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Clement Attlee 1935-55
By admin | March 4, 2007
Labour Biographies (extracts from the Dictionary of Labour Biography, Greg Rosen (ed), (Politicos Publishing 2001)
Leaders: Clement Attlee 1935-55
Clement Attlee (Earl Attlee)(1883-1967)
Clement Richard Attlee was born on 3 January 1883, to the Putney family of a wealthy city solicitor, Henry Attlee. He was educated at home until he was nine, and showed early on his remarkable latent for absorbing information like a sponge and retaining it. He learned Italian so thoroughly that, six decades later, he amazed his political colleagues by addressing the socialist international conference in Milan in fluent Italian.
At nine he was sent to Northaw Place, a boarding preparatory school at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire. The two clergymen who ran it were interested in cricket and in the bible, in that order, and in very little else, so they gave him the detailed knowledge of, and fascination for, cricket statistics which made him, as one political colleague put it, a ‘walking Wisden’.
Haileybury in Hertfordshire was chosen as his public school, and he went there in 1896. In 1901, the year of Queen Victoria’s death, Attlee entered University College, Oxford. Then he trained for the bar, but without much enthusiasm, as he told his first biographer, Roy Jenkins: ‘I rather thought of some profession in which a living could be made while in my leisure time I could continue my reading in literature and history and learn more of art and antiquities.’ His other ambition, though he did not talk about it until he retired, was to be a poet.
He passed his bar examinations in 1905. But his life changed one night when he visited the east end of London, with the vague idea of doing some charitable work among the poor. Attlee, straight from work in his silk hat and tail coat, walked gingerly through Stepney’s disgusting, uncleaned streets to Haileybury House, set up by his old school as a club for poor east end children. He quickly became deeply involved, and started to manage the club in 1907.
Deciding that charity was not enough to end poverty, and political action was required, he joined the Independent Labour Party, and conquered his shyness sufficiently to start addressing open air ILP meetings in 1908. In 1912 he took a job teaching at the London School of Economics, but two years later, when war was declared in August 1914, he chose to enlist in the army straight away - even though the ILP had always said that if war came, socialists should refuse to fight.
He had what was known as ‘a good war’ - he was wounded, admired for his efficiency and bravery, and promoted to Major. Back in Stepney in 1919, he threw himself into east end Labour politics, and bought a lease on a big, dilapidated old house in Limehouse called Norway House. He converted the first floor into a flat for himself. The ground floor he gave to the Limehouse Labour Party for its headquarters, complete with canteen, card tables, and a three quarter size billiard table, and in 1920 he was Stepney’s mayor.
While Mayor he wrote The Social Worker, which contains probably the clearest statement of the principles which underlay his political philosophy, and the philosophy of the government he led a quarter of a century later. In particular, it attacks the idea that looking after the poor can be left to voluntary action. Charity, he says, is a cold, grey, loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at whim.
Charity, he says, ‘is only possible without loss of dignity between equals. A right established by law, such as that to an old age pension, is less galling than an allowance made by a rich man to a poor one, dependent on his view of the recipient’s character, and terminable at his caprice …’
On 10 January 1922 he married Violet Millar, and in November of the same year was elected Labour MP for Limehouse, soon becoming labour leader Ramsay MacDonald’s PPS. When Macdonald formed the first Labour government two years later, Attlee, who had by then earned himself a reputation as a solid and reliable parliamentarian, became Under-Secretary of State for War.
In the late 1920s he left the ILP, which had been his political home ever since he became a socialist. The ILP, he wrote in his autobiography, ‘became more and more irresponsible under the leadership of Jimmy Maxton. With many others I found it necessary to part company with this organisation. This was a matter of very great regret, for I had spent my political life in its ranks.’
He was disappointed not to get a job in Macdonald’s second government in 1929, but became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as a result of the resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley in May 1930. A further reshuffle in March 1931 made him Postmaster General, still outside Cabinet. But in the election later that year, Labour was decimated by the National Government, led by the man who until a few weeks previously had led the Labour government, Ramsay MacDonald.
The Labour leader, Arthur Henderson, lost his seat, and so did all remaining members of the MacDonald cabinet. Only three of Labour’s 46 MPs had any front bench experience: Attlee, George Lansbury, and Sir Stafford Cripps, who had been Solicitor General for a year, but was very new to the Party and had only been in the House for a year. There was only one conceivable leader, Lansbury, and only one conceivable deputy leader, Attlee.
When Lansbury retired in 1935, the real battle for the succession was between Attlee and Herbert Morrison, who had lost his seat in 1931 but was now back in parliament. Morrison believed all his life that had he been an MP in 1931, he would have won the leadership in 1935, but this seems unlikely. The truth is that, after they had been betrayed by the showy and snobbish MacDonald, Attlee’s modest suburban ways appealed to the Party.
The characteristics which became the stuff of affectionate anecdote later were already present, like his terseness, his addiction to the Times crossword puzzle, his fascination with cricket, and his strange and rather exaggerated devotion to Haileybury, to University College Oxford, and even to his prep school, Northaw House.
People say that he never had an image. But the truth was that these things were his image. He turned suburban mannerisms and staccato, pronounless sentences into precious political assets.
In a growingly dangerous international situation, he knew that he needed to get his Party, despite its pacifist traditions, to think seriously about defence. So, as he wrote in his autobiography, ‘As soon as the 1935 parliament met, I determined to take steps to create a better understanding of defence problems in the Party…I…formed a Defence Committee which met regularly and discussed defence problems…The result was seen in the far more informed contribution which Labour men were able to make in Service debates.’
In 1940 Attlee played a key part in the formation of a coalition government under Winston Churchill, making it clear that Labour would not serve under Neville Chamberlain. Two days after Germany invaded Holland and Belgium, on Friday May 10, Attlee and the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, agreed on the composition of a new government. Attlee was determined not to hold things up by bargaining over offices, for he remembered how vital decisions were delayed during the Dardanelles campaign while Conservatives and Liberals bargained for places in Asquith’s coalition of 1915. Attlee himself became Lord Privy Seal, and a member of the war cabinet.
He was a much more powerful figure during the war than his low public profile suggested. Behind the scenes his voice was often crucial, and never more so than just before the fall of France. French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud wanted Britain to try to negotiate a general peace with Hitler. Attlee was the first to speak in the war cabinet, and it was his contribution that effectively destroyed Reynaud’s idea.
Only Attlee and Churchill were in the war cabinet from start to finish, and Attlee did most of the nuts and bolts work. There was a sense of almost audible relief around Whitehall when it was known that Attlee, not Churchill, would be in the chair at cabinet, for the meeting would be far more efficiently conducted and would last half the time. He was sharp with any minister who spoke too long or was not properly briefed, and he kept debates as short as possible. In February 1942 Churchill gave him the title of Deputy Prime Minister, and he also became Dominions Secretary until September 1943 when he became Lord President of the Council.
At the 1945 election, Labour was returned with 393 seats and an overall majority for the first time ever, and Attlee became Prime Minister. Until December 1946 he followed Churchill’s example in serving as his own Minister of Defence.
He held up the adoption of a thoroughgoing cold war policy until January 1947. Right up until then - unlike his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin - he believed that the United Nations would be given the power to create a new world order; and that you could negotiate with the Russians.
He acted decisively over India, appointing Louis Mounbatten as Viceroy and giving him full powers to reach an agreement. He and Mountbatten enabled Britain., against all the odds, to withdraw in good order from a large slice of Empire. Mountbatten wrote to Attlee: ‘Without your original guidance and your unwavering support nothing could have been accomplished out here.’
But the central job of the 1945 government, as Attlee saw it, was the creation of the welfare state, whose design was to be found in the wartime Beveridge report. On 5 July 1948 the National Health Service came into existence after a titanic struggle between Health Minister Aneurin Bevan and the doctors. In addition, on the same day, Attlee was able to announce ‘the most comprehensive system of social security ever introduced into any country.’
Four Acts came into force that day: the National Insurance Act, the Industrial Injuries Act, the National Assistance Act, and the NHS Act. They were all based on a new principle: that ‘we must combine together to meet contingencies with which we cannot cope as individual citizens.’
In the same year the government nationalised inland transport - railways, canals, and road haulage - and the great utilities, electricity and gas. The Bank of England had been nationalised in 1945. Iron and steel followed in 1949. Altogether, the Attlee government brought about a fifth per cent of the economy into public ownership.
Attlee drove these measures through against a background of dire warnings that the war-shattered economy could not afford them. He gave his reply to Parliament in 1946, and it remains a standing rebuke to Labour ministers who say that we must have a better deal for the poorest - but now is never the right time to do it.
‘The question is asked - can we afford it? Supposing the answer is “No,” what does that mean? It really means that the sum total of the goods produced and the services rendered by the people of this country is not sufficient to provide for all our people at all times, in sickness, in health, in youth and in age, the very modest standard of life that is represented by the sums of money set out in the Second Schedule to this (National Insurance) Bill. I cannot believe that our national productivity is so slow, that our willingness to work is so feeble or that we can submit to the world that the masses of our people must be condemned to penury.’
At the February 1950 election, Labour polled the highest popular vote any party had ever polled, even more than in 1945, nearly three per cent more than the Conservatives. The swing to the Conservatives was only 3.3%. But Labour’s overall majority was down to five, because many of its votes went to build up massive majorities in safe Labour seats. The redistribution of seats which had taken place during the Parliament had transferred huge blocks of Labour votes from marginal seats to safe seats and probably lost Labour about 30 MPs. Redistribution meant also that Attlee himself now sat as MP for Walthamstow West.
Attlee was forced to go to the country again in October 1951, this time against the background of a bitter cabinet division over charging for teeth and spectacles on the NHS between Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevan. Yet still he came near to winning the election - and did win it, in the sense that Labour polled more votes than the Conservatives. But it got fewer seats; Churchill’s Conservatives had an overall majority of 17.
Attlee led Labour through the General Election of May 1955. Retiring as leader and as an MP in December 1955, he was created Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood and became in 1956 a Knight of the Garter. He had been made a Companion of Honour in 1945 and was awarded an Order of Merit in 1951. His beloved Vi died in 1964 at the age of 68, and Attlee moved into a flat at 1 Kings Bench Walk in the Temple. He died in his sleep on 8 October 1967.
Attlee published his memoirs, As it Happened, in 1954. His other publications include: The Social Worker (1920); The Town Councillor (1925); The Will and the Way to Socialism (1935); The Labour Party in Perspective (1937); Collective Security Under the United Nations (1958) and Empire into Commonwealth (1961). Francis Williams’ A Prime Minister Remembers, based on interviews with Attlee, appeared in 1961. Attlee papers are held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Churchill College, Cambridge. Biographies include Roy Jenkins, Mr Attlee (1048); Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982); Trevor Burridge, Clement Attlee: A Political Biography, (1985); Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee (1997).
Francis Beckett
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