In a life and death struggle, we cannot afford to leave our destinies in the hands of failures.
― Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (3 January 1883 - 8 October 1967) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 - 1951, preceded and succeeded by Winston Churchill. He was previously Britain's first Deputy Prime Minister from 1940 - 1945 in Churchill's provisional wartime government. He is mostly remembered for presiding over the birth of the National Health Service and the British welfare state, and the nationalisation of British industry. He also made many other reforms to British law to improve the rights of British workers, women and children.
Attlee was wounded in action while serving in the First World War. He entered politics just after the war and became mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, using his position to serve legal orders against slum landlords who charged high rents while refusing to use their money to make their properties habitable. He was elected to Parliament in 1922, helping Ramsay MacDonald to get elected as Leader of the Labour Party. He briefly served as Permanent Under-Secretary for War in MacDonald's short-lived government. During the 1926 general strike Attlee negotiated with the strikers and persuaded the Electrical Trade Union to continue supplying electricity to hospitals.
MacDonald's government fell after losing the 1931 election, losing over 200 seats, although Attlee was able to hold on to his seat in Parliament. He was appointed Deputy Party Leader by MacDonald's successor George Lansbury, taking over from Lansbury after he resigned in 1935. Attlee lead Labour through the 1935 election, during which they regained 100 seats but still lost to the Conservatives. Attlee stood in the subsequent party leadership election, beating his main rivals Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood. He initially supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Nazi Germany, but turned against it when the failures of this policy became clear. Attlee publicly opposed the Munich Agreement between Britain and Germany and provided financial support to the evacuation of Jews from Nazi Germany.
When the Second World War broke out, Chamberlain resigned and a coalition government was formed by the Conservative and Labour parties under Attlee and Winston Churchill. While Churchill worked on the public aspects of government and the war effort, Attlee worked behind the scenes ensuring the smooth running of government, abolishing several obstructive committees and making sure to avert divisions within the cabinet.
Once Germany was defeated, Churchill and Attlee ran against each other in the 1945 election. A key point of both campaigns was the Beveridge Report, a 1942 government report by William Beveridge mandating that the government overcome the Five Giants: want, ignorance, squalor, idleness and disease. All parties committed themselves to fulfilling this aim, but it was Labour that was seen as most likely to deliver on it. Most people expected Churchill to win because of his status as hero of World War 2, but Attlee won by a landslide. Herbert Morrison plotted to usurp him by holding a leadership contest before Attlee officially entered office, but Attlee's government received royal assent before Morrison's plan could reach fruition.
Attlee delivered on his promise to enact the Beveridge Report's recommendations, with his Health Minister Aneurin Bevan creating the National Health Service, a publicly-funded health service which offers service free of charge. Attlee's government also made many other advances relating to the welfare state, passing a law providing domestic help to families whose breadwinners were incapacitated by illness and setting in place National Insurance - a tax funding the NHS, the national pension, unemployment benefits and other aspects of social security. In addition, Attlee enacted a massive program for the creation of more council housing.
Attlee embarked upon a number of reforms improving conditions for women, children and workers. He introduced the universal family allowance to provide financial support to poor families, struck down restrictions on women owning property, gave more legal protection to sex workers, restricted imprisonment of underage children and abolished the ban on married women joining the civil service. Free secondary school education was legally enshrined as a right, and it was made easier to get into college and university, although Attlee failed to introduce comprehensive education (which was accomplished under the later government of Harold Wilson). He also expanded entitlement to sick leave and sick pay, introduced new pension schemes, repealed a 1927 law that banned trade unions and standardised and raised wages for miners, police officers and other essential workers.
One of Attlee's main manifesto promises had been to nationalise British industry. He stuck to this commitment, nationalising rail, steel, coal, electricity, gas, the Bank of England and many others. By 1951 20% of British industry was under public ownership. Many of these industries, such as electricity, gas and coal, became more efficient and profitable after being nationalised.
The most significant problem facing Attlee was the economy, as Britain had been left bankrupt by the war. Attlee, in order to rectify this, sent economist John Maynard Keynes to negotiate a loan from the Americans. This, alongside the Marshall Aid program, improved Britain's economic situation significantly; however, the government were forced to devalue the pound due to a currency crisis caused by attempts to make the British pound convertible to the US dollar. Despite the economic problems, Attlee was able to maintain near-full employment, with 97% of the workforce being employed. By 1951, Britain had the best economic situation in Europe, with the economy growing by 3% each year.
In foreign affairs, Attlee supported freeing all British colonies from British control, orchestrating the granting of independence to India and Pakistan and sponsoring the peaceful transition to independence of Burma and Sri Lanka. However, he retained Britain's African colonies as a strategic advantage in the Cold War, in line with his hardline anti-Soviet foreign policy. He promoted the Marshall Plan, which greatly contributed to the recovery of post-war Europe's economy, and initiated the development of Britain's nuclear deterrent.
Attlee narrowly lost the 1951 election to Churchill after the Labour Party was split by an austerity budget. He retired as party leader in 1955 and died of pneumonia at the age of 84 in 1967.