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 the
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom from
1945 to
1951, and as the
Leader of the
Labour Party from
1935 to
1955. He was also the first person to hold the office of
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 in
1945. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term, and the first to command a Labour majority in Parliament.
The government he led put in place the post-war settlement, 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
Life and career
From
1906 to
1909, Attlee worked as manager of Haileybury House, a charitable 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 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. 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. 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.
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.
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; when the war cabinet had voted on whether to surrender, Attlee (along with fellow Labour minister Arthur Greenwood) voted in favour of fighting, giving Churchill the majority he needed to continue the war.
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. Immediately on its release, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. 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."
Nationalisation
Attlee's government also carried out their manifesto commitment for
nationalisation of basic industries and public utilities. The
Bank of England and civil aviation were nationalised in 1946.
Coal mining, the
railways, road haulage, canals and cable and wireless were nationalised in 1947, 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."
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.
(left) with Clement Attlee in 1945]]
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 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. British policies there were perceived by the Zionist movement and the Truman administration as pro-Arab and anti-Jewish, and in the face of armed revolt of Jewish militant groups and increasing violence of the local Arab population Britain had found itself unable to control events. 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. Although Attlee's second government was less radical than the first, it oversaw the passage of a number of useful reforms, relating to issues such as industry in development areas, the restoration of land which had been devastated by ironstone pollution, and river pollution
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. 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 stood down as Leader of the Opposition in November 1955, and retired as leader of the Labour party on 14 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 decriminalisation 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."
Religious views
Although one of his brothers became a clergyman and one of his sisters a
missionary, Attlee himself is usually regarded as an
agnostic. In an interview he described himself as "incapable of religious feeling", saying that he believed in "the ethics of Christianity" but not "the mumbo-jumbo". When asked whether he was an agnostic, Attlee replied "I don't know".
Appearance in popular culture
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,
: CH and OM,
: 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,
: CH and OM,
: 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.
Played by Bill Paterson in Into the Storm (2009).
Legislation enacted by the Attlee Governments
Family Allowances Act 1945
Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946
Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act 1946
National Health Service Act 1946
National Insurance Act 1946
National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946
New Towns Act 1946
Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1946
Police Act 1946
Electricity Act 1947
Fire Services Act 1947
Town and Country Planning Act 1947
Transport Act 1947
Fire Services Act 1947
National Assistance Act 1948
Representation of the People Act 1948
Housing Act 1949
House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1949
Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949
Lands Tribunal Act 1949
Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949
Marriage Act 1949
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949
Parliament Act 1949
Registered Designs Act 1949
Representation of the People Act 1949
Special Roads Act 1949
Attlee's cabinet 1945–50
Clement Attlee: Prime Minister and Minister of Defence
Lord Jowitt: Lord Chancellor
Herbert Morrison: Deputy Prime Minister, 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 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: Deputy Prime Minister, 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.
Further reading
Clement Attlee published his memoirs,
As it Happened, in 1954.
Francis Williams' A Prime Minister Remembers, based on interviews with Attlee, was published in 1961.
Attlee's other publications include:
The Social Worker (1920);
The Town Councillor (1925);
The Will and the Way to Socialism (1935);
The Labour Party in Perspective (1937);
Collective Security Under the United Nations (1958);
Empire into Commonwealth (1961).
Biographies include:
Roy Jenkins, Mr Attlee (1948);
Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982);
Trevor Burridge, Clement Attlee: A Political Biography, (1985);
Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee (1997);
David Howell, Attlee (2006).
Biographies of Attlee and of his Cabinet can be found in:
Greg Rosen (ed) Dictionary of Labour Biography. Politicos Publishing. ISBN 1-902301-18-8
The entry on Attlee in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) was prepared by Maurice Shock, who as a Fellow of University College, Oxford (Attlee's alma mater), came to know Attlee personally in his later years.
Accounts of the period include:
Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–51, Oxford University Press, 1984;
Greg Rosen, Old Labour to New, Politicos Publishing, 2005.
Notes
References
External links
More about Clement Attlee on the Downing Street website.
Clement Attlee at Find-A-Grave
Annotated bibliography for Clement Attlee from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
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