Conflicting Views of the Attlee Governments by Professor Kevin Jeffreys. University of Plymouth new perspective. Volume 3. Number 3. March 1998 Summary: Labour won a resounding election victory in 1945, but from 1947 its popularity began to ebb, with economic, financial and foreign policy problems, and it went out of office in 1951. In the meantime it instituted substantial reforms, including the creation of the welfare state and the nationalisation of important industries. How should the party's achievements be judged? Did Labour under Attlee miss a golden opportunity to introduce socialism, or did his governments attempt too much and over-stretch the economy? Kevin Jefferys accepts neither of these alternatives. Instead he praises Labour for making Britain a better place in which to live. Introduction: Attlee becomes Prime Minister WINSTON CHURCHILL'S WIFE was said to have remarked that electoral defeat in 1945 was a blessing in disguise. If so, Churchill said, the blessing was extremely well disguised. In spite of his reputation as Britain's saviour during the Second World War, the Conservatives were decisively rejected at the polls.

At the last pre-war election, Labour trailed the Tory-dominated National Government by over 200 parliamentary seats. But as victory against Hitler came into sight during 1943-44, Churchill and other leading Conservatives misjudged the mood of the nation. By championing the wishes of millions who hoped to see a 'New Jerusalem' emerging out of the ashes of war, Labour swept into office in 1945 with one of the biggest landslide victories in modern politics. As Churchill licked his wounds, the enigmatic figure of Clement Attlee entered No. 10 Downing Street, at the head of the first-ever Labour government with a clear majority over all other parties combined. Attlee was much under-rated at the time. He clearly lacked certain qualities. On the 'equivalent of the Richter scale for oratory', Peter Hennessy has written, 'the needle scarcely flickered'. Yet Attlee was a leader with considerable self-belief, and his shrewd common sense and skilful handling of colleagues enabled him to remain at the helm for six gruelling years. He was confronted by desperate economic hardships and found his parliamentary majority greatly reduced in 1950.

Yet by the time his second, short-lived administration came to an end in 1951, Attlee could reflect with pride on what had been achieved. The face of domestic politics had been transformed by a new 'post-war settlement': this included a mixed economy containing many nationalised industries; the maintenance of high wartime levels of employment; and the introduction of what became known as the welfare state. Historians, social scientists, journalists and politicians have debated long and hard about the type of society Britain became in the immediate post-war years. Before assessing some of the conflicting interpretations, we mightfirst set the scene by outlining four broad stages in the history of the Attlee governments. Full Speed Ahead 1945-46 Britain had lost a quarter of its national wealth in defeating Hitler; without urgent attempts to recover lost exports markets, the government faced a 'financial Dunkirk'. Yet fortified by the negotiation of a controversial American loan, ministers forged ahead with an extensive reform programme, as promised in Labour's election manifesto. The pace of change in the early days was encouraged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, whose economic policy was designed to favour ordinary working-class families, most of whom were still suffering from the privations associated with war.

Food subsidies were retained in order to keep down living costs; progressive rates of taxation were kept in place; and regional development was pursued vigorously, so helping to avoid any return to mass unemployment in pre-war industrial blackspots. Under the watchful guidance of Herbert Morrison, Labour's organisational supremo, several major industries were taken into public ownership. In later years the development of a mixed economy was to falter, but in the aftermath of war nationalisation provided a popular means of seeking to redeem industries such as coal mining that had been inefficient and unprofitable in private hands. Concern about 'our people' - the working classes - also underpinned the rapid introduction of welfare reform. In 1942 the Beveridge Report publicised the need for an overhaul of social security provision. Labour's National Insurance Act of 1946 provided for the first time a comprehensive safety net by bringing together benefits to insure against sickness, unemployment and old age. In housing, Labour faced the task of fitting a population enlarged by a million into properties reduced in number by 700,000 owing to bomb damage. After a slow start, one million new homes were built.

Eighty per cent were council houses (rather than being built for private sale) - a clear reversal of Tory priorities in the 1930s. But the jewel in Labour's welfare crown was the National Health Service (NHS), which introduced free access to a wide range of hospital and general practitioner services. The Conservatives voted against the 1946 NHS Act, though opposition dwindled as the popularity of free medical care became obvious, especially among working-class women hitherto unable to insure themselves against ill-health. Labour charges that the Tories would dismantle the welfare state had to be strongly denied. In the words of one Tory MP, 'No one shoots Santa Claus'. The Crises of 1947 The government's honeymoon period came to an abrupt halt in 1947. In February ministers struggled to cope with the 'winter crisis': fuel shortages compounded by the coldest weather in living memory. As much of industry ground to a temporary halt, the Minister of Fuel and Power, Manny Shinwell, came under attack. 'Shiver with Shinwell' became a potent Tory slogan.

In the summer fresh turmoil was created when it became clear that the American loan came with strings attached: the so-called 'convertibility clause' intensified Britain's balance-of-payments problem in trading with the affluent USA and brought sterling under intense pressure on the foreign exchanges. Dalton as Chancellor was forced into a rapid tightening of economic policy - a humiliation from which his reputation never recovered. In November, after controversy over the delivery of his emergency budget, Dalton resigned. In the wake of these recurrent economic difficulties, ministers were faced with a gradual erosion of public confidence. By the autumn the Tories were ahead in the opinion polls for the first time since Attlee came to power. In domestic politics, 1947 thus marked an important point of transition: from the confidence of the early months in power to a less buoyant phase in which ministers spoke of 'consolidating' advances already made. Stafford Cripps and 'Austerity' 1948-50 The period between 1948 and the general election in 1950 became indelibly associated in the public mind with drabness and petty restrictions.

This 'age of austerity' was closely identified with the persona of Dalton's successor, Sir Stafford Cripps, a vegetarian teetotaller noted for cold baths at four in the morning and a prodigious work rate that included three hours at his desk before breakfast. Hoping for similar self-discipline from the nation, Cripps continued with a wartime-style 'fair shares' policy of food rationing. This was in spite of growing resentment among middle-class women over ever-lengthening queues to obtain food of dubious quality, such as the infamous South African fish snoek, which tasted so unappetising that the whole bulk consignment had to be sold off for reprocessing as cat food. Under Cripps, Labour's domestic policy became more pragmatic. Welfare expenditure was tightened, talk of 'socialist planning' was downplayed, and sterling was devalued in order to make British exports more competitive overseas, above all in American markets. Churchill depicted devaluation as a national humiliation, and the opposition recovered further ground by claiming that scarcities in the shops were entirely the product of government mismanagement.

This proved a telling theme at the general election in February 1950, which saw a swing against Labour of 2.9 per cent (compared with 12 per cent against the Conservatives in 1945), so leaving Labour in office but as Dalton said 'without authority or power'. Whereas many working-class areas remained loyal to Labour, the party fared badly in middle-class districts in southern England, where austerity proved to be a prime cause of voter disaffection. Attlee remained in Downing Street, but this time - unlike 1945 - there were no joyous celebrations in the streets. The Second Attlee Government 1950-1 For several months, the reconstituted government locked capable of confounding those who felt Labour could not survive another full term. But in the summer of 1950 the outbreak of the Korean War proved divisive and contentious. Several Labour MPs felt that the decision to send British troops to combat Communist forces in North Korea smacked of subservience to American wishes. More seriously, the decision to further increase an already large defence budget precipitated the first major split in party ranks since 1945.

Nye Bevan as the architect of the NHS refused to accept the case made by Hugh Gaitskell - Chancellor after Cripps resigned on medical grounds - that rearmament required spending cutbacks on the home front. Bevan's resignation over the breaching of the principle of a free health service symbolised an emerging division over future strategy that was to bedevil Labour for years to come. 'The End Is Nye' claimed Tory propagandists, and this proved the case for Attlee when a further small swing was sufficient to bring the Tories back to power at the election of October 1951. Churchill, having spent six fairly leisurely years recuperating from his wartime exploits, could at last leave behind the humiliation of defeat in 1945. Perhaps his wife had been right after all. Interpreting the Attlee Years How then have observers and commentators summed up Attlee's legacy? Among the majority of historians, Labour has received a fair trial. The counsel for the defence has included distinguished writers such as Kenneth Morgan, Henry Pelling, Alec Cairncross and Peter Hennessy (see Further Reading below). The Attlee era, so the argument goes, constituted Labour's finest hour.

This was a period that went some way towards satisfying wartime demands for a New Jerusalem: the economy recovered from the ravages of war while avoiding a return to mass unemployment, and simultaneously ministers never wavered in their determination to fulfil the Beveridge promise of social protection 'from the cradle to the grave'. Other historians have been less impressed. For left-wing critics, the immediate post-war years were marked by a betrayal of socialist idealism and by wasted opportunities. Instead of using public backing as evident in 1945 to introduce wholesale socialist change, Labour instead opted for cautious reformism: for example failing to break down entrenched class barriers. In Jim Fyrth's recent collection of fifteen essays the left-wing case for the prosecution receives its most extended treatment yet. The tone for the volume is set by John Saville's introduction, which claims that the Attlee government 'disillusioned its own militants' by achieving only modest reform, so providing a 'springboard for the rich totake off into the profiteers' paradise of the 1950s'. Correlli Barnett and Industrial Decline From an alternative critical perspective, Correlli Barnett has attacked Labour for introducing too much rather than too little socialism.

In his concern to explain Britain's post-war 'industrial decline', Barnett is highly critical of wartime evangelists of a 'Brave New World', such as Beveridge, who were allowed to prevail over those aware of the 'Cruel Real World' of lost exports and vanished overseas investment. The folly of giving priority to welfare reform over economic regeneration was compounded by Attlee after 1945, with the result that Britain missed a unique chance to remake itself industrially while her rivals were crippled by defeat and occupation. In this line of thinking, the newly imposed 'burden' of a welfare state was unsustainable in the longer-term. This forceful critique was taken up by Conservative politicians seeking to 'roll back' the frontiers of the state in the 1980s, though it has found little support among academics. Economic historians point out that Labour was remarkably successful at boosting industrial production, manufacturing output and the volume of exports (the latter up by 73.1 per cent between 1945 and 1951).

The priority given to social needs was hardly surprising given the nation's verdict in 1945: voters promised jam tomorrow were adamant that 'never again' should there be a return to the misery associated with inter-war Britain. If there was a failure to modernise infrastructure, then this was not considered necessary: the swift rise of European competition in the 1950s was not something that could be predicted in advance. Nor was there anything incompatible about aiming for both economic regeneration and social reform. Far from imposing crippling costs, the British version of the welfare state consumed quite limited resources, especially when seen as a positive contributor to the economy and not simply as a burden upon the taxpayer. Barnett has also been taken to task for failing to acknowledge the 'fair-shares' ethos left by the searing experience of war. Recent studies have been keen to stress that Labour ministers hoped to turn people into better citizens; values such as duty and responsibility were frequently extolled, and the needs of the community were always to come before the wishes of the individual. There was, in other words, a desire for moral as well as economic change, an unusual combination of what Peter Hennessy calls 'hope and public purpose'.

Indeed one cause of Labour's demise in 1950-51 has been identified as the party's mistaken view that voters fully shared its ethical vision. Measures to sustain a wartime sense of community, instead of transforming people into active citizens, foundered in the face of apathy. But the effort had been made. 'There were many more responsible than the Labour Party', conclude the authors of 'England Arise', for ensuring that the high ideals of the 1940s were never achieved. Conclusion Several critiques, in the view of this writer, mistakenly judge the Attlee years against inappropriate yardsticks. Criticism has often been unduly influenced by later developments in politics and society. Britain's 'industrial disease' became a matter of widespread concern from the 1960s onwards. Yet Correlli Barnett's talk of decline finds little echo in the debates of the late 1940s, when much of the nation took pride in having survived and recovered from war.

Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s proved gravely disappointing to activists hoping for fundamental change, and left-wing historians have read back from this a willingness on the part of Attlee's ministers to oppose radical solutions. But at the time very few Labour MPs or party workers had clear ideas about what 'more socialism' might amount to in domestic policy. Indeed for most of the Labour movement, from the leadership down to the rank-and-file, the Attlee years were soon regarded as something of a golden age. One reason for this sense of shared pride was that Labour stalwarts remembered what came before. When judged against pre-1945 standards, Britain for most of its citizens had become a more tolerable place in which to live. Austerity, the inevitable by-product of war, grated among the middle classes especially, and ministers were increasingly forced on the defensive by opposition exploitation of public weariness with the ethos of fair shares. But in 1951, while the Tories won more seats, Labour secured the highest ever number of total votes, based on massive support in industrial strongholds.

For the working classes who made up the majority of the population, job security was on a level unknown in the 1930s, fresh opportunities were opening up for the young in education, and pensions approximated as never before to a living income. Affordable, decent housing came within the reach of thousands of lower income families, and the NHS treated millions of patients in its early years of operation. One woman recalled how, on the evening before the health service was formally launched in July 1948, she was delivered of a baby shortly before midnight. The next morning she received a bill from the doctor; had the baby been born fifteen minutes later, there would have been no charge. This was what Attlee meant when he spoke of having achieved a 'revolution without tears'. Words and concepts to note financial Dunkirk: British troops were forced to make a hasty exit from the Continent by advancing German forces at Dunkirk in 1940; five years later the British economy faced humiliating ruin unless remedies were found. mixed economy: an economy containing a mixture of both state-controlled and privately owned industries. welfare state: social and economic policies designed to provide security against want and ill-health, e.g. social security, health service etc.

enigmatic: puzzling, hard to understand. recurrent: occurring again and again. ethos: distinctive character or atmosphere. demise: death, ending. What were the reasons for the decline in Labour's popularity after 1945? w What were the main achievements of the 1945-51 Labour governments? w 'Attlee's Labour governments were too timid to grasp the nettle of socialism.' Discuss this view. w Why, and with what justification, has it been argued that the 1945-51Labour governments saddled the British economy with an insupportable welfare state? Further Reading : Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory. British Dreams, British Realities 1945-50, Macmillan, 1995; Stephen Brooke (ed.), Reform and Reconstruction. Britain after the War 1945-51, Manchester University Press, 1995; Alec Cairncross, Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy 1945-51, Methuen, 1985; Jim Fyrth (ed.), Labour's High Noon.

The Government and the Economy 1945-51, Lawrence and Wishart, 1993; Peter Hennessy, Never Again: Britain 1945-51, Jonathan Cape, 1992; Kevin Jefferys, The Attlee Governments 1945-51, Longman, 1992; Kenneth Morgan, Labour In Power 1945-51, Oxford University Press, 1984; Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments 1945-51, Macmillan, 1984; John Saville, The Labour Movement in Britain, Faber and Faber, 1988; Nick Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years, Pinter, 1991; Steve Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, 'England Arise!' The Labour Party and Popular Politics In 1940s Britain, Manchester University Press 1995.

Rebuilding Post-war Britain: Conflicting Views of the Attlee Governments, 1945-51 by Kevin Jeffreys ï¿½ new perspective 1998 Kevin Jefferys is Reader in Contemporary History at Plymouth University. He is general editor of the Manchester University Press series 'Documents in Contemporary History', and his publications include The Labour Party since 1945, Macmillan, 1993 and The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, MUP, 1995. Clement Attlee Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Clement Attlee '''The First Earl Attlee of Walthamstow Term of Office: Labour Born in Putney, London, England into a middle-class family, and educated at Haileybury and University College, Oxford , Attlee trained as a lawyer. He turned to socialism after working with slum children in the East End of London . Good works for the poor did not attract him; he did not want there to be any poor. He left the Fabian Society and joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908 .

Attlee became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1913 , but enlisted promptly for World War I . Having reached Major, and been seriously wounded, he became mayor of the London borough of Stepney in 1919 and a Labour MP for the Limehouse division of Stepney in 1922. He was Ramsay MacDonald 's parliamentary private secretary for the brief 1922 parliament. Attlee served in the first two Labour governments, as under-secretary of state for war in 1924 with Ramsay MacDonald , then as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and later Postmaster General in the 1929 to 1931 MacDonald government. He actively supported the General Strike . In 1928 he reluctantly joined the Simon Commission, a royal commission on India . As a result of the time he had to devote to this, he was not initiall offered a ministerial post in the Second Labour Government. In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley attacked his own government favouring Keynesian action against unemployment, and lost. Attlee got Mosley's old job as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster .

He was Postmaster General in 1931, when most of the party's leaders lost their seats; this helped him win the deputy leadership under George Lansbury . Attlee, and Labour, opposed appeasement . He became leader in 1935 , and remained until 1955. In the World War II coalition government, three interconnected committees ran the war: Churchill chaired the war cabinet and the defence committee. Attlee was his regular deputy in committee and in parliament, and chaired the lord president's committee, which ran the civil side of the war. Only he and Churchill remained in the war cabinet throughout. Attlee was Lord Privy Seal (1940-2), Deputy Prime Minister (1942), Dominions Secretary (1942-3), and Lord President of the Council (1943-5). The landslide Khaki Election returned Labour to power in 1945 , Attlee becoming prime minister. The party had clear aims. Reforms took place, including the nationalisation of utilities and creation of the modern Welfare State . India became independent, and Britain's role in Palestine ended.

Attlee's Health Secretary, Nye Bevan , was at the forefront of creating the National Health Service . The substantial enactment of its manifesto commitments earned Atlee's government a contemporary level of esteem matched by few previous or later administrations. Its political opponents were sometimes caricatured as having nothing to criticise in its record with the sole exception of the Tanganyika groundnut scheme, a plan to cultivate tracts of what is now Tanzania with peanuts . This enterprise was abandoned at substantial financial loss to the tax payer. The Labour Party was returned to power in the general election of 1950 . The large reduction that it suffered in its parliamentary majority was mostly due to the Conservative opposition recovering support at the expense of the Liberal Party. Labour lost the General Election of 1951 after being weakened by splits exacerbated by strain of financing British involvement in the Korean War . Attlee led the party in opposition until 1955, when he retired from the commons and was elevated to the peerage to take his seat in the House of Lords as Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood on 16 December 1955 .

He died in 1967 and the title passed to his son Martin Richard Attlee, 2nd Earl Attlee (1927 - 1991). The title is now held by Clement Attlee's grandson John Richard Attlee, 3rd Earl Attlee. The third earl (a member of the Conservative Party ) retained his seat in the Lords as one of the few hereditary peers elected to the House under an amendment to the 1999 House of Lords Act. Churchill famously described Attlee as "a modest little man with a lot to be modest about". Attlee's self-description was in the form of a limerick : Few thought he was even a starter. There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, July 1946 - Arthur Greenwood becomes Paymaster-General as well as Lord Privy Seal. October 1946 - The Secretary of State for War, the Secretary of State for Air, and the First Lord of the Admiralty leave the cabinet. Albert Victor Alexander becomes Minister without Portfolio. Arthur Creech Jones succeeds George Henry Hall as Secretary of State for the Colonies.

December 1946 - Albert Victor Alexander succeeds Attlee as Minister of Defence. February 1947 - George Tomlinson succeeds Ellen Wilkinson as Minister of Education. March 1947 - Arthur Greenwood ceases to be Paymaster-General, remaining Lord Privy Seal. His successor as Paymaster-General is not in the cabinet. April 1947 - Lord Inman succeeds Arthur Greenwood as Lord Privy Seal. Lord Listowel succeeds Lord Pethick-Lawrence as Secretary of State for India and Burma. July 1947 - The Dominion Affairs Office becomes the Office of Commonwealth Relations. Addison remains at the head. August 1947 - The India and Burma Office becomes the Burma office with India's independence. Lord Listowel remains in office. September 1947 - Sir Stafford Cripps becomes Minister of Economic Affairs. Harold Wilson succeeds Cripps as President of the Board of Trade. October 1947 - Lord Addison succeeds Lord Inman as Lord Privy Seal. Philip Noel-Baker succeeds Lord Addison as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations . Arthur Woodburn succeeds Joseph Westwood as Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, leaves the Cabinet. November 1947 - Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer. January 1948 - The Burma Office is abolished with Burma's independence. May 1948 : Hugh Dalton re-enters the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster . Lord Pakenham enters the Cabinet as Minister of Civil Aviation. July 1948 : Lord Addison becomes Paymaster-General. April 1949 : Lord Addison ceased to be Paymaster-General, remaining Lord Privy Seal. His successor as Paymaster-General is not in the Cabinet. Tom Williams: Minister of Agriculture George Alfred Isaacs: Minister of Labour and National Service Emanuel Shinwell : Minister of Defence Hugh Dalton: Minister of Town and Country Plannind October 1950 : Hugh Gaitskell succeeds Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer. January 1951 : Aneurin Bevan succeeds G.A. Isaacs as Minister of Labour and National Service. Bevan's successor as Minister of Health is not in the cabinet. Hugh Dalton's post is renamed Minister of Local Government and Planning.

March 1951 : Herbert Stanley Morrison succeeds Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary. Lord Addison succeeds Morrison as Lord President. Bevin succeeds Addison as Lord Privy Seal. April 1951 : Richard Stokes succeeds Ernest Bevin as Lord Privy Seal. Sir Hartley Shawcross succeeds Harold Wilson as President of the Board of Trade. Preceded by: Hugh Gaitskell | British statesman | Britannica.com British statesman Alternative Title: Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell Hugh Gaitskell Hugh Gaitskell, in full Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell (born April 9, 1906, London , England —died January 18, 1963, London), British statesman, leader of the British Labour Party from December 1955 until his sudden death at the height of his influence. Gaitskell, 1955 Keystone/FPG After teaching political economy at the University of London , Gaitskell served through World War II in the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Entering the House of Commons in 1945, he was appointed minister of fuel and power in 1947, minister of state for economic affairs in 1950, and chancellor of the exchequer (succeeding Sir Stafford Cripps ) later the same year, leaving office when the Labour government was defeated in 1951. Gaitskell was chosen to succeed Clement Attlee as Labour leader in 1955, in preference to two more experienced candidates, Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan . He seemed discredited in 1959 when his party lost the general election, and in 1960 when the party executive, which opposed unilateral nuclear disarmament, was defeated on that issue at the annual party conference. At the 1961 party conference, however, he secured a reversal of the decision on nuclear weapons and then was able to reunite the party. In 1962, again at the party conference, he made a notable speech opposing Great Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (Common Market), for which the Conservative government was unsuccessfully negotiating.

Learn More in these related articles: Clement Attlee C Clement Attlee Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British Labour politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Minister under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill's Conservative Party at the 1945 general election. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term and the first to have a majority in Parliament. The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created – aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service.

After initial Conservative opposition to Keynesian fiscal policy, this settlement was broadly accepted by all parties until Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in the 1970s and neoliberalism became mainstream. His government also presided over the decolonisation of a large part of the British Empire when India , Pakistan , Burma , Sri Lanka , Jordan , and Palestine obtained their independence. In 2004, he was voted the greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 professors organised by MORI. Early life and family He was born in Putney, London, into a middle-class family, the seventh of eight children. His father was Henry Attlee (1841–1908), a solicitor, and his mother was Ellen Bravery Watson (1847–1920). He was educated at Northaw School, Haileybury and University College, Oxford, where he graduated with a Second Class Honours BA in Modern History in 1904. Attlee then trained as a lawyer, and was called to the Bar in 1906.

From 1906 to 1909, Attlee worked as manager of Haileybury House, a club for working-class boys in Limehouse in the East End of London run by his old school. Prior to this, his political views had been Conservative. However, he was shocked by the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with slum children. He came to the view that that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty, and only massive action and income redistribution by the state would have any serious effect. This caused him to convert to socialism . He joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908, and became active in London local politics. In 1909 he worked briefly as secretary for Beatrice Webb , and from 1909 to 1910 he worked as secretary for Toynbee Hall. In 1911 he took up a government job as an 'official explainer', touring the country to explain 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.

Attlee became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1912, but promptly applied for a Commission in August 1914 for World War I . Military service during World War I During World War I, Attlee was given the rank of captain and served with the South Lancashire Regiment in the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey . After a period of fighting in the heat, sand, and flies he became ill with dysentery and was sent to hospital in Malta to recover. This may have saved his life, as while he was in hospital he missed the Battle of Sari Bair in which many of his comrades were killed. Attlee had gained a reputation among his superiors as a competent leader. When he returned to the front, he was informed that his company had been chosen to hold the final lines when Gallipoli was evacuated. He was the last-but-one man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay (the last being General F.S. Maude). The Gallipoli campaign had been masterminded by Winston Churchill. Attlee believed that it was a bold strategy, which could have been successful if it had been better implemented.

This gave him an admiration for Churchill as a military strategist, which improved their working relationship in later years. He later served in the Mesopotamian Campaign in Iraq , where he was badly wounded at El Hannah after being hit in the leg by shrapnel from an exploding shell while taking enemy trenches. He was sent back to England to recover, and spent most of 1917 training soldiers. He was sent to France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front for the last months of the war. In 1917 he had been promoted to the rank of Major, and continued to be known as "Major Attlee" for much of the inter-war period. His decision to fight in the war caused a rift between him and his older brother Tom Attlee, who as a pacifist and a conscientious objector spent much of the war in prison. After the war, he returned to teaching at the London School of Economics until 1923. Marriage and children Attlee met Violet Millar on a trip to Italy in 1921. Within a few weeks of their return they became engaged and were married at Christ Church, Hampstead on 10 January 1922.

Theirs would be a devoted marriage until her death in 1964. Their four children were Lady Janet Helen (b. 1923), Lady Felicity Ann (1925–2007), Martin Richard (1927–91) and Lady Alison Elizabeth (b. 1930). Early political career Local politics Attlee returned to local politics in the immediate post-war period, becoming mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1919, one of London's poorest inner-city boroughs. 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 house-owners to repair their property. It also appointed health visitors and sanitary inspectors, and reduced the infant mortality rate. In 1920, while mayor, he wrote his first book, "The Social Worker", which set out many of the principles which informed his political philosophy and were to underpin the actions of his government in latter years. The book attacked the idea that looking after the poor could be left to voluntary action.

He wrote: 'Charity 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 a whim'. He went on to write: '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. The first way is intolerable, and as for the third: 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'. He strongly supported the Poplar Rates Rebellion led by George Lansbury in 1921. This put him into conflict with many of the leaders of the London Labour Party, including Herbert Morrison.

Member of Parliament At the 1922 general election, Attlee became the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Limehouse in Stepney. He helped Ramsay MacDonald, whom at the time he admired, get elected as Labour Party leader at the 1922 Labour leadership election, a decision which he later regretted. He served as Ramsay 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. 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 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. 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. As a result of the time he needed to devote to the commission, and contrary to a promise made to Attlee by MacDonald to induce him to serve on the commission, he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the Second Labour Government. However, his unsought service on the Commission was to equip Attlee (who was later to have to decide the future of India as Prime Minister) with a thorough exposure to India and many of its political leaders. In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem. Attlee was given Mosley's post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was Postmaster-General at the time of the 1931 crisis, during which most of the party's leaders lost their seats.

During the course of the second Labour government, Attlee had become increasingly disillusioned by Ramsay MacDonald, whom he came to regard as vain and incompetent, and later wrote scathingly of him in his autobiography. Opposition during the 1930s Deputy Leader of the Labour Party After the downfall of the second Labour government, the 1931 General Election was held. The election was a disaster for the Labour Party, which lost over 200 seats; most of the party's senior figures lost their seats, including Arthur Henderson the party leader. George Lansbury and Attlee were among the few surviving Labour MPs who had served in government. Accordingly, Lansbury became leader of the party and Attlee became deputy leader. Attlee served as acting leader for nine months from December 1933, after Lansbury fractured his thigh in an accident. This raised his public profile. During this period, financial problems again almost forced Attlee to quit politics, as his wife was ill, and there was then no separate salary for the Leader of the Opposition. He was persuaded to stay on, however, by Stafford Cripps, a wealthy socialist who agreed to pay him an additional salary.

Leader of the Opposition George Lansbury, a convinced pacifist, resigned as leader at the 1935 Labour Party conference, after the party voted in favour of sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia , a policy which Lansbury strongly opposed. With a general election looming, the Parliamentary Labour Party then appointed Attlee as interim leader, on the understanding that a leadership election would be held after the general election. Attlee led Labour through the 1935 general election, which saw the party stage a partial recovery from its disastrous performance in 1931, gaining over one hundred seats. In the post-election leadership contest held in November 1935, Attlee was opposed by Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood. Morrison was seen as the favourite by many, but was distrusted by many sections of the party, especially the left. Arthur Greenwood's leadership bid was hampered by his alcohol problem . Attlee came first in both the first and second ballots, and subsequently retained the leadership, a post which he would retain until 1955.

Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s , the Labour Party's official policy, supported by Attlee, was to oppose rearmament, and support collective security under the League of Nations . However, with the rising threat from Nazi Germany , and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, this policy lost credibility. By 1937, Labour had jettisoned its pacifist position and came to support rearmament and oppose Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement . In 1937 Attlee 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. Deputy Prime Minister Attlee remained opposition leader when war broke out in September 1939. The disastrous Norwegian campaign resulted in a motion of no confidence in the government. Although Chamberlain survived this, the reputation of his administration was so badly damaged that it was clear that a coalition government was necessary. The crisis coincided with the Labour Party Conference.

Even if Attlee had been prepared to serve under Chamberlain (in a "national emergency government"), he would not have been able to carry the party with him. Consequently, Chamberlain tendered his resignation, and Labour and the Liberals entered a coalition government led by Winston Churchill. In the World War II coalition government, three interconnected committees ran the war. Churchill chaired the War Cabinet and the Defence Committee. Attlee was his regular deputy in these committees, and answered for the government in parliament when Churchill was absent. Attlee chaired the third body, the Lord President's Committee, which ran the civil side of the war. As Churchill was most concerned with executing the war, the arrangement suited both men. Only he and Churchill remained in the war cabinet from the formation of the Government of National Unity to the 1945 election. Attlee was Lord Privy Seal (1940–42), Deputy Prime Minister (1942–45), Dominions Secretary (1942–43), and Lord President of the Council (1943–45).

Attlee supported Churchill in his continuation of Britain's resistance after the French capitulation in 1940, and proved a loyal ally to Churchill throughout the conflict. 1945 general election Following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Attlee and Churchill wanted the coalition government to last until Japan had been defeated. However, Herbert Morrison argued that the party would not accept this, and the Labour National Executive Committee agreed with him. Churchill responded by resigning as coalition Prime Minister and decided to call an election at once. The war set in motion profound social changes within Britain, and led to a popular desire for social reform . This mood was epitomised in the Beveridge Report. The report assumed that the maintenance of full employment would be the aim of postwar governments, and that this would provide the basis for the welfare state. All major parties were committed to this aim, but perhaps Attlee and Labour were seen by the electorate as the best candidates to follow it through. Labour campaigned on the theme of "[ Let Us Face the Future]" and positioned themselves as the party best placed to rebuild Britain after the war, while the Conservatives campaign centred around Churchill. With the hero status of Churchill, few expected a Labour victory.

However Churchill made some errors during the campaign: His suggestion during a radio broadcast, that a Labour government would require "some form of gestapo " to implement their socialist policies, was widely seen as being in bad taste, and backfired. The results of the election when they were announced on 26 July, came as a surprise to almost everyone, including Attlee: Labour had been swept to power on a landslide, winning just under 50% of the vote, to the Conservatives' 36%. Labour won 393 seats, giving them a majority of 147. The story goes that when Attlee visited King George VI at Buckingham Palace to kiss hands, the notoriously laconic Attlee and the notoriously tongue-tied George VI stood for some minutes in silence, before Attlee finally volunteered the remark "I've won the election." The King replied "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News." Prime Minister Now Prime Minister, Attlee appointed Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary; Hugh Dalton was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer (it had widely been expected to be the other way around).

Stafford Cripps became President of the Board of Trade, while Herbert Morrison was given the post of Deputy Prime Minister and given overall control of Labour's nationalisation programme. Aneurin Bevan became Minister of Health, whilst Ellen Wilkinson, the only woman to serve in Attlee's government, became Minister of Education. Domestic policy Health and Welfare reforms In domestic policy , the party had clear aims. Attlee's first Health Secretary, Aneurin Bevan, fought against the general disapproval of the medical establishment in creating the British National Health Service. Although there are often disputes about its organisation and funding, British parties to this day must still voice their general support for the NHS in order to remain electable. The government set about implementing William Beveridge's plans for the creation of a 'cradle to grave' welfare state, and set in place an entirely new system of social security. Among the most important pieces of legislation was the National Insurance Act 1946, in which, people in work paid a flat rate of national insurance . In return, they (and the wives of male contributors) were eligible for flat-rate pensions, sickness benefit, unemployment benefit, and funeral benefit.

Various other pieces of legislation provided for child benefit and support for people with no other source of income. Nationalisation Attlee's government also carried out their manifesto commitment for nationalisation of basic industries and public utillities. 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, electricity and gas followed in 1948. The steel industry was finally nationalised in 1951. By 1951 about 20% of the British economy had been taken into public ownership. Other changes included the creation of a National Parks system, the introduction of the Town and Country Planning system, and the repeal of the Trades Disputes Act 1927. The Economy Nevertheless, the most significant problem remained the economy; the war effort had left Britain nearly bankrupt. The war had cost Britain about a quarter of its national wealth. Overseas investments had been wound 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 meant that strict rationing of food and other essential goods were continued 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 crisis. The abrupt ending of the American Lend-Lease program in August 1945 almost caused a crisis. This was mitigated by the Anglo-American loan negotiated in December 1945 by John Maynard Keynes , which provided some respite. The conditions attached to the loan included making the pound fully convertible to the dollar. When this was introduced in July 1947, it led to a currency crisis and convertibility had to be suspended after just five weeks. Britain benefited from the American Marshall Aid program from 1948, and the economic situation improved significantly. However another balance of payments crisis in 1949 forced Chancellor of the Exchequer Stafford Cripps into devaluation of the pound. 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% of the total workforce. In fact labour shortages proved to be more of a problem. One area where the government was not quite as successful was in housing, which was also 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. 1947 crisis 1947 proved to be 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 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. However these plots petered out after Bevin refused to co-operate.

Later that year, Hugh Dalton resigned as Chancellor after inadvertently leaking details of the budget to a journalist, he was replaced by Cripps. Relations with the Press and Royal Family Attlee's government faced constant hostility from Conservative supporting sections of society, including the Conservative supporting press. The Sunday Times journalist James Margach, wrote of the Attlee years; "I have never known the Press so consistently and irresponsibly political, slanted and prejudiced". As early as 1946 the Attorney-General Sir Hartley Shawcross attacked "the campaign of calumny and misrepresentation which the Tory Party and the Tory stooge press has directed at the Labour government. Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to tell lies". In 1946 the government set up a Royal Commission on the press which eventually led to the setting up of the Press Council in 1953. Relations with the Royal Family were also strained.

A letter from Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), dated 17 May 1947, showed "her decided lack of enthusiasm for the socialist government" and describes the British electorate as "poor people, so many half-educated and bemused" for electing Attlee over Winston Churchill, whom she saw as a war hero. That said, according to Lord Wyatt, this was to be expected as the Queen Mother was "the most right-wing member of the Royal Family." Foreign policy Postwar Europe and the Cold War In foreign affairs, Attlee's cabinet was concerned with four issues: postwar 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 in these matters by Ernest Bevin. Attlee attended the later stages of the Potsdam Conference in the company of Truman and Stalin . In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Government faced the challenge of managing relations with Britain's former war-time ally, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union . Attlee's Foreign Secretary, the former trade union leader Ernest Bevin, was passionately anti-communist, based largely on his experience of fighting communist influence in the trades union movement.

Bevin's initial approach to the USSR as Foreign Secretary has been described by historian Kenneth O. Morgan as "wary and suspicious, but not automatically hostile". In an early "good-will" gesture that has been criticised more recently, the Attlee government allowed the Soviets access, under the terms of a 1946 UK-USSR Trade Agreement, to several Rolls-Royce Nene jet engines . 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, used to good effect against US-UK forces in the subsequent Korean War, as well as in several later MiG models. 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 borne out. The Attlee government then became instrumental in the creation of the successful NATO defence alliance to protect Western Europe against any Soviet aggression. 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.

A group of left wing 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 'third force' of European powers to stand between the USA and USSR. However, deteriorating relations between Britain and the USSR, and Britain's economic reliance on America, steered policy towards supporting America. Fear of Soviet and American intentions led, in January 1947, to a secret meeting of senior cabinet ministers, where it was decided to press ahead with the development of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, an issue which later caused a split in the Labour Party, although the first successful test did not occur until 1952, after Attlee had left office. In 1950 American president Harry S. Truman said that atomic weapons may be used in the Korean War. Attlee became concerned with the power America possessed and therefore called a meeting of some foreign affairs ministers in order to discuss the issue that had evolved. Decolonisation Attlee's government was responsible for the first significant decolonisation of part of the British Empire -- India.

Attlee appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten Viceroy of India, and agreed to Mountbatten's request for plenipotentiary powers for negotiating Indian independence. In view of implacable demands by the political leadership of the Islamic community in British India for a Muslim homeland, Mountbatten conceded the partition of India between a Hindu-majority India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan (which at the time incorporated East Pakistan , now Bangladesh ). Partition was accomplished only at the cost of large-scale population movements and heavy communal bloodshed on both sides. The independence of Burma and Ceylon was also negotiated around this time. Some of the new countries became British Dominions , the genesis of the modern Commonwealth of Nations . One of the most urgent problems concerned the future of the Palestine Mandate. This was a very unpopular commitment and the evacuation of British troops and subsequent handing over of the issue to the UN was widely supported by the public. The government's policies with regard to the other colonies, however, particularly those in Africa, were very different.

A major military base was built in Kenya, and the African colonies came under an unprecedented degree of direct control from London, as development schemes were implemented with a view to helping solve Britain's desperate post-war balance of payments crisis, and raising African living standards . This 'new colonialism' was, however, generally a failure: in some cases, such as a then-infamous Tanganyika groundnut scheme, spectacularly so. Demise of Attlee's government The Labour Party was returned to power in the general election of 1950 with a much reduced parliamentary majority under the first-past-the-post voting system , despite an increase in the popular vote. It was at this time that a degree of Conservative opposition recovered at the expense of the declining Liberal Party. By 1951, the Attlee government was looking increasingly exhausted, with several of its most important ministers having died or ailing.

The party split in 1951 over the austerity budget brought in by Hugh Gaitskell to pay for the cost of Britain's participation in the Korean War : Aneurin Bevan, architect of the National Health Service (NHS), resigned to protest against the new charges for "teeth and spectacles" introduced by the budget, and was joined in this action by the later prime minister, Harold Wilson. Labour lost the general election of 1951 to Churchill's renewed Conservatives, despite polling more votes than in the 1945 election and more votes nationwide than the Conservative party, and, indeed, the most votes Labour had ever won. His short list of Resignation Honours announced in November 1951 included an Earldom for William Jowitt, Lord Chancellor. Return to opposition and retirement Following the defeat in 1951, Attlee continued to lead the party in opposition. His last four years as leader are widely seen as one of the Labour Party's weaker periods. The party became split between its right wing led by Hugh Gaitskell and its left led by Aneurin Bevan.

One of his main reasons for staying on as leader was to frustrate the leadership ambitions of Herbert Morrison, whom Attlee disliked for political and personal reasons. Attlee had reportedly at one time favoured Bevan to succeed him as leader, but this became problematic after the latter split the party. Attlee, now aged 72, contested the 1955 general election against Anthony Eden, which saw the Conservative majority increase. He retired as leader on 7 December 1955, having led the party for over twenty years, and was succeeded by Hugh Gaitskell. He retired from the Commons and was elevated to the peerage to take his seat in the House of Lords as Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood on 16 December 1955. In 1958 he was, along with Bertrand Russell, one of a group of notables to establish the Homosexual Law Reform Society, which campaigned for the decriminalization of homosexual acts in private by consenting adults,a reform which was voted through parliament nine years later.

He attended Churchill's funeral in January 1965 - elderly and frail by then, he had to remain seated in the freezing cold as the coffin was carried, having tired himself out by standing at the rehearsal the previous day. He lived to see Labour return to power under Harold Wilson in 1964, but also to see his old constituency of Walthamstow West fall to the Conservatives in a by-election in September 1967. Clement Attlee died of pneumonia at the age of 84 at Westminster Hospital on 8 October 1967. On his death, the title passed to his son Martin Richard Attlee, 2nd Earl Attlee (1927–91). It is now held by Clement Attlee's grandson John Richard Attlee, 3rd Earl Attlee. The third earl (a member of the Conservative Party) retained his seat in the Lords as one of the hereditary peers to remain under an amendment to Labour's 1999 House of Lords Act. When Attlee died, his estate was sworn for probate purposes at a value of £7,295, a relatively modest sum for so prominent a figure.

His ashes are buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey , close to those of Lord Passfield and Ernest Bevin. Legacy "A modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about", is a quote about Attlee that is very commonly ascribed to Churchill (although Churchill in fact respected Attlee's service in the War Cabinet). Attlee's modesty and quiet manner hid a great deal that has only come to light with historical reappraisal. In terms of the machinery of government, he was one of the most businesslike and effective of all the British prime ministers. Indeed he is widely praised by his successors, both Labour and Conservative. His leadership style of consensual government, acting as a chairman rather than a president, won him much praise from historians and politicians alike. Even Thatcherites confess to admiring him. Christopher Soames, a Cabinet Minister under Thatcher, remarked that "Mrs Thatcher was not really running a team. Every time you have a Prime Minister who wants to make all the decisions, it mainly leads to bad results. Attlee didn't.

That's why he was so damn good." Even Thatcher herself wrote in her 1995 memoirs, which charted her beginnings in Grantham to her victory in the 1979 General Election, that she admired Attlee saying: "Of Clement Attlee, however, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show". His administration presided over the successful transition from a wartime economy to peacetime, tackling problems of demobilisation, shortages of foreign currency, and adverse deficits in trade balances and government expenditure. Further domestic policies that he brought about included the establishment of the National Health Service and post-war Welfare State , which became key to the reconstruction of post-war Britain. In foreign affairs, he did much to assist with the post-war economic recovery of Europe, though this did not lead to a realisation that this was where Britain's future might lie. He proved a loyal ally of America at the onset of the cold war. Because of his style of leadership it was not he but Ernest Bevin who masterminded foreign policy.

It was Attlee's government that decided Britain should have an independent atomic weapons programme, and work began on it in 1947. Bevin, Attlee's Foreign Secretary, famously stated that "We've got to have it and it's got to have a bloody Union Jack on it." However, the first operational British A Bomb was not detonated until October 1952, about one year after Attlee had left office. Though a socialist, Attlee still believed in the British Empire of his youth, an institution that, on the whole, he thought was a power for good in the world. Nevertheless, he saw that a large part of it needed to be self-governing. Using the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as a model, he began the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth. His greatest achievement, surpassing many of these, was, perhaps, the establishment of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all parties, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal subscribed to for three decades, fixing the arena of political discourse until the later 1970s.

Image Although possessed of a genial personality, Clement Attlee was notably taciturn in his relations with the Press, sometimes offering only monosyllabic answers to reporters' questions. He was seldom referred to by his forenames; usually he was referred to as "C. R. Attlee" or "Mr. Attlee." Appearance in popular culture Art Attlee's portrait hangs in the dining hall of University College, Oxford in recognition of his services to Britain. Literature Attlee composed this limerick about himself to demonstrate how he was often underestimated: : Few thought he was even a starter. There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he finished PM, An earl and a Knight of the Garter. Source: Jones, B., Barry Jones' Dictionary of World Biography, 1998 An alternative version also exists, which may reflect Attlee's use of English more closely:- There were few who thought him a starter, Many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.

Source: Kenneth Harris, "Attlee" (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1982) Music Lord Beginner's song "General Election" was inspired by Attlee's victory in the 1950 British general election. Sport In 1981, Attlee again entered British popular culture as one of the famous English people taunted by name in Bjørge Lillelien's legendary commentary immediately after Norway defeated England in a FIFA World Cup qualifier. Drama Played by Patrick Troughton in ''Edward & Mrs. Simpson. Appeared as a character in the play ''Tom and Clem'', by Stephen Churchett. In the original production in 1997, Alec McCowen played Attlee, and Michael Gambon played Tom Driberg. Played by Alan David in the final episode of the BBC sitcom ''Goodnight Sweetheart'', The main character in the BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play ''That Man Attlee''. Broadcast on 15 September 2007, it was written by Robin Glendinning, with Bill Wallis playing Attlee.

Played by Richard Attlee, his grandson, in Jerome Vincent’s 'Stuffing Their Mouths with Gold'; the story of how the National Health Service came to be. Broadcast on Radio 4 on 4 July 2008, the day before the 60th anniversary of the founding of the NHS. Attlee's cabinet 1945–50 Herbert Morrison: Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons Arthur Greenwood: Lord Privy Seal Hugh Dalton: Chancellor of the Exchequer Ernest Bevin: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs George Henry Hall: Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Addison: Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Leader of the House of Lords Lord Pethick-Lawrence: Secretary of State for India and Burma A. V.

Alexander: First Lord of the Admiralty Jack Lawson: Secretary of State for War William Wedgwood Benn, Lord Stansgate: Secretary of State for Air Ellen Wilkinson: Minister of Education Joseph Westwood: Secretary of State for Scotland Tom Williams: Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries George Isaacs: Minister of Labour and National Service Aneurin Bevan: Minister of Health Sir Stafford Cripps: President of the Board of Trade Emanuel Shinwell: Minister of Fuel and Power Changes July 1946 - Arthur Greenwood becomes Paymaster-General as well as Lord Privy Seal. October 1946 - The three service ministers (Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and First Lord of the Admiralty) cease to be cabinet positions. A. V. Alexander remains in the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. George Hall replaces A. V. Alexander as First Lord of the Admiralty, outside the cabinet. Arthur Creech Jones succeeds Hall as Secretary of State for the Colonies. December 1946 - A. V. Alexander succeeds Attlee as Minister of Defence. February 1947 - George Tomlinson succeeds Ellen Wilkinson as Minister of Education upon her death.

March 1947 - Arthur Greenwood ceases to be Paymaster-General, remaining Lord Privy Seal. His successor as Paymaster-General is not in the cabinet. April 1947 - Arthur Greenwood becomes Minister without Portfolio. Lord Inman succeeds Arthur Greenwood as Lord Privy Seal. William Francis Hare, Lord Listowel succeeds Lord Pethick-Lawrence as Secretary of State for India and Burma. July 1947 - The Dominion Affairs Office becomes the Office of Commonwealth Relations. Addison remains at the head. August 1947 - The India and Burma Office becomes the Burma office with India's independence. Lord Listowel remains in office. September 1947 - Sir Stafford Cripps becomes Minister of Economic Affairs. Harold Wilson succeeds Cripps as President of the Board of Trade. Arthur Greenwood retires from the Front Bench. October 1947 - Lord Addison succeeds Lord Inman as Lord Privy Seal, remaining also Leader of the House of Lords. Philip Noel-Baker succeeds Lord Addison as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. Arthur Woodburn succeeds Joseph Westwood as Secretary of State for Scotland. The Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, leaves the Cabinet.

November 1947 - Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer. January 1948 - The Burma Office is abolished with Burma's independence. May 1948: Hugh Dalton re-enters the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Lord Pakenham enters the Cabinet as Minister of Civil Aviation. July 1948: Lord Addison becomes Paymaster-General. April 1949: Lord Addison ceases to be Paymaster-General, remaining Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. His successor as Paymaster-General is not in the Cabinet.

Attlee's cabinet 1950–51 In February 1950, a substantial reshuffle took place following the General Election: Clement Attlee: Prime Minister Lord Jowitt: Lord Chancellor Herbert Morrison: Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons Lord Addison: Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords Sir Stafford Cripps: Chancellor of the Exchequer Ernest Bevin: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs James Chuter Ede: Secretary of State for the Home Department Jim Griffiths: Secretary of State for the Colonies Patrick Gordon Walker: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Harold Wilson: President of the Board of Trade Lord Alexander of Hillsborough: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster George Tomlinson: Minister of Education Hector McNeil: Secretary of State for Scotland Tom Williams: Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries George Isaacs: Minister of Labour and National Service Aneurin Bevan: Minister of Health Emanuel Shinwell: Minister of Defence Hugh Dalton: Minister of Town and Country Planning Changes October 1950: Hugh Gaitskell succeeds Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

January 1951: Aneurin Bevan succeeds George Isaacs as Minister of Labour and National Service . Bevan's successor as Minister of Health is not in the cabinet. Hugh Dalton's post is renamed Minister of Local Government and Planning. March 1951: Herbert Morrison succeeds Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary. Lord Addison succeeds Morrison as Lord President. Bevin succeeds Addison as Lord Privy Seal. James Chuter Ede succeeds Morrison as Leader of the House of Commons whilst remaining Home Secretary. April 1951: Richard Stokes succeeds Ernest Bevin as Lord Privy Seal. Alf Robens succeeds Aneurin Bevan (resigned) as Minister of Labour and National Service. Sir Hartley Shawcross succeeds Harold Wilson (resigned) as President of the Board of Trade. (Wikipedia)

Question: Who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Clement Attlee's government from 1947 to 1950?
Answer: STAFFORD CRIPPS