Clement Attlee

In 1906, he became a volunteer at Haileybury House, a charitable club for working-class boys in Stepney in the East End of London run by his old school, and from 1907 to 1909 he served as the club's manager. Until then, his political views had been more conservative. However, after his shock at the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with the slum children, he came to the view that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty and that only direct action and income redistribution by the state would have any serious effect. This sparked a process that caused him to convert to socialism. He subsequently joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1908 and became active in local politics. In 1909, he stood unsuccessfully at his first election, as an ILP candidate for Stepney Borough Council.[10]

He also worked briefly as a secretary for Beatrice Webb in 1909, before becoming a secretary for Toynbee Hall. He worked for Webb's campaign of popularisation of the Minority Report as he was very active in Fabian Society circles, in which he would go round visiting many political societies—Liberal, Conservative and socialist—to explain and popularise the ideas, as well as recruiting lecturers deemed suitable to work on the campaign. In 1911, he was employed by the Government as an "official explainer"—touring the country to explain Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George's National Insurance Act. He spent the summer of that year touring Essex and Somerset on a bicycle, explaining the Act at public meetings. A year later, he became a lecturer at the London School of Economics, teaching Social science and Public administration. [11]

Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Attlee applied to join the British Army. Initially his application was turned down, as his age of 31 was seen as being too old; however, he was eventually commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 6th (Service) Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, on 30 September 1914.[12] On 9 February 1915 he was promoted to captain,[13] and on 14 March was appointed battalion adjutant.[14] The 6th South Lancashires were part of the 38th Brigade of the 13th (Western) Division, which served in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. Attlee's decision to fight caused a rift between him and his older brother Tom, who, as a conscientious objector, spent much of the war in prison.[15]

After a period spent fighting in Gallipoli, Attlee collapsed after falling ill with dysentery and was put on a ship bound for England to recover. When he woke up he wanted to get back to action as soon as possible, and asked to be let off the ship in Malta, where he stayed in hospital in order to recover. His hospitalisation coincided with the Battle of Sari Bair, which saw a large number of his comrades killed. Upon returning to action, he was informed that his company had been chosen to hold the final lines during the evacuation of Suvla. As such, he was the penultimate man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay, the last being General Stanley Maude.[16]

Attlee (seen in the centre) in 1916, aged 33, whilst serving in Mesopotamia.

The Gallipoli Campaign had been engineered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Although it was unsuccessful, Attlee believed that it was a bold strategy which could have been successful if it had been better implemented on the ground. This led to an admiration for Churchill as a military strategist, something which would make their working relationship in later years productive.[17]

He later served in the Mesopotamian campaign in what is now Iraq, where in April 1916 he was badly wounded, being hit in the leg by shrapnel from friendly fire while storming an enemy trench during the Battle of Hanna. The battle was an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the Siege of Kut, and many of Attlee's fellow soldiers were also wounded or killed. He was sent firstly to India, and then back to the UK to recover. On 18 December 1916 he was transferred to the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps,[18] and 1 March 1917 he was promoted to the temporary rank of major,[19] leading him to be known as "Major Attlee" for much of the inter-war period. He would spend most of 1917 training soldiers at various locations in England.[20] From 2 to 9 July 1917, he was the temporary commanding officer (CO) of the newly formed L (later 10th) Battalion, the Tank Corps at Bovington Camp, Dorset. From 9 July, he assumed command of the 30th Company of the same battalion; however, he did not deploy to France with it in December 1917,[21] as he was transferred back to the South Lancashire Regiment on 28 November.[22]

After fully recovering from his injuries, he was sent to France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front for the final months of the war. After being discharged from the Army in January 1919, he returned to Stepney, and returned to his old job lecturing part-time at the London School of Economics.[23]

Attlee returned to local politics in the immediate post-war period, becoming mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, one of London's most deprived inner-city boroughs, in 1919. During his time as mayor, the council undertook action to tackle slum landlords who charged high rents but refused to spend money on keeping their property in habitable condition. The council served and enforced legal orders on homeowners to repair their property. It also appointed health visitors and sanitary inspectors, reducing the infant mortality rate, and took action to find work for returning unemployed ex-servicemen.[24]

In 1920, while mayor, he wrote his first book, The Social Worker, which set out many of the principles that informed his political philosophy and that were to underpin the actions of his government in later years. The book attacked the idea that looking after the poor could be left to voluntary action. He wrote that:

In a civilised community, although it may be composed of self-reliant individuals, there will be some persons who will be unable at some period of their lives to look after themselves, and the question of what is to happen to them may be solved in three ways – they may be neglected, they may be cared for by the organised community as of right, or they may be left to the goodwill of individuals in the community.[25] [...] Charity 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.[26]

In 1921, George Lansbury, the Labour mayor of the neighbouring borough of Poplar, and future Labour Party leader, launched the Poplar Rates Rebellion; a campaign of disobedience seeking to equalise the poor relief burden across all the London boroughs. Attlee, who was a personal friend of Lansbury, strongly supported this. However, Herbert Morrison, the Labour mayor of nearby Hackney, and one of the main figures in the London Labour Party, strongly denounced Lansbury and the rebellion. During this period, Attlee developed a lifelong dislike of Morrison.[27][28][29]

At the 1922 general election, Attlee became the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Limehouse in Stepney. At the time, he admired Ramsay MacDonald and helped him get elected as Labour Party leader at the 1922 leadership election. He served as MacDonald's Parliamentary Private Secretary for the brief 1922 parliament. His first taste of ministerial office came in 1924, when he served as Under-Secretary of State for War in the short-lived first Labour government, led by MacDonald.[30]

Attlee opposed the 1926 General Strike, believing that strike action should not be used as a political weapon. However, when it happened, he did not attempt to undermine it. At the time of the strike, he was chairman of the Stepney Borough Electricity Committee. He negotiated a deal with the Electrical Trade Union so that they would continue to supply power to hospitals, but would end supplies to factories. One firm, Scammell and Nephew Ltd, took a civil action against Attlee and the other Labour members of the committee (although not against the Conservative members who had also supported this). The court found against Attlee and his fellow councillors and they were ordered to pay £300 damages. The decision was later reversed on appeal, but the financial problems caused by the episode almost forced Attlee out of politics.[31]

In 1927, he was appointed a member of the multi-party Simon Commission, a royal commission set up to examine the possibility of granting self-rule to India. Due to the time he needed to devote to the commission, and contrary to a promise MacDonald made to Attlee to induce him to serve on the commission, he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the Second Labour Government, which entered office after the 1929 general election.[32] Attlee's service on the Commission equipped him with a thorough exposure to India and many of its political leaders. By 1933 he argued that British rule was alien to India and was unable to make the social and economic reforms necessary for India's progress. He became the British leader most sympathetic to Indian independence (as a dominion), preparing him for his role in deciding on independence in 1947.[33][34]

In May 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem, and Attlee was given Mosley's post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In March 1931, he became Postmaster General, a post he held for five months until August, when the Labour government fell, after failing to agree on how to tackle the financial crisis of the Great Depression.[35] That month MacDonald and a few of his allies formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals, leading them to be expelled from Labour. MacDonald offered Attlee a job in the National Government, but he turned down the offer and opted to stay loyal to the main Labour party.[36]

After Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government, Labour was deeply divided. Attlee had long been close to MacDonald and now felt betrayed—as did most Labour politicians. During the course of the second Labour government, Attlee had become increasingly disillusioned with MacDonald, whom he came to regard as vain and incompetent, and of whom he later wrote scathingly in his autobiography. He would write:[37]

In the old days I had looked up to MacDonald as a great leader. He had a fine presence and great oratorical power. The unpopular line which he took during the First World War seemed to mark him as a man of character. Despite his mishandling of the Red Letter episode, I had not appreciated his defects until he took office a second time. I then realised his reluctance to take positive action and noted with dismay his increasing vanity and snobbery, while his habit of telling me, a junior Minister, the poor opinion he had of all his Cabinet colleagues made an unpleasant impression. I had not, however, expected that he would perpetrate the greatest betrayal in the political history of this country ... The shock to the Party was very great, especially to the loyal workers of the rank-and-file who had made great sacrifices for these men.

The 1931 general election held later that year was a disaster for the Labour Party, which lost over 200 seats, returning only 52 MPs to Parliament. The vast majority of the party's senior figures, including the Leader Arthur Henderson, lost their seats. Attlee, however, narrowly retained his Limehouse seat, with his majority being slashed from 7,288 to just 551. He was one of only three Labour MPs who had experience of government to retain their seats, along with George Lansbury and Stafford Cripps. Accordingly, Lansbury was elected Leader unopposed with Attlee as his deputy.[38]

Most of the remaining Labour MPs after 1931 were elderly trade union officials who could not contribute much to debates, Lansbury was in his 70s, and Stafford Cripps another main figure of the Labour front bench who had entered Parliament in 1931, was inexperienced. As one of the most capable and experienced of the remaining Labour MPs, Attlee therefore shouldered a lot of the burden of providing an opposition to the National Government in the years 1931–35, during this time he had to extend his knowledge of subjects which he had not studied in any depth before, such as finance and foreign affairs in order to provide an effective opposition to the government.[39]

Attlee effectively served as acting leader for nine months from December 1933, after Lansbury fractured his thigh in an accident, which raised Attlee's public profile considerably. It was during this period, however, that personal financial problems almost forced Attlee to quit politics altogether. His wife had become ill, and at that time there was no separate salary for the Leader of the Opposition. On the verge of resigning from Parliament, he was persuaded to stay by Stafford Cripps, a wealthy socialist, who agreed to make a donation to party funds to pay him an additional salary until Lansbury could take over again.[40]

During 1932–33 Attlee flirted with, and then drew back from radicalism, influenced by Stafford Cripps who was then on the radical wing of the party. He was briefly a member of the Socialist League, which had been formed by former Independent Labour Party (ILP) members, who opposed the ILP's disaffiliation from the main Labour Party in 1932. At one point he agreed with the proposition put forward by Cripps that gradual reform was inadequate and that a socialist government would have to pass an emergency powers act, allowing it to rule by decree to overcome any opposition by vested interests until it was safe to restore democracy. He admired Oliver Cromwell's strong-armed rule and use of major generals to control England. After looking more closely at Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and even his former colleague Oswald Mosley, leader of the new blackshirt fascist movement in Britain, Attlee retreated from his radicalism, and distanced himself from the League, and argued instead that the Labour Party must adhere to constitutional methods and stand forthright for democracy and against totalitarianism of either the left or right. He always supported the crown, and as Prime Minister was close to King George VI.[41][42]

George Lansbury, a committed pacifist, resigned as the Leader of the Labour Party at the 1935 Party Conference on 8 October, after delegates voted in favour of sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. Lansbury had strongly opposed the policy, and felt unable to continue leading the party. Taking advantage of the disarray in the Labour Party, the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announced on 19 October that a general election would be held on 14 November. With no time for a leadership contest, the party agreed that Attlee should serve as interim leader, on the understanding that a leadership election would be held after the general election.[43] Attlee therefore led Labour through the 1935 election, which saw the party stage a partial comeback from its disastrous 1931 performance, winning 38 per cent of the vote, the highest share Labour had won up to that point, and gaining over one hundred seats.[44]

Attlee stood in the subsequent leadership election, held soon afterward, where he was opposed by Herbert Morrison, who had just re-entered parliament in the recent election, and Arthur Greenwood: Morrison was seen as the favourite, but was distrusted by many sections of the party, especially the left wing. Arthur Greenwood meanwhile was a popular figure in the party; however, his leadership bid was severely hampered by his alcohol problem. Attlee was able to come across as a competent and unifying figure, particularly having already led the party through a general election. He went on to come first in both the first and second ballots, formally being elected Leader of the Labour Party on 3 December 1935.[45]

Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the Labour Party's official policy had been to oppose rearmament, instead supporting internationalism and collective security under the League of Nations.[46] At the 1934 Labour Party Conference, Attlee declared that, "We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty. We are deliberately putting a world order before our loyalty to our own country. We say we want to see put on the statute book something which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country".[47] During a debate on defence in Commons a year later, Attlee said "We are told (in the White Paper) that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves. We do not think you can do it by national defence. We think you can only do it by moving forward to a new world. A world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system. I shall be told that that is quite impossible".[48] Shortly after those comments, Adolf Hitler proclaimed that German rearmament offered no threat to world peace. Attlee responded the next day noting that Hitler's speech, although containing unfavourable references to the Soviet Union, created "A chance to call a halt in the armaments race ... We do not think that our answer to Herr Hitler should be just rearmament. We are in an age of rearmaments, but we on this side cannot accept that position".[49]

Attlee played little part in the events that would lead up to the abdication of Edward VIII, for despite Baldwin's threat to step down if Edward attempted to remain on the throne after marrying Wallis Simpson, Labour was widely accepted not to be a viable alternative government, owing to the National Government's overwhelming majority in the Commons. Attlee, along with Liberal leader Archibald Sinclair, was eventually consulted with by Baldwin on 24 November 1936, and Attlee agreed with both Baldwin and Sinclair that Edward could not remain on the throne, firmly eliminating any prospect of any alternative government forming were Baldwin to resign.[50]

In April 1936, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, introduced a Budget which increased the amount spent on the armed forces. Attlee made a radio broadcast in opposition to it, saying:

[The budget] was the natural expression of the character of the present Government. There was hardly any increase allowed for the services which went to build up the life of the people, education and health. Everything was devoted to piling up the instruments of death. The Chancellor expressed great regret that he should have to spend so much on armaments, but said that it was absolutely necessary and was due only to the actions of other nations. One would think to listen to him that the Government had no responsibility for the state of world affairs. [...] The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and the people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. [...] This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments.[51]

In June 1936, the Conservative MP Duff Cooper called for an Anglo-French alliance against possible German aggression and called for all parties to support one. Attlee condemned this: "We say that any suggestion of an alliance of this kind—an alliance in which one country is bound to another, right or wrong, by some overwhelming necessity—is contrary to the spirit of the League of Nations, is contrary to the Covenant, is contrary to Locarno is contrary to the obligations which this country has undertaken, and is contrary to the professed policy of this Government".[52] At the Labour Party conference at Edinburgh in October Attlee reiterated that "There can be no question of our supporting the Government in its rearmament policy".[53]

However, with the rising threat from Nazi Germany, and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, this policy eventually lost credibility. By 1937, Labour had jettisoned its pacifist position and came to support rearmament and oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.[54]

At the end of 1937, Attlee and a party of three Labour MPs visited Spain and visited the British Battalion of the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War. One of the companies was named the "Major Attlee Company" in his honour.[55] Attlee was supportive of the Republican government, and at the 1937 Labour conference moved the wider Labour Party towards opposing what he considered the "farce" of the Non-Intervention Committee organised by the British and French governments. In the House of Commons, Attlee stated "I cannot understand the delusion that if Franco wins with Italian and German aid, he will immediately become independent. I think it is a ridiculous proposition."[56] Dalton, the Labour Party's spokesman on foreign policy, also thought that Franco would ally with Germany and Italy. However, Franco's subsequent behaviour proved it was not such a ridiculous proposition.[57] As Dalton later acknowledged, Franco skilfully maintained Spanish neutrality, whereas Hitler would have occupied Spain if Franco had lost the Civil War.[58]

In 1938, Attlee opposed the Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler to give Germany the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland:

We all feel relief that war has not come this time... we cannot, however, feel that peace has been established, but that we have nothing but an armistice in a state of war. We have been unable to go in for care-free rejoicing. We have felt that we are in the midst of a tragedy... [and] humiliation. This has not been a victory for reason and humanity. It has been a victory for brute force. At every stage of the proceedings there have been time limits laid down... [the] terms laid down as ultimata. We have seen to-day a gallant, civilised and democratic people betrayed and handed over to a ruthless despotism... The events of these last few days constitute one of the greatest diplomatic defeats that this country and France have ever sustained. There can be no doubt that it is a tremendous victory for Herr Hitler. Without firing a shot, by the mere display of military force, he has achieved a dominating position in Europe which Germany failed to win after four years of war. He has overturned the balance of power in Europe... [and] destroyed the last fortress of democracy in Eastern Europe which stood in the way of his ambition. He has opened his way to the food, the oil and the resources which he requires in order to consolidate his military power, and he has successfully defeated and reduced to impotence the forces that might have stood against the rule of violence.[59] [...] The cause [of the crisis which we have undergone] was not the existence of minorities in Czechoslovakia; it was not that the position of the Sudeten Germans had become intolerable. It was not the wonderful principle of self-determination. It was because Herr Hitler had decided that the time was ripe for another step forward in his design to dominate Europe... The minorities question is no new one. [...] [And] short of a drastic and entire reshuffling of these populations there is no possible solution to the problem of minorities in Europe except toleration.[60]

However, the new Czechoslovakian state did not provide equal rights to the Slovaks and Sudeten Germans,[61] with the historian Arnold J. Toynbee already having noted that "for the Germans, Magyars and Poles, who account between them for more than one quarter of the whole population, the present regime in Czechoslovakia is not essentially different from the regimes in the surrounding countries".[62] Anthony Eden in the Munich debate acknowledged that there had been "discrimination, even severe discrimination" against the Sudeten Germans.[63]

In 1937, Attlee wrote a book entitled The Labour Party in Perspective that sold fairly well in which he set out some of his views. He argued that there was no point in Labour compromising on its socialist principles in the belief that this would achieve electoral success. He wrote: "I find that the proposition often reduces itself to this – that if the Labour Party would drop its socialism and adopt a Liberal platform, many Liberals would be pleased to support it. I have heard it said more than once that if Labour would only drop its policy of nationalisation everyone would be pleased, and it would soon obtain a majority. I am convinced it would be fatal for the Labour Party." He also wrote that there was no point in "watering down Labour's socialist creed in order to attract new adherents who cannot accept the full socialist faith. On the contrary, I believe that it is only a clear and bold policy that will attract this support".[64]

In the late 1930s, Attlee sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children, enabling them to leave Germany in 1939 and move to the UK. On arriving in Britain, Attlee invited one of the children into his home in Stanmore, north-west London, where he stayed for several months.[65]

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the War in Europe in May 1945, Attlee and Churchill favoured the coalition government remaining in place until Japan had been defeated. However, Herbert Morrison made it clear that the Labour Party would not be willing to accept this, and Churchill was forced to tender his resignation as Prime Minister and call an immediate election.[28]

The war had set in motion profound social changes within Britain and had ultimately led to a widespread popular desire for social reform. This mood was epitomised in the Beveridge Report of 1942, by the Liberal economist William Beveridge. The Report assumed that the maintenance of full employment would be the aim of post-war governments, and that this would provide the basis for the welfare state. Immediately upon its release, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. All major parties committed themselves to fulfilling this aim, but most historians say that Attlee's Labour Party was seen by the electorate as the party most likely to follow it through.[75][76]

Labour campaigned on the theme of "Let Us Face the Future", positioning themselves as the party best placed to rebuild Britain following the war,[77] and were widely viewed as having run a strong and positive campaign, while the Conservative campaign centred entirely around Churchill.[76] Despite opinion polls indicating a strong Labour lead, opinion polls were then viewed as a novelty which had not proven their worth, and most commentators expected that Churchill's prestige and status as a "war hero" would ensure a comfortable Conservative victory.[76] Before polling day, The Manchester Guardian surmised that "the chances of Labour sweeping the country and obtaining a clear majority ... are pretty remote".[78] The News of the World predicted a working Conservative majority, while in Glasgow a pundit forecast the result as Conservatives 360, Labour 220, Others 60.[79] Churchill, however, made some costly errors during the campaign. In particular, his suggestion during one radio broadcast that a future Labour Government would require "some form of a gestapo" to implement their policies was widely regarded as being in very bad taste and massively backfired.[28]

When the results of the election were announced on 26 July, they came as a surprise to most, including Attlee himself. Labour had won power by a huge landslide, winning 47.7 per cent of the vote to the Conservatives' 36 per cent.[80] This gave them 393 seats in the House of Commons, a working majority of 146. This was the first time in history that the Labour Party had won a majority in Parliament.[81] When Attlee went to see King George VI at Buckingham Palace to be appointed Prime Minister, the notoriously laconic Attlee and the famously tongue-tied King stood in silence; Attlee finally volunteered the remark, "I've won the election". The King replied "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News".[82]

Francis (1995) argues there was consensus both in the Labour's national executive committee and at party conferences on a definition of socialism that stressed moral improvement as well as material improvement. The Attlee government was committed to rebuilding British society as an ethical commonwealth, using public ownership and controls to abolish extremes of wealth and poverty. Labour's ideology contrasted sharply with the contemporary Conservative Party's defence of individualism, inherited privileges, and income inequality.[83] On 5 July 1948, Clement Attlee replied to a letter dated 22 June from James Murray and ten other MPs who raised concerns about West Indians who arrived on board the HMT Empire Windrush.[84] As for the prime minister himself, he was not much focused on economic policy, letting others handle the issues.[85]

Attlee's government also carried out their manifesto commitment for nationalisation of basic industries and public utilities. The Bank of England and civil aviation were nationalised in 1946. Coal mining, the railways, road haulage, canals and Cable and Wireless were nationalised in 1947, and electricity and gas followed in 1948. The steel industry was nationalised in 1951. By 1951 about 20 per cent of the British economy had been taken into public ownership.[86]

Nationalisation failed to provide workers with a greater say in the running of the industries in which they worked. It did, however, bring about significant material gains for workers in the form of higher wages, reduced working hours,[87] and improvements in working conditions, especially in regards to safety.[88] As historian Eric Shaw noted of the years following nationalisation, the electricity and gas supply companies became "impressive models of public enterprise" in terms of efficiency, and the National Coal Board was not only profitable, but working conditions for miners had significantly improved as well.[89]

Within a few years of nationalisation, a number of progressive measures had been carried out which did much to improve conditions in the mines, including better pay, a five-day working week, a national safety scheme (with proper standards at all the collieries), a ban on boys under the age of 16 going underground, the introduction of training for newcomers before going down to the coalface, and the making of pithead baths into a standard facility.[90]

The newly established National Coal Board offered sick pay and holiday pay to miners.[91] As noted by Martin Francis:

Union leaders saw nationalisation as a means to pursue a more advantageous position within a framework of continued conflict, rather than as an opportunity to replace the old adversarial form of industrial relations. Moreover, most workers in nationalised industries exhibited an essentially instrumentalist attitude, favouring public ownership because it secured job security and improved wages rather than because it promised the creation of a new set of socialist relationships in the workplace.[92]

The Attlee government placed strong emphasis on improving the quality of life in rural areas, benefiting both farmers and other consumers. Security of tenure for farmers was introduced, while consumers were protected by food subsidies and the redistributive effects of deficiency payments. Between 1945 and 1951, the quality of rural life was improved by improvements in gas, electricity, and water services, as well as in leisure and public amenities. In addition, the 1947 Transport Act improved provision of rural bus services, while the Agriculture Act 1947 established a more generous subsidy system for farmers.[93] Legislation was also passed in 1947 and 1948 which established a permanent Agricultural Wages Board to fix minimum wages for agricultural workers.[94][95]

Attlee's government made it possible for farm workers to borrow up to 90 per cent of the cost of building their own houses, and received a subsidy of £15 a year for 40 years towards that cost.[92] Grants were also made to meet up to half the cost of supplying water to farm buildings and fields, the government met half the cost of bracken eradication and lime spreading, and grants were paid for bringing hill farming land into use that had previously been considered unfit for farming purposes.[96]

In 1946, the National Agricultural Advisory Service was set up to supply agricultural advice and information.[97] The Hill Farming Act 1946 introduced for upland areas a system of grants for buildings, land improvement, and infrastructural improvements such as roads and electrification. The Act also continued a system of headage payments for hill sheep and cattle that had been introduced during the war. The Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 enabled (in effect) tenant farmers to have lifelong tenancies and made provision for compensation in the event of cessations of tenancies.[98] In addition, the Livestock Rearing Act 1951[99] extended the provisions of the Hill Farming Act 1946 to the upland store cattle and sheep sector.[100]

At a time of world food shortages, it was vital that farmers produced the maximum possible quantities. The government encouraged farmers via subsidies for modernisation, while the National Agricultural Advisory Service provided expertise and price guarantees. As a result of the Attlee government's initiatives in agriculture, there was a 20 per cent increase in output between 1947 and 1952, while Britain adopted one of the most mechanised and efficient farming industries in the world.[101]

The Attlee government ensured provisions of the Education Act 1944 were fully implemented, with free secondary education becoming a right for the first time. Fees in state grammar schools were eliminated, while new, modern secondary schools were constructed.[102]

The school leaving age was raised to 15 in 1947, an accomplishment helped brought into fruition by initiatives such as the HORSA ("Huts Operation for Raising the School-leaving Age") scheme and the S.F.O.R.S.A. (furniture) scheme.[103] University scholarships were introduced to ensure that no one who was qualified "should be deprived of a university education for financial reasons",[104] while a large school building programme was organised.[105] A rapid increase in the number of trained teachers took place, and the number of new school places was increased.[106]

Increased Treasury funds were made available for education, particularly for upgrading school buildings suffering from years of neglect and war damage.[107] Prefabricated classrooms were built, and 928 new primary schools were constructed between 1945 and 1950. The provision of free school meals was expanded, and opportunities for university entrants were increased.[108] State scholarships to universities were increased,[109] and the government adopted a policy of supplementing university scholarships awards to a level sufficient to cover fees plus maintenance.[103]

Many thousands of ex-servicemen were assisted to go through college who could never have contemplated it before the war.[110] Free milk was also made available to all schoolchildren for the first time.[111] In addition, spending on technical education rose, and the number of nursery schools was increased.[112] Salaries for teachers were also improved, and funds were allocated towards improving existing schools.[113]

In 1947 the Arts Council of Great Britain was set up to encourage the arts.[114]

The Ministry of Education was established under the 1944 Act, and free County Colleges were set up for the compulsory part-time instruction of teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 who were not in full-time education.[115] An Emergency Training Scheme was also introduced which turned out an extra 25,000 teachers in 1945–1951.[116] In 1947, Regional Advisory Councils were set up to bring together industry and education to find out the needs of young workers "and advise on the provision required, and to secure reasonable economy of provision".[117] That same year, thirteen Area Training Organisations were set up in England and one in Wales to coordinate teacher training.[118]

Attlee's government, however, failed to introduce the comprehensive education for which many socialists had hoped. This reform was eventually carried out by Harold Wilson's government. During its time in office, the Attlee government increased spending on education by over 50 per cent, from £6.5 billion to £10 billion.[119]

Petticoat Lane Market in London, 1947

The most significant problem facing Attlee and his ministers remained the economy, as the war effort had left Britain nearly bankrupt.[120] Overseas investments had been used up to pay for the war. The transition to a peacetime economy, and the maintaining of strategic military commitments abroad led to continuous and severe problems with the balance of trade. This resulted in strict rationing of food and other essential goods continuing in the post war period to force a reduction in consumption in an effort to limit imports, boost exports, and stabilise the Pound Sterling so that Britain could trade its way out of its financial state.

The abrupt end of the American Lend-Lease programme in August 1945 almost caused a crisis. Some relief was provided by the Anglo-American loan, negotiated in December 1945. The conditions attached to the loan included making the pound fully convertible to the US dollar. When this was introduced in July 1947, it led to a currency crisis and convertibility had to be suspended after just five weeks.[86] The UK benefited from the American Marshall Aid program in 1948, and the economic situation improved significantly. Another balance of payments crisis in 1949 forced Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stafford Cripps, into devaluation of the pound.[86]

Despite these problems, one of the main achievements of Attlee's government was the maintenance of near full employment. The government maintained most of the wartime controls over the economy, including control over the allocation of materials and manpower, and unemployment rarely rose above 500,000, or 3 per cent of the total workforce.[86] Labour shortages proved a more frequent problem. The inflation rate was also kept low during his term.[89] The rate of unemployment rarely rose above 2 per cent during Attlee's time in office, whilst there was no hard-core of long-term unemployed. Both production and productivity rose as a result of new equipment, while the average working week was shortened.[121]

The government was less successful in housing, which was the responsibility of Aneurin Bevan. The government had a target to build 400,000 new houses a year to replace those which had been destroyed in the war, but shortages of materials and manpower meant that less than half this number were built. Nevertheless, millions of people were rehoused as a result of the Attlee government's housing policies. Between August 1945 and December 1951, 1,016,349 new homes were completed in England, Scotland, and Wales.[93]

When the Attlee government was voted out of office in 1951, the economy had been improved compared to 1945. The period from 1946 to 1951 saw continuous full employment and steadily rising living standards, which increased by about 10 per cent each year. During that same period, the economy grew by 3 per cent a year, and by 1951 the UK had "the best economic performance in Europe, while output per person was increasing faster than in the United States".[122] Careful planning after 1945 also ensured that demobilisation was carried out without having a negative impact upon economic recovery, and that unemployment stayed at very low levels.[107] In addition, the number of motor cars on the roads rose from 3 million to 5 million from 1945 to 1951, and seaside holidays were taken by far more people than ever before.[123] A Monopolies and Restrictive Practices (Inquiry and Control) Act was passed in 1948, which allowed for investigations of restrictive practices and monopolies.[124]

1947 proved a particularly difficult year for the government; an exceptionally cold winter that year caused coal mines to freeze and cease production, creating widespread power cuts and food shortages. The Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell was widely blamed for failing to ensure adequate coal stocks, and soon resigned from his post. The Conservatives capitalised on the crisis with the slogan 'Starve with Strachey and shiver with Shinwell' (referring to the Minister of Food John Strachey).[125]

The crisis led to an unsuccessful plot by Hugh Dalton to replace Attlee as Prime Minister with Ernest Bevin. Later that year Stafford Cripps tried to persuade Attlee to stand aside for Bevin. These plots petered out after Bevin refused to cooperate. Later that year, Dalton resigned as Chancellor after inadvertently leaking details of the budget to a journalist. He was replaced by Cripps.[126]

In foreign affairs, the Attlee government was concerned with four main issues: post-war Europe, the onset of the Cold War, the establishment of the United Nations, and decolonisation. The first two were closely related, and Attlee was assisted by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. Attlee also attended the later stages of the Potsdam Conference, where he negotiated with President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin.

Attlee shaking hands with US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes upon his arrival at National Airport in Washington, 1945

Attlee with Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 1945

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Government faced the challenge of managing relations with Britain's former war-time ally, Stalin and the Soviet Union. Ernest Bevin was a passionate anti-communist, based largely on his experience of fighting communist influence in the trade union movement. Bevin's initial approach to the USSR as Foreign Secretary was "wary and suspicious, but not automatically hostile".[93] Attlee himself sought warm relations with Stalin. He put his trust in the United Nations, rejected notions that the Soviet Union was bent on world conquest, and warned that treating Moscow as an enemy would turn it into one. This put Attlee at sword's point with his foreign minister, the Foreign Office, and the military who all saw the Soviets as a growing threat to Britain's role in the Middle East. Suddenly in January 1947, Attlee reversed his position and agreed with Bevin on a hardline anti-Soviet policy.[127]

In an early "good-will" gesture that was later heavily criticised, the Attlee government allowed the Soviets to purchase, under the terms of a 1946 UK-USSR Trade agreement, a total of 25 Rolls-Royce Nene jet engines in September 1947 and March 1948. The agreement included an agreement not to use them for military purposes. The price was fixed under a commercial contract; a total of 55 jet engines were sold to the USSR in 1947.[128] However, the Cold War intensified during this period and the Soviets, who at the time were well behind the West in jet technology, reverse-engineered the Nene and installed their own version in the MiG-15 interceptor. This was used to good effect against US-UK forces in the subsequent Korean War, as well as in several later MiG models.[129]

After Stalin took political control of most of Eastern Europe, and began to subvert other governments in the Balkans, Attlee's and Bevin's worst fears of Soviet intentions were realised. The Attlee government then became instrumental in the creation of the successful NATO defence alliance to protect Western Europe against any Soviet expansion.[130] In a crucial contribution to the economic stability of post-war Europe, Attlee's Cabinet was instrumental in promoting the American Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Europe. He called it one of the "most bold, enlightened and good-natured acts in the history of nations".[131]

A group of Labour MPs, organised under the banner of "Keep Left", urged the government to steer a middle way between the two emerging superpowers, and advocated the creation of a "third force" of European powers to stand between the US and USSR. However, deteriorating relations between Britain and the USSR, as well as Britain's economic reliance on America following the Marshall Plan, steered policy towards supporting the US.[86] In January 1947, fear of both Soviet and American nuclear intentions led to a secret meeting of the Cabinet, where the decision was made to press ahead with the development of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, an issue which later caused a split in the Labour Party. Britain's first successful nuclear test, however, did not occur until 1952, one year after Attlee had left office.[86]

The London dock strike of July 1949, led by Communists, was suppressed when the Attlee government sent in 13,000 Army troops and passed special legislation to promptly end the strike. His response reveals Attlee's growing concern that Soviet expansionism, supported by the British Communist Party, was a genuine threat to national security, and that the docks were highly vulnerable to sabotage ordered by Moscow. He noted that the strike was caused not by local grievances, but to help communist unions who were on strike in Canada. Attlee agreed with MI5 that he faced "a very present menace".[132]

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (left) with Attlee in 1945

Decolonisation was never a major election issue, but Attlee gave the matter a great deal of attention and was the chief leader in beginning the process of decolonisation of the British Empire.[133][134]

In August 1948, the Chinese Communists' victories caused Attlee to begin preparing for a Communist takeover of China. It kept open consulates in Communist-controlled areas and rejected the Chinese Nationalists' requests that British citizens assist in the defence of Shanghai. By December, the government concluded that although British property in China would likely be nationalised, British traders would benefit in the long run from a stable, industrialising Communist China. Retaining Hong Kong was especially important to him; although the Chinese Communists promised to not interfere with its rule, Britain reinforced the Hong Kong Garrison during 1949. When the victorious Chinese Communists government declared on 1 October 1949 that it would exchange diplomats with any country that ended relations with the Chinese Nationalists, Britain became the first western country to formally recognise the People's Republic of China in January 1950.[135] In 1954, a Labour Party delegation including Attlee visited China at the invitation of then Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. Attlee became the first high-ranking western politician to meet Mao Zedong.[136]

Attlee orchestrated the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. Attlee in 1928–1934 had been a member of the Indian Statutory Commission (otherwise known as the Simon Commission). He became the Labour Party expert on India and by 1934 was committed to granting India the same independent dominion status that Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa had recently been given.[137] He faced strong resistance from the die-hard Conservative imperialists, led by Churchill, who opposed both independence and efforts led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to set up a system of limited local control by Indians themselves.[138] Attlee and the Labour leadership were sympathetic to both the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Pakistan movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. During the Second World War, Attlee was in charge of Indian affairs. He set up the Cripps Mission in 1942, which tried and failed to bring the factions together. When Congress called for passive resistance in the Quit India movement of 1942–1945, it was the British regime ordered the widespread arrest and internment for the duration of tens of thousands of Congress leaders as part of its efforts to crush the revolt.[139]

Labour's election Manifesto in 1945 called for "the advancement of India to responsible self-government".[140] In 1942 the British Raj tried to enlist all major political parties in support of the war effort. Congress, led by Nehru and Gandhi, demanded immediate independence and full control by Congress of all of India. That demand was rejected by the British, and Congress opposed the war effort with its "Quit India campaign". The Raj immediately responded in 1942 by imprisoning the major national, regional and local Congress leaders for the duration. Attlee did not object.[141] By contrast, the Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, strongly supported the war effort. They greatly enlarged their membership and won favour from London for their decision. Attlee retained a fondness for Congress and until 1946, accepted their thesis that they were a non-religious party that accepted Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and everyone else.[142] Nevertheless, this difference in opinion between the Congress and the Muslim League towards the British war effort encouraged Attlee and his government to consider further negotiations with the Muslim League.

The Muslim League insisted that it was the only true representative of all of the Muslims of India. With violence escalating in India after the war, but with British financial power at a low ebb, large-scale military involvement was impossible. Viceroy Wavell said he needed a further seven army divisions to prevent communal violence if independence negotiations failed. No divisions were available; independence was the only option.[143] Given the increasing demands of the Muslim League, independence implied a partition that set off heavily Muslim Pakistan from the main portion of India.[144] After becoming Prime Minister in 1945 Attlee originally planned to give India Dominion status in 1948.[145]

Attlee suggested in his memoirs that "traditional" colonial rule in Asia was no longer viable. He said that he expected it to meet renewed opposition after the war both by local national movements as well as by the United States.[146] The prime minister's biographer John Bew says that Attlee hoped for a transition to a multilateral world order and a Commonwealth, and that the old British empire "should not be supported beyond its natural lifespan" and instead be ended "on the right note." His exchequer Hugh Dalton meanwhile feared that post-war Britain could no longer afford to garrison its empire. [147]

Ultimately the Labour government gave full independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 through the Indian Independence Act. This involved creating a demarcation between the two regions which was known as the Radcliffe Line. The boundary between the newly created states of Pakistan and India involved the widespread resettlement of millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. Almost immediately, extreme anti-Hindu and anti-Sikh violence ensued in Lahore, Multan and Dacca when the Punjab province and the Bengal province were split in the Partition of India. This was followed by a rapid increase in widespread anti-Muslim violence in several areas including Amritsar, Rajkot, Jaipur, Calcutta and Delhi. Historian Yasmin Khan estimates that over a million people were killed of which several were women and children.[148][149] Gandhi himself was assassinated in January 1948.[150] Attlee remarked Gandhi as the "greatest citizen" of India and added, "this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem. He had become the expression of the aspirations of the Indian people for independence".[151][152][153]

Historian Andrew Roberts says the independence of India was a "national humiliation" but it was necessitated by urgent financial, administrative, strategic and political needs.[154] Churchill in 1940–1945 had tightened the hold on India and imprisoned the Congress leadership, with Attlee's approval. Labour had looked forward to making it a fully independent dominion like Canada or Australia. Many of the Congress leaders in the India had studied in England, and were highly regarded as fellow idealistic socialists by Labour leaders. Attlee was the Labour expert on India and took special charge of decolonisation.[155] Attlee found that Churchill's viceroy, Field Marshal Wavell, was too imperialistic, too keen on military solutions, and too neglectful of Indian political alignments.[156] The new Viceroy was Lord Mountbatten, the dashing war hero and a cousin of the King.[157]

Attlee also sponsored the peaceful transition to independence in 1948 of Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).[158]

VE Day celebrations in British-controlled Jerusalem (1945)

One of the most urgent problems facing Attlee concerned the future of the British mandate in Palestine, which had become too troublesome and expensive to handle. British policies in Palestine were perceived by the Zionist movement and the Truman administration to be pro-Arab and anti-Jewish, and Britain soon found itself unable to maintain public order in the face of a Jewish insurgency and a civil war.

During this period, 70,000 Holocaust survivors attempted to reach Palestine as part of the Aliyah Bet refugee movement. Attlee's government tried several tactics to prevent the migration.[159] Five ships were bombed by the Secret Intelligence Service (though with no casualties) with a fake Palestinian group created to take responsibility.[160] The navy apprehended over 50,000 refugees en route, interning them in detention camps in Cyprus. Conditions in the camps were harsh and faced global criticism. Later, the refugee ship Exodus 1947 would be sent back to mainland Europe, instead of being taken to Cyprus.[159]

In response to the increasingly unpopular mandate, Attlee ordered the evacuation of all British military personnel and handed over the issue to the United Nations, a decision which was widely supported by the general public in Britain.[161] With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the camps in Cyprus were eventually closed, with their former occupants finally completing their journey to the new country.[159]

The government's policies with regard to the other colonies, particularly those in Africa, focused on keeping them as strategic Cold War assets while modernising their economies. The Labour Party had long attracted aspiring leaders from Africa and had developed elaborate plans before the war. Implementing them overnight with an empty treasury proved too challenging.[162] A major military base was built in Kenya, and the African colonies came under an unprecedented degree of direct control from London. Development schemes were implemented to help solve Britain's post-war balance of payments crisis and raise African living standards. This "new colonialism" worked slowly, and had failures such as the Tanganyika groundnut scheme.[163]

The 1950 election gave Labour a massively reduced majority of five seats compared to the triple-digit majority of 1945. Although re-elected, the result was seen by Attlee as very disappointing, and was widely attributed to the effects of post-war austerity denting Labour's appeal to middle-class voters.[164] With such a small majority leaving him dependent on a small number of MPs to govern, Attlee's second term was much tamer than his first. Some major reforms were nevertheless passed, particularly regarding industry in urban areas and regulations to limit air and water pollution.[165][166]

By 1951, the Attlee government was exhausted, with several of its most senior ministers ailing or ageing, and with a lack of new ideas.[167] Attlee's record for settling internal differences in the Labour Party fell in April 1951, when there was a damaging split over an austerity Budget brought in by the Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, to pay for the cost of Britain's participation in the Korean War. Aneurin Bevan resigned to protest against the new charges for "teeth and spectacles" in the National Health Service introduced by that Budget, and was joined in this action by several senior ministers, including the future Prime Minister Harold Wilson, then the President of the Board of Trade. Thus escalated a battle between the left and right wings of the Party that continues today.[168] Finding it increasingly impossible to govern, Attlee's only chance was to call a snap election in October 1951, in the hope of achieving a more workable majority and to regain authority.[169] The gamble failed: Labour narrowly lost to the Conservative Party, despite winning considerably more votes (achieving the largest Labour vote in electoral history). Attlee tendered his resignation as Prime Minister the following day, after six years and three months in office.[170]

The Statue of Clement Attlee in its new position at Queen Mary University of London

On 30 November 1988, a bronze statue of Clement Attlee was unveiled by Harold Wilson (the next Labour Prime Minister after Attlee) outside Limehouse Library in Attlee's former constituency.[203] By then Wilson was the last surviving member of Attlee's cabinet,[204] and the unveiling of the statue would be one of the last public appearances by Wilson, who was by that point in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease; he died at the age of 79 in May 1995.[205]

Limehouse Library was closed in 2003, after which the statue was vandalised. The council surrounded it with protective hoarding for four years, before eventually removing it for repair and recasting in 2009.[204] The restored statue was unveiled by Peter Mandelson in April 2011, in its new position less than a mile away at the Queen Mary University of London's Mile End campus.[206]

There is also a statue of Clement Attlee in the Houses of Parliament[207] that was erected, instead of a bust, by parliamentary vote in 1979. The sculptor was Ivor Roberts-Jones.

Although his parents were devout Anglicans, with one of his brothers becoming a clergyman and one of his sisters a missionary, Attlee himself is usually regarded as an agnostic. In an interview he described himself as "incapable of religious feeling", saying that he believed in "the ethics of Christianity" but not "the mumbo-jumbo". When asked whether he was an agnostic, Attlee replied "I don't know".[217][218]

Attlee's other publications