Clement Attlee
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| Period in office: | 27 July 1945 - 26 Oct 1951 |
| PM predecessor: | Winston Churchill |
| PM successor: | Winston Churchill |
| Date of birth: | January 3, 1883 |
| Place of birth: | Putney, London |
| Political party: | Labour |
| Retirement honour: | Earldom of Attlee |
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH (January 3, 1883 – October 8, 1967) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951. Despite his natural modesty and laconic style of speaking, he won a landslide election victory over Winston Churchill immediately after Churchill had led Britain through World War II. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve for a full Parliamentary term, and the first to have a majority in Parliament. The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, which enabled the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities to create a system of administration that was by and large accepted by both parties until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. In 2004 he was voted as the most effective British Prime Minister in the 20th century in a poll of political academics organised by MORI.
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Introduction
Born in Putney in London 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 initially 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. Additionally, he had previously opposed (in concert with the Liberal Party) rearmament, for which Churchill blamed him in his monumental work A Gathering Storm (among others, including Lansbury and MacDonald). When Lansbury resigned the leadership in 1935, Attlee was appointed as an interim leader until after the general election that year. In the post election leadership contest Attlee was elected, beating both Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood, and remained leader of the party until 1955 - to date, Labour's longest-serving party leader.
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 (1940-1942), Deputy Prime Minister (1942), Dominions Secretary (1942-1943), and Lord President of the Council (1943-1945).
The landslide 1945 Election returned Labour to power and Attlee became prime minister. The party had clear aims. Several controversal policies were enacted, including the nationalisation of utilities and the long-distance transport system and the creation of the modern Welfare State. India became independent, and Britain's role in Palestine ended. Attlee's first Health Secretary, Aneurin Bevan, fought against general medical disapproval, to create the British National Health Service that still survives today and is often just as controversial as then.
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 vagaries of the first past the post voting system, plus a degree of Conservative opposition recovering support at the expense of the Liberal Party.
Labour lost the General Election of 1951 despite polling more votes than in the 1945 election. Labour had also been internally 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.
Attlee's Cabinet 1945-1950
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- Clement Attlee: Prime Minister and Minister of Defence
- Lord Jowitt: Lord Chancellor
- 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
- James Chuter Ede: Secretary of State for the Home Department
- George Henry Hall: Secretary of State for the Colonies
- Lord Addison: Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs
- Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 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 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. 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. 1st Baron 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. His successor as Paymaster-General is not in the Cabinet.
Attlee's Cabinet 1950-1951
February 1950: A substantial reshuffle takes 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
- 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: 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.
Categories: British Prime Ministers | British MPs | British Secretaries of State | Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster | Leaders of the British Labour Party | Lord Presidents of the Council | Lords Privy Seal | Earls in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | Knights of the Garter | 1883 births | 1967 deaths | Former students of University College, Oxford | British Army officers