an early return to office. For the Conservatives, so Labour believed, would be unable to preserve the gains of the Attlee government, in particular full employment and the welfare state. The Conservative government, there- fore, would prove little more than a brief interlude interrupting the smooth progress of socialist advance. Attlee appears to have believed that he would be back in Downing Street by 1953. Labour, so Harold Macmillan believed, had ‘fought the election (very astutely) not on Socialism but on Fear. Fear of unemployment, fear of reduced wages; fear of reduced social benefits; fear of war. – If, before the next election, none of these fears have proved reason- able, we may be able to force the Opposition to fight on Socialism. Then we can win’. 8 5 Peter Catterall, The Macmillan Diaries, p. 382, entry for 20 January 1955. 6 Anthony Montague Browne (1995) Long Sunset, Cassell, p. 307. 7 Quoted in John Ramsden (1978) The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940, Longman, p. 376. 8 Catterall, The Macmillan Diaries, p. 113. Entry for 28 October 1951. 26 Vernon Bogdanor Churchill was well aware that he was on probation. Like Charles II, he was determined not to go on his travels again. This meant that any radical assault on the welfare state, on full employment or on the privileges of the trade unions was immediately ruled out. It also meant that there was no hope of revers- ing the ‘socialism’ which, so Churchill believed, had infected British life since 1945.

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