Clement Attlee

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill, and served twice as Leader of the Opposition from 1935 to 1940 and from 1951 to 1955. Attlee remains the longest serving Labour leader.

Attlee was born into an upper-middle-class family, the son of a wealthy London solicitor. After attending the public school Haileybury College and the University of Oxford, he practised as a barrister. The volunteer work he carried out in London's East End exposed him to poverty, and his political views shifted leftwards thereafter. He joined the Independent Labour Party, gave up his legal career, and began lecturing at the London School of Economics. His work was interrupted by service as an officer in the First World War. In 1919, he became mayor of Stepney and in 1922 was elected Member of Parliament for Limehouse. Attlee served in the first Labour minority government led by Ramsay MacDonald in 1924, and then joined the Cabinet during MacDonald's second minority (1929–1931). After retaining his seat in Labour's landslide defeat of 1931, he became the party's Deputy Leader. Elected Leader of the Labour Party in 1935, and at first advocating pacificism and opposing re-armament, he became a critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in the lead-up to the Second World War. Attlee took Labour into the wartime coalition government in 1940 and served under Winston Churchill, initially as Lord Privy Sealand then as Deputy Prime Minister from 1942.

As the European front of WWII reached its conclusion, the war cabinet headed by Churchill was dissolved and elections were scheduled to be held. The Labour Party, led by Attlee, won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election, on their post-war recovery platform. Following the election, Attlee led the construction of the first Labour majority government. His government's Keynesian approach to economic managementaimed to maintain full employment, a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act, the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system.

Attlee's foreign policy focused on decolonization efforts which he delegated to Ernest Bevin, but personally oversaw the partition of India (1947), the independence of Burma and Ceylon, and the dissolution of the British mandates of Palestine and Transjordan. He and Bevin encouraged the United States to take a vigorous role in the Cold War; unable to afford military intervention in Greece during its civil war, he called on Washington to counter the communists there. The strategy of containment was formalized between the two nations through the Truman Doctrine. He supported the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with American money and, in 1949, promoted the NATO military alliance against the Soviet bloc. After leading Labour to a narrow victory at the 1950 general election, he sent British troops to fight alongside South Korea in the Korean War.

Attlee had inherited a country close to bankruptcy following the Second World War and beset by food, housing and resource shortages; despite his social reforms and economic programme, these problems persisted throughout his premiership, alongside recurrent currency crises and dependence on US aid. His party was narrowly defeated by the Conservatives in the 1951 general election, despite winning the most votes. He continued as Labour leader but retired after losing the 1955 election and was elevated to the House of Lords, where he served until his death in 1967. In public, he was modest and unassuming, but behind the scenes his depth of knowledge, quiet demeanour, objectivity and pragmatism proved decisive. He is often ranked as one of the greatest British prime ministers. Attlee's reputation among scholars has grown, thanks to his role in the Second World War, creation of the modern welfare state, and the establishment of the NHS. He is also commended for continuing the special relationship with the US and active involvement in NATO.

Biography

Clement Attlee was born in Putney, Surrey, United Kingdom on 3 January 1883. Attlee, the seventh of eight children, was educated at Haileybury and read history at Oxford. After leaving university, he went to London to study law and qualify as a lawyer, and he volunteered at Toynee Hall in the poor East end of London. Attlee became a socialist as a result of this experience, and he joined the Fabian Society in 1907 and the Independent Labor Party in 1908. He also worked as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, but his career was cut short when he joined the British Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914; he served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, rising to Major. On discharge from the army in 1919, he returned to London, became Mayor of Stepney, and was endorsed as a UK Labor Party MP, winning election in 1922. Attlee served as Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's Private Secretary, and he served as Under-Secretary at the War Office in 1924. In 1927, he examined British rule in India. In 1930, he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and he became Postmaster-General a year later.

Prime Minister

Attlee opposed MacDonald's formation of the 1931 national government, and he was elected Labor leader in 1935. From May 1940, he served as Lord Privy Seal, and he became Deputy Prime Minister in 1942 and Dominions Secretary. Attlee gained a reputation as a skillful manager of disagreements and disputes among colleagues, and his party won the general election in 1945. As Prime Minister, he oversaw the granting of independence to India, Pakistan, and Burma in 1947, withdrew from Palestine a year later, and (unsuccessfully) attempted to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union. However, he was best remembered for his domestic affairs, adhering to Keynesian economics. He also introduced a national health service, nationaliuzed the Bank of England and the gas, coal, electricity, and railway industries, relocated industries and planned new towns, and pursued full employment. Attlee also generated policies of public spending at a time of record public debt, and he maintained tight control over public consumption. The government's popularity declined due to the maintenance of wartime rationing and the slowness of his government's house-building policies, and the party won a majority of only five seats in the 1950 general election. In 1951, his party lost to the Conservative Party, and he remained leader of the opposition until 1955, when he went to the House of Lords. Attlee lacked charisma and a good public image, but he transformed the party into a stable pillar of the British political system before resigning as Labor Party leader in 1955.