Clement Richard Attlee

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (1883-1967), was prime minister of England from 1945 to 1951. He led the labour government that established the welfare state in Great Britain.

Clement Attlee was born in Putney, near London, on Jan. 23, 1883, the son of Henry Attlee, a successful solicitor, and Ellen Watson Attlee, a cultivated and educated woman. The family was devoutly religious. Attlee attended Haileybury College and then University College, Oxford, where he read modern history and achieved second-class honors in 1904.

Heading for a legal career, Attlee joined the Inner Temple, studied and worked in chambers, was called to the bar in 1906, and set up his own office. After a visit to Haileybury House in east London, a boys' club supported by his old school, he moved to the East End. He continued practicing law, helped evenings in the club, and soon became its manager. He developed a new outlook and a new purpose. By 1908 he was a member of the Fabian Society (a socialist organization) and of the Independent Labour party, and he was a socialist in the practical sense of being committed to improving the lot of the working class.

In 1909 Attlee gave up his law practice and spent a brief period as secretary of Toynbee Hall, the best-known of the university settlements in the East End. Then he lectured at Ruskin College, Oxford, and was appointed tutor and lecturer in social science at the London School of Economics in 1913.

In 1914 he had leanings toward pacifism but concluded that the war was justified. Promptly commissioned, he served in Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia. He was discharged as a major, a title he continued to use, and returned to the London School of Economics. Still residing in the East End, he became the first labour mayor of Stepney in 1919 and a member of the executive committee of the London Labour party. In 1922 he was returned to Parliament from Limehouse, and that year he married Violet Helen Millar of Hampstead; four children were born to them.

Attlee now devoted full time to Labour politics. Ramsay MacDonald, as leader of the Opposition, appointed Attlee his parliamentary private secretary and then in 1924 in the first Labour government designated him undersecretary of state for war. Though at first excluded from the Labour Cabinet in 1929, Attlee became chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1930 and a year later postmaster general. In the landslide victory for the National (coalition) government in 1931, Attlee, one of three surviving Labour members with front-bench experience, was made deputy leader of the party. Labour members of Parliament became almost hopelessly divided on armaments and diplomacy; in a tumultuous meeting in October 1935 Attlee was elected party leader, because of his demonstrated parliamentary qualities. It cannot be said that either Attlee or his party had imaginative views for dealing with Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, but on the other hand the National government made no moves toward developing common policy. Attlee did reunite his party.

When war came and Winston Churchill formed a true coalition government in May 1940, Attlee joined the War Cabinet of five and in 1942 became deputy prime minister. He attended the San Francisco conference in April 1945, which established the United Nations. At Potsdam, the final wartime conference of the allies, in July 1945, power shifted from Churchill to Attlee after the overwhelming electoral victory of Labour at the polls. Attlee formed a strong government, and in nationalization of basic industries, the extension of social insurance, and the establishment of the National Health Service, he carried out most of his party's pledges. Under his guidance India and Pakistan became independent and England entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Labour was less successful in dealing with economic problems; leadership shifted in 1951 to the Conservatives. Within the party Attlee managed to hold on, despite attacks from the left wing, until 1955, when he suffered a stroke and resigned after 20 years of leadership.

Attlee received the Order of Merit in 1951. In 1955 he was made a knight of the Garter and granted an earldom. For several years he was active in the House of Lords and devoted considerable time to writing and lecturing. He died on Oct. 8, 1967.

Further Reading

Roy Jenkins, Mr. Attlee: An Interim Biography (1948), is useful on Attlee's early years but continues only to 1945. Another early biography is Cyril Clemens, The Man from Limehouse: Clement Richard Attlee (1946). Attlee tells his own story to 1953 in As it Happened (1954). Francis Williams records conversations with Lord Attlee concerning the war and postwar periods in A Prime Minister Remembers (1961). Background studies which discuss Attlee include R. T. McKenzie, British Political Parties (1955; 2d ed. 1963); Henry Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (1961; 2d ed. 1965); D. N. Pritt, The Labour Government, 1945-51 (1963); Francis Boyd, British Politics in Transition, 1945-63 (1964); and Carl F. Brand, The British Labour Party: A Short History (1964). □

Attlee, Clement R. (1883–1967),British Labour politician who was deputy prime minister in Churchill's coalition government from May 1940 to July 1945, when he became prime minister.

After serving in the First World War, which he finished as a major, Attlee became Labour MP for Limehouse in 1922 and by 1935 was Labour Party leader. In May 1940, when Chamberlain could not continue as prime minister of a Conservative administration without Labour support, Attlee asked the Labour National Executive committee two questions: would it serve under Chamberlain and would it serve under someone else? When the answer was ‘no’ to the first question and ‘yes’ to the second, Chamberlain resigned.

Though not officially given the title until February 1942, Attlee was, de facto, deputy prime minister from the start of the new government. Both he and his deputy, Arthur Greenwood, were members of the war cabinet ( Greenwood stepped down in February 1942) and Attlee served as Lord Privy Seal until February 1942, then as secretary for the dominions until September 1943 when he was appointed lord president of the council. His main responsibilities lay with the civil side of government but he also ran the government's day-to-day business in the House of Commons and chaired the war cabinet and the Defence Committee in Churchill's absence.

Given their very different personalities and political beliefs the two men worked together with a remarkable degree of harmony. Attlee's loyalty rarely wavered, nor did he ever push his socialist programme of reform beyond acceptable limits, a stance which proved unpopular with some of his more left-wing colleagues. He was a man of few words but his criticisms could be biting.

Attlee accompanied the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in May 1945, but returned early for the July general election which gave him a majority of 170 seats. One of his first tasks was to take Churchill's place at the Potsdam conference (see TERMINAL) and he served as prime minister until 1951. See also UK, 3.

Bibliography

Attlee, C. , As It Happened (London, 1954).
Harris, K. , Attlee (London, 1982).

Attlee, Clement Richard, 1st Earl (1883–1967) British statesman, prime minister (1945–51). Attlee joined the Fabian Society in 1907, and became a Labour member of Parliament in 1922. He joined the Labour government in 1930, but resigned when Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Coalition (1931). Attlee became leader of the Labour Party in 1935. During World War II, he served in Winston Churchill's wartime cabinet, first as Dominions Secretary (1942–43) and then as deputy prime minister (1942–45). Attlee won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election. His administration was notable for the introduction of important social reforms, such as the National Health Service (NHS) and the nationalization of the power industries, the railways and the Bank of England. He also granted independence to India (1947) and Burma (1948). Attlee was re-elected in 1950, but was defeated by Winston Churchill in the 1951 general election. He continued to serve as leader of the opposition until he retired and accepted an earldom in 1955.

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Attlee, Clement Richard, 1st Earl Attlee (1883–1967) British Labour statesman, Prime Minister (1945–51). He became Labour Party leader in 1935, and deputy Prime Minister in 1942 in Churchill's coalition government. Following his party's landslide election victory in 1945, Attlee became the first Labour Prime Minister to command an absolute majority in the House of Commons. His term saw the creation of the modern welfare state and a wide programme of nationalization of major industries (including coal, gas, and electricity). Foreign policy initiatives included a progressive withdrawal from colonies and support for NATO.

Attlee, Clement Richard (1883–1967) British statesman. As Labour prime minister (1945–51), Attlee replaced Churchill midway through the Potsdam Conference (1945), attended also by President Harry S. Truman and Josef Stalin, and established Britain as a close ally with the United States early in the cold war confrontation with the Soviet Union.