Clement Attlee#Prime Minister

Clement Richard Attlee was born on 3 January 1883 in Putney, Surrey (now part of London), into an upper middle class family, the seventh of eight children. His father was Henry Attlee, a solicitor, and his mother was Ellen Bravery Watson, daughter of Thomas Simons Watson, secretary for the Art Union of London.Davies, Edward J. "The Ancestry of Clement Attlee", Genealogists' Magazine, 31(2013–15): 380–87. His parents were "committed Anglicans" who read prayers and psalms each morning at breakfast.{{cite news|url=https://spartacus-educational.com/TUattlee.htm|title=Clement Attlee|publisher=Spartacus Education|access-date=2 August 2017|archive-date=25 July 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230725070820/https://spartacus-educational.com/TUattlee.htm|url-status=live}}

Attlee grew up in a two-storey villa with a large garden and tennis court, staffed by three servants and a gardener. His father, a political Liberal, had inherited family interests in milling and brewing, and became a senior partner in the law firm of Druces, also serving a term as president of the Law Society of England and Wales. In 1898 he purchased a {{convert|200|acre|ha|adj=on}} estate, Comarques in Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex. At the age of nine, Attlee was sent to board at Northaw Place, a boys' preparatory school in Hertfordshire. In 1896 he followed his brothers to Haileybury College, where he was a middling student. He was influenced by the Darwinist views of his housemaster Frederick Webb Headley, and in 1899 he published an attack on striking London cab-drivers in the school magazine, predicting they would soon have to "beg for their fares".

In 1901, Attlee went up to University College, Oxford, reading modern history. He and his brother Tom "were given a generous stipend by their father and embraced the university lifestyle—rowing, reading and socializing". He was later described by a tutor as "level-headed, industrious, dependable man with no brilliance of style ... but with excellent sound judgement". At university he had little interest in politics or economics, later describing his views at this time as "good old fashioned imperialist conservative". He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1904 with second-class honours.

Attlee then trained as a barrister at the Inner Temple and was called to the bar in March 1906. He worked for a time at his father's law firm Druces and Attlee but did not enjoy the work, and had no particular ambition to succeed in the legal profession.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|p=17}} He also played football for non-League club Fleet.{{cite news |last=Borrows |first=Bill |title=Why football can be a dangerous game for politicians |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11566133/Why-football-can-be-a-dangerous-game-for-politicians.html |url-status=live |url-access=subscription |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |date=27 April 2015 |access-date=2 September 2022 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11566133/Why-football-can-be-a-dangerous-game-for-politicians.html |archive-date=11 January 2022}}{{cbignore}} Attlee's father died in 1908, leaving an estate valued for probate at £75,394 (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|75394|1908|r=0}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}}).

In 1906, Attlee became a volunteer at Haileybury House, a charitable club for working-class boys in Stepney in the East End of London run by his old school, and from 1907 to 1909 he served as the club's manager. Until then, his political views had been more conservative. However, after his shock at the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with the slum children, he came to the view that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty and that only direct action and income redistribution by the state would have any serious effect. This sparked a process that caused him to convert to socialism. He joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1908 and became active in local politics.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=18–35}}

Following his father's death in November 1908, Attlee gave up his legal career and devoted himself to politics and social work. His father left him an income of £400 a year ({{Inflation|UK|400|1908|r=-4|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} In 1909, he stood unsuccessfully at his first election, as an ILP candidate for Stepney Borough Council.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=18–35}} He got a job briefly working as a secretary for Beatrice Webb in 1909, before becoming a secretary for Toynbee Hall. He worked for Webb's campaign of popularisation of the Minority Report as he was very active in Fabian Society circles, in which he would go round visiting many political societies—Liberal, Conservative and socialist—to explain and popularise the ideas, as well as recruiting lecturers deemed suitable to work on the campaign. In 1911, he was employed by the Government as an "official explainer"—touring the country to explain Chancellor of the Exchequer 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. A year later, he became a lecturer at the London School of Economics, teaching social science and public administration.{{Sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=34–43}}

Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Attlee applied to join the British Army. Initially his application was turned down, as his age of 31 was seen as being too old; however, he was eventually commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 6th (Service) Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, on 30 September 1914.{{London Gazette|issue=28985|supp=y|page=9961|date=25 November 1914}} On 9 February 1915 he was promoted to captain,{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=29098|page=2504|date=12 March 1915}} and on 14 March was appointed battalion adjutant.{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=29124|supp=2|page=3556|date=10 April 1915}} The 6th South Lancashires were part of the 38th Brigade of the 13th (Western) Division, which served in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. Attlee's decision to fight caused a rift between him and his older brother Tom, who, as a conscientious objector, spent much of the war in prison.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=43–45, 52}}

After a period spent fighting in Gallipoli, Attlee collapsed after falling ill with dysentery and was put on a ship bound for England to recover. When he woke up he wanted to get back to action as soon as possible, and asked to be let off the ship in Malta, where he stayed in hospital in order to recover. His hospitalisation coincided with the Battle of Sari Bair, which saw a large number of his comrades killed. Upon returning to action, he was informed that his company had been chosen to hold the final lines during the evacuation of Suvla. As such, he was the penultimate man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay, the last being General Stanley Maude.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=47–50}}

File:Attlee, 1916 IWM (crop).png

The Gallipoli Campaign had been engineered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Although it was unsuccessful, Attlee believed that it was a bold strategy which could have been successful if it had been better implemented on the ground. This led to an admiration for Churchill as a military strategist, something which would make their working relationship in later years productive.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|p=46}}

He later served in the Mesopotamian campaign in what is now Iraq, where in April 1916 he was badly wounded, being hit in the leg by shrapnel from friendly fire while storming an enemy trench during the Battle of Hanna. The battle was an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the Siege of Kut, and many of Attlee's fellow soldiers were also wounded or killed. He was sent firstly to India, and then back to the UK to recover. On 18 December 1916 he was transferred to the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps,{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=29894|supp=2|page=358|date=6 January 1917}} and 1 March 1917 he was promoted to the temporary rank of major,{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=30038|supp=y|page=4050|date=27 April 1917}} leading him to be known as "Major Attlee" for much of the inter-war period. He would spend most of 1917 training soldiers at various locations in England.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=50–51}} From 2 to 9 July 1917, he was the temporary commanding officer (CO) of the newly formed L (later 10th) Battalion, the Tank Corps at Bovington Camp, Dorset. From 9 July, he assumed command of the 30th Company of the same battalion; however, he did not deploy to France with it in December 1917,The National Archive WO 95/101 War History of 10th Battalion, Tank Corps, pp. 1–2. as he was transferred back to the South Lancashire Regiment on 28 November.{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=30425|supp=3|page=13038|date=13 December 1917}}

After fully recovering from his injuries, he was sent to France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front for the final months of the war. After being discharged from the Army in January 1919, he returned to Stepney, and returned to his old job lecturing part-time at the London School of Economics.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=55–58}}

Attlee returned to local politics in the immediate post-war period, becoming mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, one of London's most deprived inner-city boroughs, in 1919. 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 homeowners to repair their property. It also appointed health visitors and sanitary inspectors, reducing the infant mortality rate, and took action to find work for returning unemployed ex-servicemen.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=62–63}}

In 1920, while mayor, he wrote his first book, The Social Worker, which set out many of the principles that informed his political philosophy and that were to underpin the actions of his government in later years. The book attacked the idea that looking after the poor could be left to voluntary action. He wrote that:

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.{{sfn|Attlee|1920|page=30}} [...] 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.{{sfn|Attlee|1920|page=75}}

At the 1922 general election, Attlee became the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Limehouse in Stepney. At the time, he admired Ramsay MacDonald and helped him get elected as Labour Party leader at the 1922 leadership election. He served as 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.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=74–77}}

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 so 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.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=80–82}}

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. Due to the time he needed to devote to the commission, and contrary to a promise MacDonald made to Attlee to induce him to serve on the commission, he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the second Labour government, which entered office after the 1929 general election.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=83–91}} Attlee's service on the Commission equipped him with a thorough exposure to India and many of its political leaders. By 1933 he argued that British rule was alien to India and was unable to make the social and economic reforms necessary for India's progress. He became the British leader most sympathetic to Indian independence (as a dominion), preparing him for his role in deciding on independence in 1947.{{sfn|Howard|Bridge|1988}}{{cite journal |last1=Howard |first1=Brasted |last2=Bridge |first2=Carl |year=1988 |title=The British Labour Party and Indian Nationalism, 1907–1947 |journal=South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=69–99 |doi=10.1080/00856408808723113}}

In May 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem, and Attlee was given Mosley's post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In March 1931, he became Postmaster General, a post he held for five months until August, when the Labour government fell, after failing to agree on how to tackle the financial crisis of the Great Depression.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=96–99}} That month MacDonald and a few of his allies formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals, leading them to be expelled from Labour. MacDonald offered Attlee a job in the National Government, but he turned down the offer and opted to stay loyal to the main Labour party.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=101–102}}

After Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government, Labour was deeply divided. Attlee had long been close to MacDonald and now felt betrayed—as did most Labour politicians. During the course of the second Labour government, Attlee had become increasingly disillusioned with MacDonald, whom he came to regard as vain and incompetent, and of whom he later wrote scathingly in his autobiography. He would write:{{Cite web |title=Ramsay MacDonald |url=http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacdonald.htm |access-date=26 July 2017 |website=Spartacus Educational |archive-date=12 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170612235412/http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacdonald.htm |url-status=live }}

In the old days I had looked up to MacDonald as a great leader. He had a fine presence and great oratorical power. The unpopular line which he took during the First World War seemed to mark him as a man of character. Despite his mishandling of the Red Letter episode, I had not appreciated his defects until he took office a second time. I then realised his reluctance to take positive action and noted with dismay his increasing vanity and snobbery, while his habit of telling me, a junior Minister, the poor opinion he had of all his Cabinet colleagues made an unpleasant impression. I had not, however, expected that he would perpetrate the greatest betrayal in the political history of this country ... The shock to the Party was very great, especially to the loyal workers of the rank-and-file who had made great sacrifices for these men.

The general election held in October 1931 proved disastrous for the Labour Party, which lost over 200 seats, returning only 52 MPs to Parliament. The vast majority of the party's senior figures, including the Leader Arthur Henderson, lost their seats. Attlee, however, narrowly retained his Limehouse seat, with his majority being slashed from 7,288 to just 551. He was one of only three Labour MPs who had experience of government to retain their seats, along with George Lansbury and Stafford Cripps. Accordingly, Lansbury was elected Leader unopposed, with Attlee as his deputy.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=104–105}}

Most of the remaining Labour MPs after 1931 were elderly trade-union officials who could not contribute much to debates; Lansbury was in his 70s, and Stafford Cripps – another main figure of the Labour front-bench who had entered Parliament in January 1931 – lacked parliamentary experience. As one of the most capable and experienced of the remaining Labour MPs, Attlee therefore shouldered a lot of the burden of providing an opposition to the National Government in the years 1931 to 1935; during this time he had to extend his knowledge of subjects which he had not studied in any depth before (such as finance and foreign affairs) in order to provide an effective opposition to the government.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp= 108–109}}

Attlee effectively served as Labour's acting-leader for nine months from December 1933, after Lansbury fractured his thigh in an accident; this raised Attlee's public profile considerably. It was during this period, however, that personal financial problems almost forced Attlee to quit politics altogether. His wife had become ill, and at that time there was no separate salary for the Leader of the Opposition. On the verge of resigning from Parliament, he was persuaded to stay by Stafford Cripps, a wealthy socialist, who agreed to make a donation to party funds to pay him an additional salary until Lansbury could take over again.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=112–113}}

During 1932–33 Attlee flirted with, and then drew back from radicalism – influenced by Stafford Cripps, who was then on the radical wing of the party. He was briefly a member of the Socialist League, which had been formed by former Independent Labour Party (ILP) members who opposed the ILP's disaffiliation from the main Labour Party in 1932. At one point he agreed with the proposition put forward by Cripps that gradual reform was inadequate and that a socialist government would have to pass an emergency powers act, allowing it to rule by decree to overcome any opposition by vested interests until it was safe to restore democracy. He admired Oliver Cromwell's strong-armed rule and use of major generals to control England. After looking more closely at Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and even his former colleague Oswald Mosley (leader of the new blackshirt fascist movement in Britain), Attlee retreated from radicalism, distanced himself from the League, and argued instead that the Labour Party must adhere to constitutional methods and stand forthright for democracy and against totalitarianism either of the left or of the right. He always supported the crown, and as Prime Minister was close to King George VI.{{cite magazine |last= Attlee |first= Clement |date= 18 February 1952 |title= Tribute from Labor's Attlee to George and the monarchy |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=dFQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30 |magazine= Life |volume= 32 |number= 7 |quote= It was my privilege for six years to serve King George as First Minister of the Crown and for five years during the war as Deputy Prime Minister. The longer I served him the greater was my respect and admiration for him. I can never forget his kindness and consideration to me. He had a great sense of duty, high courage, good judgment and warm human sympathy. He was in the fullest sense of the term a good man. |access-date= 9 November 2020 |archive-date= 24 February 2024 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170040/https://books.google.com/books?id=dFQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status= live }}{{sfn|Bew|2017|pages= 23, 173–188, 208}}

George Lansbury, a committed pacifist, resigned as the Leader of the Labour Party at the 1935 Party Conference on 8 October, after delegates voted in favour of sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. Lansbury had strongly opposed the policy, and felt unable to continue leading the party. Taking advantage of the disarray in the Labour Party, the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announced on 19 October that a general election would be held on 14 November. With no time for a leadership contest, the party agreed that Attlee should serve as interim leader, on the understanding that a leadership election would be held after the general election.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=116–117}} Attlee therefore led Labour through the 1935 election, which saw the party stage a partial comeback from its disastrous 1931 performance, winning 38 per cent of the vote, the highest share Labour had won up to that point, and gaining over one hundred seats.{{sfn|Thomas-Symonds|2012|pp=68–70}}

Attlee stood in the subsequent leadership election, held soon afterward, where he was opposed by Herbert Morrison, who had just re-entered parliament in the recent election, and Arthur Greenwood: Morrison was seen as the favourite, but was distrusted by many sections of the party, especially the left wing. Arthur Greenwood meanwhile was a popular figure in the party; however, his leadership bid was severely hampered by his alcohol problem. Attlee was able to come across as a competent and unifying figure, particularly having already led the party through a general election. He went on to come first in both the first and second ballots, formally being elected Leader of the Labour Party on 3 December 1935.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=121–130}}

Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the Labour Party's official policy had been to oppose rearmament, instead supporting internationalism and collective security under the League of Nations.{{sfn|Vickers|2013|p=92}} At the 1934 Labour Party Conference, Attlee declared that, "We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty. We are deliberately putting a world order before our loyalty to our own country. We say we want to see put on the statute book something which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country".{{sfn|Talus|1945|p=17}} During a debate on defence in Commons a year later, Attlee said "We are told (in the White Paper) that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves. We do not think you can do it by national defence. We think you can only do it by moving forward to a new world. A world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system. I shall be told that that is quite impossible".{{Hansard|1935/mar/11/defence|access-date=20 March 2013}} Shortly after those comments, Adolf Hitler proclaimed that German rearmament offered no threat to world peace. Attlee responded the next day noting that Hitler's speech, although containing unfavourable references to the Soviet Union, created "A chance to call a halt in the armaments race ... We do not think that our answer to Herr Hitler should be just rearmament. We are in an age of rearmaments, but we on this side cannot accept that position".{{Hansard|1935/may/22/defence-policy|access-date=20 March 2013}}

Attlee played little part in the events that would lead up to the abdication of Edward VIII, for despite Baldwin's threat to step down if Edward attempted to remain on the throne after marrying Wallis Simpson, Labour was widely accepted not to be a viable alternative government, owing to the National Government's overwhelming majority in the Commons. Attlee, along with Liberal leader Archibald Sinclair, was eventually consulted with by Baldwin on 24 November 1936, and Attlee agreed with both Baldwin and Sinclair that Edward could not remain on the throne, firmly eliminating any prospect of any alternative government forming were Baldwin to resign.{{sfn|Williams|2003}}

In April 1936, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, introduced a Budget which increased the amount spent on the armed forces. Attlee made a radio broadcast in opposition to it, saying:

{{blockquote|[The budget] was the natural expression of the character of the present Government. There was hardly any increase allowed for the services which went to build up the life of the people, education and health. Everything was devoted to piling up the instruments of death. The Chancellor expressed great regret that he should have to spend so much on armaments, but said that it was absolutely necessary and was due only to the actions of other nations. One would think to listen to him that the Government had no responsibility for the state of world affairs. [...] The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and the people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. [...] This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments.{{Cite news |date=23 April 1936 |title=Mr. Attlee on a war budget |pages=16 |work=The Times}}}}

In June 1936, the Conservative MP Duff Cooper called for an Anglo-French alliance against possible German aggression and called for all parties to support one. Attlee condemned this: "We say that any suggestion of an alliance of this kind—an alliance in which one country is bound to another, right or wrong, by some overwhelming necessity—is contrary to the spirit of the League of Nations, is contrary to the Covenant, is contrary to Locarno is contrary to the obligations which this country has undertaken, and is contrary to the professed policy of this Government".{{Hansard|1936/jun/29/mr-duff-cooprrs-speech|access-date=9 January 2016}} At the Labour Party conference at Edinburgh in October Attlee reiterated that "There can be no question of our supporting the Government in its rearmament policy".{{sfn|Talus|1945|p=37}}

However, with the rising threat from Nazi Germany, and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, this policy eventually lost credibility. By 1937, Labour had jettisoned its pacifist position and came to support rearmament and oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=131–134}} However Attlee and the Labour Party strongly opposed conscription when it was passed in April 1939.Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982) pp. 161–162.

At the end of 1937, Attlee and a party of three Labour MPs 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.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=134–135}} Attlee was supportive of the Republican government in Spain, and at the 1937 Labour conference moved the wider Labour Party towards opposing what he considered the "farce" of the Non-Intervention Committee organised by the British and French governments. In the House of Commons, Attlee stated, "I cannot understand the delusion that if Franco wins with Italian and German aid, he will immediately become independent. I think it is a ridiculous proposition."{{Hansard|1939/jan/31/foreign-affairs#column_72|access-date=3 April 2021}} Dalton, the Labour Party's spokesman on foreign policy, also thought that Franco would ally with Germany and Italy. However, Franco's subsequent behaviour proved it was not such a ridiculous proposition.{{cite book|last=Holroyd-Doveton|first=John|title=Maxim Litvinov: A Biography|publisher=Woodland Publications|year=2013|pages=395}} As Dalton later acknowledged, Franco skilfully maintained Spanish neutrality, whereas Hitler would likely have occupied Spain if Franco had lost the Civil War.{{cite book|last=Dalton|first=Hugh|title=The Fateful Years; Memoirs 1931–1945|publisher=Frederick Muller|year=1957|location=London|pages=97}}

In 1938, Attlee opposed the Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler to give Germany the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland:

We all feel relief that war has not come this time... we cannot, however, feel that peace has been established, but that we have nothing but an armistice in a state of war. We have been unable to go in for care-free rejoicing. We have felt that we are in the midst of a tragedy... [and] humiliation. This has not been a victory for reason and humanity. It has been a victory for brute force. At every stage of the proceedings there have been time limits laid down... [the] terms laid down as ultimata. We have seen to-day a gallant, civilised and democratic people betrayed and handed over to a ruthless despotism... The events of these last few days constitute one of the greatest diplomatic defeats that this country and France have ever sustained. There can be no doubt that it is a tremendous victory for Herr Hitler. Without firing a shot, by the mere display of military force, he has achieved a dominating position in Europe which Germany failed to win after four years of war. He has overturned the balance of power in Europe... [and] destroyed the last fortress of democracy in Eastern Europe which stood in the way of his ambition. He has opened his way to the food, the oil and the resources which he requires in order to consolidate his military power, and he has successfully defeated and reduced to impotence the forces that might have stood against the rule of violence.{{Hansard|1938/oct/03/prime-ministers-statement#column_51|title=Prime Minister's Statement|access-date=14 April 2021}} [...] The cause [of the crisis which we have undergone] was not the existence of minorities in Czechoslovakia; it was not that the position of the Sudeten Germans had become intolerable. It was not the wonderful principle of self-determination. It was because Herr Hitler had decided that the time was ripe for another step forward in his design to dominate Europe... The minorities question is no new one. [...] [And] short of a drastic and entire reshuffling of these populations there is no possible solution to the problem of minorities in Europe except toleration.{{Hansard|1938/oct/03/prime-ministers-statement#column_54|title=Prime Minister's Statement|access-date=14 April 2021}}

However, the new Czechoslovakian state did not provide equal rights to the Slovaks and Sudeten Germans,{{cite book |last=Holroyd-Doveton |first=John |title=Maxim Litvinov: A Biography |publisher=Woodland Publications |year=2013 |pages=320}} with the historian Arnold J. Toynbee already having noted that "for the Germans, Magyars and Poles, who account between them for more than one quarter of the whole population, the present regime in Czechoslovakia is not essentially different from the regimes in the surrounding countries".{{cite news |last=Toynbee |first=Arnold J. |author-link=Arnold J. Toynbee |title=Czechoslovakia's German problem |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_economist_1937-07-24_128_4900/page/183/mode/1up |newspaper=The Economist |publisher=The Economist Intelligence Unit N.A., Incorporated |volume=128 |pages=183 |date=24 July 1937 |access-date=14 April 2021}} Anthony Eden in the Munich debate acknowledged that there had been "discrimination, even severe discrimination" against the Sudeten Germans.{{Hansard|1938/oct/03/prime-ministers-statement#column_81|title=Prime Minister's Statement|access-date=14 April 2021}}

In 1937, Attlee wrote a book entitled The Labour Party in Perspective that sold fairly well in which he set out some of his views. He argued that there was no point in Labour compromising on its socialist principles in the belief that this would achieve electoral success. He wrote: "I find that the proposition often reduces itself to this – that if the Labour Party would drop its socialism and adopt a Liberal platform, many Liberals would be pleased to support it. I have heard it said more than once that if Labour would only drop its policy of nationalisation everyone would be pleased, and it would soon obtain a majority. I am convinced it would be fatal for the Labour Party." He also wrote that there was no point in "watering down Labour's socialist creed in order to attract new adherents who cannot accept the full socialist faith. On the contrary, I believe that it is only a clear and bold policy that will attract this support".{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=140–141}}

In the late 1930s, Attlee sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children, enabling them to leave Germany in 1939 and move to the UK. On arriving in Britain, Attlee invited one of the children into his home in Stanmore, north-west London, where he stayed for several months.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/clement-attlee-child-refugee-paul-willer-fled-nazis-1939|title=Clement Attlee took in Jewish child refugee who fled Nazis|last=Syal|first=Rajeev|date=20 November 2018|work=The Guardian|access-date=20 November 2018|archive-date=20 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181120153145/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/clement-attlee-child-refugee-paul-willer-fled-nazis-1939|url-status=live}}

{{see also|Churchill war ministry}}

File:Attlee 1941 P 75.jpg

Attlee remained as Leader of the Opposition when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. The ensuing disastrous Norwegian campaign would result in a motion of no confidence in Neville Chamberlain.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/norway_campaign_06.shtml|title=The Norway Campaign in World War Two|publisher=BBC|date=30 March 2011|access-date=2 October 2011|archive-date=19 June 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090619180715/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/norway_campaign_06.shtml|url-status=live}} Although Chamberlain survived this, the reputation of his administration was so badly and publicly damaged that it became clear a coalition government would be necessary. Even if Attlee had personally been prepared to serve under Chamberlain in an emergency coalition government, he would never have been able to carry Labour with him. Consequently, Chamberlain tendered his resignation, and Labour and the Conservatives entered a coalition government led by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940,{{sfn|Howell|2006}} with Attlee joining the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal on 12 May.{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=34856|page=3107|date=24 May 1940}}

Attlee and Churchill quickly agreed that the War Cabinet would consist of three Conservatives (initially Churchill, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax) and two Labour members (initially himself and Arthur Greenwood) and that Labour should have slightly more than one third of the posts in the coalition government.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=157–158}} Attlee and Greenwood played a vital role in supporting Churchill during a series of War Cabinet debates over whether or not to negotiate peace terms with Hitler following the Fall of France in May 1940; both supported Churchill and gave him the majority he needed in the War Cabinet to continue Britain's resistance.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|pp=163–164}}{{sfn|Marr|2007}}{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

Only Attlee and Churchill remained in the War Cabinet from the formation of the Government of National Unity in May 1940 through to the election in May 1945. Attlee was initially the Lord Privy Seal, before becoming Britain's first ever Deputy Prime Minister in 1942, as well as becoming the Dominions Secretary{{sfn|Howell|2006}}{{sfn|Marr|2007}}{{page needed|date=May 2024}} and Lord President of the Council on 28 September 1943.{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=36193|page=4365|date=1 October 1943}}

Attlee himself played a generally low key but vital role in the wartime government, working behind the scenes and in committees to ensure the smooth operation of government. In the coalition government, three inter-connected committees effectively ran the country. Churchill chaired the first two, the War cabinet and the Defence Committee, with Attlee deputising for him in these, and answering for the government in Parliament when Churchill was absent. Attlee himself instituted, and later chaired the third body, the Lord President's Committee, which was responsible for overseeing domestic affairs. As Churchill was most concerned with overseeing the war effort, this arrangement suited both men. Attlee himself had largely been responsible for creating these arrangements with Churchill's backing, streamlining the machinery of government and abolishing many committees. He also acted as a conciliator in the government, smoothing over tensions which frequently arose between Labour and Conservative Ministers.{{sfn|Beckett|1998|p=164}}{{sfn|Howell|2006}}{{cite web|title=Clement Attlee: enigmatic, out of time – and formidable|url=https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/11/clement-attlee-enigmatic-out-of-time-and-formidable/|first=Robert|last=Crowcroft|date=11 March 2014|publisher=Gov.uk|access-date=3 August 2017|archive-date=3 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170803171136/https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/11/clement-attlee-enigmatic-out-of-time-and-formidable/|url-status=live}}

Many Labour activists were baffled by the top leadership role for a man they regarded as having little charisma; Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary in early 1940:

:He looked and spoke like an insignificant elderly clerk, without distinction in the voice, manner or substance of his discourse. To realise that this little nonentity is the Parliamentary Leader of the Labour Party ... and presumably the future P.M. [Prime Minister] is pitiable".Quoted by Paul Addison in {{cite book|author=V. Bogdanor|title=From New Jerusalem to New Labour: British Prime Ministers from Attlee to Blair|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_etNDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA9|year=2016|page=9|publisher=Springer |isbn=9780230297005}}

File:Attlee with GeorgeVI HU 59486.jpg following Labour's 1945 election victory]]

{{main|1945 United Kingdom general election}}

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the War in Europe in May 1945, Attlee and Churchill favoured the coalition government remaining in place until Japan had been defeated. However, Herbert Morrison made it clear that the Labour Party would not be willing to accept this, and Churchill was forced to tender his resignation as Prime Minister and call an immediate election.{{sfn|Howell|2006}}

The war had set in motion profound social changes within Britain and had ultimately led to a widespread popular desire for social reform. This mood was epitomised in the Beveridge Report of 1942, by the Liberal economist William Beveridge. The Report assumed that the maintenance of full employment would be the aim of post-war governments, and that this would provide the basis for the welfare state. Immediately upon its release, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. All major parties committed themselves to fulfilling this aim, but most historians say that Attlee's Labour Party was seen by the electorate as the party most likely to follow it through.Steven Fielding, "What did 'the people' want?: the meaning of the 1945 general election". Historical Journal 35#3 (1992): 623–639.{{cite magazine|last=Addison|first=Dr Paul|title=Why Churchill Lost in 1945|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml|magazine=BBC History|access-date=9 August 2017|archive-date=26 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191226004022/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml|url-status=live}}

Labour campaigned on the theme of "Let Us Face the Future", positioning themselves as the party best placed to rebuild Britain following the war,{{cite web |url=http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab45.htm |title=British Labour Party election manifesto, 1945 [archived] |access-date=9 January 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180720200817/http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab45.htm|archive-date=20 July 2018 |url-status=dead}} and were widely viewed as having run a strong and positive campaign, while the Conservative campaign centred entirely on Churchill. Despite opinion polls indicating a strong Labour lead, opinion polls were then viewed as a novelty which had not proven their worth, and most commentators expected that Churchill's prestige and status as a "war hero" would ensure a comfortable Conservative victory. Before polling day, The Manchester Guardian surmised that "the chances of Labour sweeping the country and obtaining a clear majority ... are pretty remote".The Manchester Guardian 4 July 1945{{page needed|date=August 2021}} The News of the World predicted a working Conservative majority, while in Glasgow a pundit forecast the result as Conservatives 360, Labour 220, Others 60.{{cite book |last=Kynaston |first=David |author-link=David Kynaston |title=Austerity Britain 1945–51 |date=2008 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |location=London |isbn=978-0-7475-9923-4 |pages=70–71}} Churchill, however, made some costly errors during the campaign. In particular, his suggestion during one radio broadcast that a future Labour Government would require "some form of a gestapo" to implement their policies was widely regarded as being in very bad taste and massively backfired.{{sfn|Howell|2006}}

When the results of the election were announced on 26 July, they came as a surprise to most, including Attlee himself. Labour had won power by a huge landslide, winning 47.7 per cent of the vote to the Conservatives' 36 per cent.R. C. Whiting, "Attlee, Clement Richard, first Earl Attlee (1883–1967)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. This gave them 393 seats in the House of Commons, a working majority of 146. This was the first time in history that the Labour Party had won a majority in Parliament.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/1945_over.stm|work=BBC News|title=VOTE2001 – THE ELECTION BATTLES 1945–1997|access-date=19 December 2011|archive-date=3 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201103151039/http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/1945_over.stm|url-status=live}} When Attlee went to see King George VI at Buckingham Palace to be appointed Prime Minister, the notoriously laconic Attlee and the famously tongue-tied King stood in silence; Attlee finally volunteered the remark, "I've won the election". The King replied "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News".{{cite book|author=Kynaston, David|title=Austerity Britain, 1945–1951|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q7zQx0VRTkgC&pg=PT52|year=2010|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|page=75|isbn=9780802779588}}

{{Main|Attlee ministry}}{{see also|Post-war Britain (1945–1979)

}}

{{Infobox administration

| image = Clement Attlee.jpg

| caption = Attlee in 1950

| name = Premiership of Clement Attlee

| term_start = 26 July 1945

| term_end = 26 October 1951

| cabinet = Attlee ministry

| party = Labour

| election = {{hlist|1945|1950}}

| monarch = George VI

| seat = 10 Downing Street

| predecessor = Winston Churchill

| successor = Winston Churchill

|seal=Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government, 1901-1952).svg|seal_caption=Coat of Arms of HM Government}}

Francis (1995) argues there was consensus both in the Labour's national executive committee and at party conferences on a definition of socialism that stressed moral improvement as well as material improvement. The Attlee government was committed to rebuilding British society as an ethical commonwealth, using public ownership and controls to abolish extremes of wealth and poverty. Labour's ideology contrasted sharply with the contemporary Conservative Party's defence of individualism, inherited privileges, and income inequality.Francis, Martin. "[https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/6/2/220/1665829?redirectedFrom=fulltext Economics and Ethics: The Nature of Labour's Socialism, 1945–1951] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230519035036/https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/6/2/220/1665829?redirectedFrom=fulltext |date=19 May 2023 }}", Twentieth Century British History (1995) 6#2, pp. 220–43. On 5 July 1948, Clement Attlee replied to a letter dated 22 June from James Murray and ten other MPs who raised concerns about West Indians who arrived on board the {{HMT|Empire Windrush}}.{{Cite web | url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/attlees-britain/empire-windrush-2/ | title=The National Archives – Homepage | work=The National Archives | access-date=10 May 2018 | archive-date=11 May 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180511085255/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/attlees-britain/empire-windrush-2/ | url-status=live }} As for the prime minister himself, he was not much focused on economic policy, letting others handle the issues.{{cite book|author=Alec Cairncross|title=Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy 1945–51|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UWj_AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA49|year=2013|page=49|publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781136597701}}

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, and electricity and gas followed in 1948. The steel industry was nationalised in 1951. By 1951 about 20 per cent of the British economy had been taken into public ownership.

Nationalisation failed to provide workers with a greater say in the running of the industries in which they worked. It did, however, bring about significant material gains for workers in the form of higher wages, reduced working hours,{{cite book |last=Pelling |first=Henry |title=The Labour Governments, 1945–51}} and improvements in working conditions, especially in regards to safety.{{cite book |last=Cawood |first=Ian |title=Britain in the Twentieth Century}} As historian Eric Shaw noted of the years following nationalisation, the electricity and gas supply companies became "impressive models of public enterprise" in terms of efficiency, and the National Coal Board was not only profitable, but working conditions for miners had significantly improved as well.{{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Eric |title=The Labour Party since 1945}}

Within a few years of nationalisation, a number of progressive measures had been carried out which did much to improve conditions in the mines, including better pay, a five-day working week, a national safety scheme (with proper standards at all the collieries), a ban on boys under the age of 16 going underground, the introduction of training for newcomers before going down to the coalface, and the making of pithead baths into a standard facility.Kynaston, David. Austerity Britain 1945–1951.

The newly established National Coal Board offered sick pay and holiday pay to miners.{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/intermediate2/history/cradle_to_the_grave/welfare_state/revision/11|title=The Labour Government 1945–51 – The Welfare State: Revision, Page 11|access-date=25 March 2016|work=bbc.co.uk|archive-date=28 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160328121655/http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/intermediate2/history/cradle_to_the_grave/welfare_state/revision/11/|url-status=dead}} As noted by Martin Francis:

Union leaders saw nationalisation as a means to pursue a more advantageous position within a framework of continued conflict, rather than as an opportunity to replace the old adversarial form of industrial relations. Moreover, most workers in nationalised industries exhibited an essentially instrumentalist attitude, favouring public ownership because it secured job security and improved wages rather than because it promised the creation of a new set of socialist relationships in the workplace.Francis, Martin. Ideas and Policies Under Labour, 1945–1951.{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

File:Trafford General Hospital - geograph.org.uk - 21987.jpg, known as the birthplace of the NHS]]

Attlee's Health Minister, Aneurin Bevan, fought hard against the general disapproval of the medical establishment, including the British Medical Association, by creating the National Health Service in 1948. This was a publicly funded healthcare system, which offered treatment for all, regardless of income, free of charge at the point of use. Reflecting pent-up demand that had long existed for medical services, the NHS treated some 8.5 million dental patients and dispensed more than 5 million pairs of spectacles during its first year of operation.{{sfn|Jefferys|2014}}{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

Consultants benefited from the new system by being paid salaries that provided an acceptable standard of living without the need for them to resort to private practice.Timmins, Nicholas. The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} The NHS brought major improvements in the health of working-class people, with deaths from diphtheria, pneumonia, and tuberculosis significantly reduced.Lowe, Norman. Mastering Modern World History (second edition){{page needed|date=May 2024}} Although there were often disputes about its organisation and funding, British political parties continued to voice their general support for the NHS in order to remain electable.{{cite journal |url=http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/8/4/52.pdf |title=British public opinion on National Health Service reform|author=Blendon, R.J. & K. Donelan |journal=Health Affairs |volume=8 |issue=4 |year=1989 |pages=52–62 |pmid=2606439 |access-date=5 October 2014 |doi=10.1377/hlthaff.8.4.52}}

In the field of health care, funds were allocated to modernisation and extension schemes aimed at improving administrative efficiency. Improvements were made in nursing accommodation in order to recruit more nurses and reduce labour shortages which were keeping 60,000 beds out of use, and efforts were made to reduce the imbalance "between an excess of fever and tuberculosis (TB) beds and a shortage of maternity beds".Chick, Martin. Industrial Policy in Britain 1945–1951: Economic Planning, Nationalisation and the Labour Governments{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

BCG vaccinations were introduced for the protection of medical students, midwives, nurses, and contacts of patients with tuberculosis,Poverty, inequality and health in Britain, 1800–2000: a reader edited by George Davey Smith, Daniel Dorling, and Mary Shaw a pension scheme was set up for employees of the newly established NHS,{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mbv_YPJTKy8C&q=NHS+pension+scheme+1948&pg=PA179 |title=Issues in Healthcare Risk Management |editor1=Emslie, Stuart |editor2=Hancock, Charles |publisher=Healthcare Governance Limited |location=Oxford |date=30 July 2008 |page=179 |access-date=21 July 2012 |isbn=9780955852602}} The National Health Service (Superannuation) Regulations 1947 laid down a number of provisions for beneficiaries including an officer's pension and retiring allowance, an injury allowance, a short service gratuity, a death gratuity, a widow's pension, and supplementary payments in the case of special classes of officers. Provision was also made for the allocation of part of pension or injury allowance to spouse of dependent.[https://books.google.com/books?id=zDHyAAAAMAAJ&dq=national+health+service+superannuation+regulations+1947+No.++1755&pg=PA1373 Statutory Rules and Orders Other Than Those of a Local, Personal Or Temporary Character (varies Slightly).Volume 1, Part, By Great Britain. Laws, statutes, etc · 1948, p. 1373]

The Radioactive Substances Act 1948 set out general provisions to control radioactive substances.{{cite book |last1=Rees |first1=Naomi |last2=Watson |first2=David |title=International Standards for Food Safety |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FWjmJqPecHAC&q=united+kingdom+radioactive+substances+act+1948&pg=PA251 |date=30 April 2000 |publisher=Springer |access-date=9 January 2016 |isbn=9780834217683}} Numerous lesser reforms were also introduced, some of which were of great benefit to certain segments of British society, such as the mentally deficient and the blind.Hill, C. P. British Economic and Social History, 1700–1964.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} Between 1948 and 1951, Attlee's government increased spending on health from £6 billion to £11 billion: an increase of over 80%, and from 2.1% to 3.6% of GDP.Ten Years of New Labour (edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee){{page needed|date=May 2024}}

The government set about implementing the Wartime plans of 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.Thorpe, Andrew. (2001) A History of the British Labour Party, Palgrave; {{ISBN|0-333-92908-X}} Various provisions were included in the National Insurance Act 1946 including unemployment and sickness benefit, maternity grant and attendance allowance, maternity allowance, widow's benefit, widow's pensions in special cases, guardian's allowance, retirement pension, and death grant.{{citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3SZLAQAAIAAJ&dq=National+Insurance+Act+1946+widows+allowance+widowed+mother%27s+allowance&pg=PA807 |chapter=National Insurance Act, 1946 |title=Compendious Abstract of Public General Acts |date=1823 |page=710 |via=Google Books |publisher=HMSO}}

Various other pieces of legislation provided for child benefit and support for people with no other source of income. In 1949, unemployment, sickness and maternity benefits were exempted from taxation.{{cite web |url=http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101481 |title=HC S Budget Resolution and Economic Situation |publisher=Margaret Thatcher Foundation |date=5 May 1966 |access-date=20 March 2013}}

A block grant introduced in 1948 helped the social services provided by local authorities.Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour in Power, 1945–1951.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} Personal Social Services or welfare services were developed in 1948 for individual and families in general, particularly special groups such as the mentally disordered, deprived children, the elderly, and the handicapped.Byrne, Tony & Colin F. Padfield. Social Services: Made Simple.{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

The Attlee Government increased pensions and other benefits, with pensions raised to become more of a living income than they had ever been. War pensions and allowances (for both World Wars) were increased by an act of 1946{{which|date=February 2024}} which gave the wounded man with an allowance for his wife and children if he married after he had been wounded, thereby removing a grievance of more than twenty years standing.Socialism: The British Way (edited by Donald Munro).{{page needed|date=May 2024}} Other improvements were made in war pensions during Attlee's tenure as prime minister. A Constant Attendance Allowance was tripled, an Unemployability Allowance was tripled from 10s to 30s a week, and a special hardship allowance of up to £1 a week was introduced. In addition, the 1951 Budget made further improvements in the supplementary allowances for many war pensioners. From 1945 onwards, three out of every four pension claims had been successful, whilst after the First World War only one pension claim in three was allowed.Fifty Facts for Labour, published by the Labour Party, Transport House, Smith Square, London, SW1, October 1951. Under the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1948, employees of a body representative of local authorities or of the officers of local authorities could be admitted "on suitable terms to the superannuation fund of a local authority".{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PX0oAAAAQBAJ&q=united+kingdom+Superannuation+%28Miscellaneous+Provisions%29+Act+1948&pg=PA210|title=Pension and Widows' and Orphans' Funds|isbn=9781107621749|access-date=9 January 2016| last1=Crabbe|first1=R. J. W.|last2=Poyser|first2=C. A.|date=22 August 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press }} In 1951, a comforts allowance was introduced that was automatically paid to war pensioners "receiving unemployability supplement and constant attendance allowance".Welfare Policy Under the Conservatives, 1951–1964: A Guide to Documents in the Public Record Office by Paul Bridgen and Rodney Lowe

The Personal injuries (Civilians) Scheme of 1947 included various benefits such as an exceptional maximum rate of constant attendance allowance of 40s a week, and an allowance for wear and tear of clothing caused by the use of artificial limbs and appliances. In addition, allowances payable while a pensioner underwent inpatient treatment "are normally no longer subject to a deduction in respect of decreased home expenditure." Various changes were also made in respect of gainfully employed persons who sustained war injuries and civil defence volunteers who war service injuries. These included the provision of allowances for the wife and children for injured persons receiving injury allowance or disablement pension, amendments to the provisions for an allowance to a pensioner deemed unemployable by reason of his pensioned disablement "to secure that he receives in the aggregate by way of unemployability allowance and any social service benefits for which he is eligible at least 20s. a week in addition to his pension," increases in the allowance payable for a wife of a person receiving treatment allowance, unemployability allowance or injury allowance under certain conditions and "if no allowance is payable for a wife, an allowance may be granted for a dependant adult," and a social hardship allowance for partially disabled men "who, though not unemployable, is prevented by his pensioned disablement from resuming his former occupation or taking up one of equivalent standard." Also, "Where a man dies as the direct result of a qualifying injury his widow may be awarded a pension (with allowances for his children) without regard to the date of marriage."{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TYRQAQAAIAAJ&dq=United+kingdom+personal+injury+civilian+scheme+1946&pg=PA1595 |title=Statutory Rules and Orders Other Than Those of a Local, Personal, Or Temporary Character 1947 |date=1947 |pages=1589–1638}}

A more extensive system of social welfare benefits{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tn27AAAAIAAJ&dq=Clement+Attlee+National+Insurance+Act+1946&pg=PA79 |title=Clement Attlee |first= Jerry |last=Hardman Brookshire |year= 1995 |page=79|publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-0-7190-3244-8 }}[https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2024/10/18/the-british-labour-party-and-welfare-the-legacies-of-the-attlee-and-wilson-governments The British Labour Party and Welfare: The Legacies of the Attlee and Wilson Governments By Vittorio Trevitt, Published by History Is Now, October 20, 2024][https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ideas_and_Economic_Crises_in_Britain_fro/KoRCAdfkAfEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Clement+Attlee+National+Insurance+Act+1946&pg=PA62&printsec=frontcover Ideas and Economic Crises in Britain from Attlee to Blair (1945-2005) By Matthias Matthijs, 2012, P.62] had been established by the Attlee Government, which did much to reduce acute social deprivation. The cumulative impact of the Attlee's Government's health and welfare policies was such that all the indices of health (such as statistics of school medical or dental officers, or of medical officers of health) showed signs of improvement, with continual improvements in survival rates for infants and increased life expectancy for the elderly. The success of the Attlee Government's welfare legislation in reducing poverty was such that, in the general election of 1950, according to one study, "Labour propaganda could make much of the claim that social security had eradicated the most abject destitution of the 1930s".{{sfn|Jefferys|2014}}{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

The Attlee government ensured provisions of the Education Act 1944 were fully implemented, with free secondary education becoming a right for the first time. Fees in state grammar schools were eliminated, while new, modern secondary schools were constructed.Hopkins, Eric. Industrialisation and Society: A Social History, 1830–1951.{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

The school leaving age was raised to 15 in 1947, an accomplishment helped brought into fruition by initiatives such as the HORSA ("Huts Operation for Raising the School-leaving Age") scheme and the S.F.O.R.S.A. (furniture) scheme.{{cite web|url=https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/Documents/Detail/next-steps-in-education-a-discussion-pamphlet-based-on-a-report-to-the-fabian-education-group-1949/101438 |title=Next Steps in Education}} University scholarships were introduced to ensure that no one who was qualified "should be deprived of a university education for financial reasons",{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SqHbQYSsGvUC&q=ellen+wilkinson+free+school+meals&pg=PA21|title=Education Policy|access-date=9 January 2016|isbn=9781446271568|last1=Abbott|first1=Ian|last2=Rathbone|first2=Michael|last3=Whitehead|first3=Phillip|date=12 November 2012|archive-date=24 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170009/https://books.google.com/books?id=SqHbQYSsGvUC&q=ellen+wilkinson+free+school+meals&pg=PA21#v=snippet&q=ellen%20wilkinson%20free%20school%20meals&f=false|url-status=live}} while a large school building programme was organised.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0mSpBQAAQBAJ&q=ellen+wilkinson+university+scholarships&pg=PA120|title=The Home Front in Britain|access-date=9 January 2016|isbn=9781137348999|last1=Lomas|first1=Janis|date=29 October 2014|publisher=Springer|archive-date=24 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170025/https://books.google.com/books?id=0mSpBQAAQBAJ&q=ellen+wilkinson+university+scholarships&pg=PA120#v=snippet&q=ellen%20wilkinson%20university%20scholarships&f=false|url-status=live}} A rapid increase in the number of trained teachers took place, and the number of new school places was increased.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SqHbQYSsGvUC&q=Tomlinson+was+successful+in+increasing+the+number+of+new+school+places&pg=PA22|title=Education Policy|access-date=9 January 2016|isbn=9781446271568|last1=Abbott|first1=Ian|last2=Rathbone|first2=Michael|last3=Whitehead|first3=Phillip|date=12 November 2012}} Under the Education Act of 1946[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/9-10/50/enacted#:~:text=1946%20CHAPTER%2050,Libraries%20Acts%2C%201892%20to%201919 Education Act 1946 1946 CHAPTER 50] and the Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1948,[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/11-12/40/enacted Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1948 1948 CHAPTER 40] local authorities were empowered to provide clothing to pupils.

Increased Treasury funds were made available for education, particularly for upgrading school buildings suffering from years of neglect and war damage.Jefferys, Kevin. The Labour Party since 1945.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} Prefabricated classrooms were built, and 928 new primary schools were constructed between 1945 and 1950. The provision of free school meals was expanded, and opportunities for university entrants were increased.Hartley, Cathy. A Historical Dictionary of British Women.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} State scholarships to universities were increased,Pelling, Henry & Alastair J. Reid. A Short History of the Labour Party.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} and the government adopted a policy of supplementing university scholarships awards to a level sufficient to cover fees plus maintenance.

Many thousands of ex-servicemen were assisted to go through college who could never have contemplated it before the war.{{sfn|Munro|1948}} Free milk was also made available to all schoolchildren for the first time.Oddy, Derek J. From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1990s.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} In addition, spending on technical education rose, and the number of nursery schools was increased.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zaD1Gn0Wls0C&q=labour+government+1945-1951+nursery+schools+increased&pg=PA244|title=Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951|author=Tomlinson, Jim|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, UK|page=244|year=1997|access-date=21 July 2012|isbn=9780521892599|archive-date=24 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170007/https://books.google.com/books?id=zaD1Gn0Wls0C&q=labour+government+1945-1951+nursery+schools+increased&pg=PA244#v=snippet&q=labour%20government%201945-1951%20nursery%20schools%20increased&f=false|url-status=live}} Salaries for teachers were also improved, and funds were allocated towards improving existing schools.Pritt, Denis Nowell. The Labour Government 1945–51.{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

In 1947 the Arts Council of Great Britain was set up to encourage the arts.{{cite book|title=Freedom and Faith: A Question of Scottish Identity|author=Smith, D.|date=2013|publisher=St. Andrew Press, Ltd|isbn=9780861538133|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iYb-AQAAQBAJ|page=54|access-date=5 October 2014}}

The Ministry of Education was established under the 1944 Act, and free County Colleges were set up for the compulsory part-time instruction of teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 who were not in full-time education.Hodge, B. & W. L. Mellor. Higher School Certificate History.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} An Emergency Training Scheme was also introduced which turned out an extra 25,000 teachers in 1945–1951.{{cite web|url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:YdHEFfT32noJ:campbeltowngrammar.org.uk/downloads/history/5_year/british_higher/labour-reforms/i-assessment/1945-1951_labour_government.doc+%E2%80%9CPrefab%E2%80%9D+classrooms+were+also+built+and+928+new+primary+schools+were+constructed+between+1945+and+1950&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgaOtfB49c9TMEFcKCx0vUvwvLMyzSWQ9JMXlhiobC4Nc_-tDp2dZDqxDPSU6ylDlCONx_3vjFQ7Fc3VaJMijATeUPQ9lRI_EbAVSjjKj4Wb-s5sWyh0gIQ-oyKgx9L9VZIEDfB&sig=AHIEtbTl0DuRvchpzLCqCLa8NHX25FRRPA|title=Powered by Google Docs|access-date=2 October 2011|archive-date=12 November 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112212628/https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:YdHEFfT32noJ:campbeltowngrammar.org.uk/downloads/history/5_year/british_higher/labour-reforms/i-assessment/1945-1951_labour_government.doc+%E2%80%9CPrefab%E2%80%9D+classrooms+were+also+built+and+928+new+primary+schools+were+constructed+between+1945+and+1950&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgaOtfB49c9TMEFcKCx0vUvwvLMyzSWQ9JMXlhiobC4Nc_-tDp2dZDqxDPSU6ylDlCONx_3vjFQ7Fc3VaJMijATeUPQ9lRI_EbAVSjjKj4Wb-s5sWyh0gIQ-oyKgx9L9VZIEDfB&sig=AHIEtbTl0DuRvchpzLCqCLa8NHX25FRRPA|url-status=live}} In 1947, Regional Advisory Councils were set up to bring together industry and education to find out the needs of young workers "and advise on the provision required, and to secure reasonable economy of provision".Whitaker's Almanack, J. Whitaker & Sons, 1987{{page needed|date=May 2024}} That same year, thirteen Area Training Organisations were set up in England and one in Wales to coordinate teacher training.{{cite web|url=https://education-uk.org/history/timeline.html|title=Education in England – Timeline|author=Gillard, Derek|publisher=educationengland.org.uk|access-date=5 October 2014|archive-date=19 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110819075553/http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/timeline.html|url-status=live}}

Attlee's government, however, failed to introduce the comprehensive education for which many socialists had hoped. This reform was eventually carried out by Harold Wilson's government. During its time in office, the Attlee government increased spending on education by over 50 per cent, from £6.5 billion to £10 billion.{{sfn|Beech|Lee|2008}}

File:Overzicht van de markt, Bestanddeelnr 191-0944.jpg in London, 1947]]

The most significant problem facing Attlee and his ministers remained the economy, as the war effort had left Britain nearly bankrupt.{{cite encyclopedia | last = Gilbert | first = Bentley Brinkerhoff | title = Britain since 1945 Labour and the welfare state (1945–51) | encyclopedia = Britannica | url = https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Britain-since-1945 | date = 2021 | access-date = 26 October 2021 | archive-date = 19 January 2024 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240119232557/https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Britain-since-1945 | url-status = live }} Overseas investments had been used 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 resulted in strict rationing of food and other essential goods continuing 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 financial state.{{cite book |last1=Cowcroft |first1=Robert |last2=Theakston |first2=Kevin |editor1-last=Heppell |editor1-first=T |editor2-last=Theakston |editor2-first=Kevin |title=How Labour Governments Fall: From Ramsay Macdonald to Gordon Brown |date=2013 |isbn=978-0-230-36180-5 |url=https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/85710/2/Fall%20of%20Attlee%20Govt.pdf |access-date=5 December 2023 |chapter=The Fall of the Attlee Government, 1951 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |archive-date=14 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240114172944/https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/85710/2/Fall%20of%20Attlee%20Govt.pdf |url-status=live }}

The abrupt end of the American Lend-Lease programme in August 1945 almost caused a crisis. Some relief was provided by the Anglo-American loan, negotiated in December 1945. The conditions attached to the loan included making the pound fully convertible to the US dollar. When this was introduced in July 1947, it led to a currency crisis and convertibility had to be suspended after just five weeks. The UK benefited from the American Marshall Aid program in 1948, and the economic situation improved significantly. 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 per cent of the total workforce. Labour shortages proved a more frequent problem. The inflation rate was also kept low during his term. The rate of unemployment rarely rose above 2 per cent during Attlee's time in office, whilst there was no hard-core of long-term unemployed. Both production and productivity rose as a result of new equipment, while the average working week was shortened.Thompson, David. England in the Twentieth Century (1914–63).{{page needed|date=May 2024}}

The government was less successful in housing, which was 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. Nevertheless, millions of people were rehoused as a result of the Attlee government's housing policies. Between August 1945 and December 1951, 1,016,349 new homes were completed in England, Scotland, and Wales.{{sfn|Morgan|1984}}

When the Attlee government was voted out of office in 1951, the economy had been improved compared to 1945. The period from 1946 to 1951 saw continuous full employment and steadily rising living standards, which increased by about 10 per cent each year. During that same period, the economy grew by 3 per cent a year, and by 1951 the UK had "the best economic performance in Europe, while output per person was increasing faster than in the United States".Ten Years of New Labour (edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee){{page needed|date=May 2024}} Careful planning after 1945 also ensured that demobilisation was carried out without having a negative impact upon economic recovery, and that unemployment stayed at very low levels.{{page needed|date=May 2024}} In addition, the number of motor cars on the roads rose from 3 million to 5 million from 1945 to 1951, and seaside holidays were taken by far more people than ever before.{{sfn|Hill|1970}} A Monopolies and Restrictive Practices (Inquiry and Control) Act was passed in 1948, which allowed for investigations of restrictive practices and monopolies. However, some economic historians have argued that the UK failed to develop economically after the war, with failure to support industry leaving the economy not recovering as effectively as Germany.{{cite news |last1=Brown |first1=Derek |title=1945–51: Labour and the creation of the welfare state |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education |access-date=5 December 2023 |work=The Guardian |date=14 March 2001 |archive-date=30 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231130202217/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education |url-status=live }}{{cite web |last1=Myers |first1=John |title=The plot against Mercia |url=https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/ |website=UnHerd |access-date=5 December 2023 |date=13 September 2020 |archive-date=5 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231205225402/https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/ |url-status=live }}{{cite book |last1=Barnett |first1=Correlli |author-link=Correlli Barnett|title=The Lost Victory: British Dreams and British Realities |date=1995 |publisher=Macmillan|pages=170–171}}

1947 proved 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 Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell was widely blamed for failing to ensure adequate coal stocks, and soon resigned from his post. The Conservatives capitalised on the crisis with the slogan 'Starve with Strachey and shiver with Shinwell' (referring to the Minister of Food John Strachey).{{cite web |last=Sandbrook |first=Dominic |author-link=Dominic Sandbrook |title=Winter of 1947 |url=http://www.jubileeriver.co.uk/100110%20-%20winter%20of%201947.htm |url-status=dead |publisher=Jubileeriver.co.uk |date=9 January 2010 |access-date=20 March 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728181223/http://www.jubileeriver.co.uk/100110%20-%20winter%20of%201947.htm |archive-date=28 July 2011}}

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. These plots petered out after Bevin refused to cooperate. Later that year, Dalton resigned as Chancellor after inadvertently leaking details of the budget to a journalist. He was replaced by Cripps.{{cite book |last=Foot |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Foot |title=Aneurin Bevan: A Biography: Volume 2: 1945–1960 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0jeyDZ_1h1cC&pg=PT75 |publisher=Faber & Faber |year=2011 |page=75 |isbn=9780571280858}}

In foreign affairs, the Attlee government was concerned with four main issues: post-war 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 by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. Attlee also attended the later stages of the Potsdam Conference, where he negotiated with President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin.File:Photograph of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee shaking hands with Secretary of State James Byrnes upon his... - NARA - 199245.jpg upon his arrival at National Airport in Washington, 1945]]File:Potsdam big three.jpg and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 1945]]In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Government faced the challenge of managing relations with Britain's former war-time ally, Stalin and the Soviet Union. Ernest Bevin was a passionate anti-communist, based largely on his experience of fighting communist influence in the trade union movement. Bevin's initial approach to the USSR as Foreign Secretary was "wary and suspicious, but not automatically hostile".{{sfn|Morgan|1984}} Attlee himself sought warm relations with Stalin. He put his trust in the United Nations, rejected notions that the Soviet Union was bent on world conquest, and warned that treating Moscow as an enemy would turn it into one. This put Attlee at sword's point with his foreign minister, the Foreign Office, and the military who all saw the Soviets as a growing threat to Britain's role in the Middle East. Suddenly in January 1947, Attlee reversed his position and agreed with Bevin on a hardline anti-Soviet policy.{{cite journal |author=Smith Raymond, Zametica John |title=The Cold Warrior: Clement Attlee reconsidered, 1945–7 |journal=International Affairs |volume=61 |issue=2 |pages=237–252 |year=1985 |jstor=2617482 |doi=10.2307/2617482}}

In an early "good-will" gesture that was later heavily criticised, the Attlee government allowed the Soviets to purchase, under the terms of a 1946 UK-USSR Trade agreement, a total of 25 Rolls-Royce Nene jet engines in September 1947 and March 1948. The agreement included an agreement not to use them for military purposes. The price was fixed under a commercial contract; a total of 55 jet engines were sold to the USSR in 1947.{{Hansard|1948/nov/22/jet-engines-foreign-sales|access-date=28 April 2020}} However, the Cold War intensified during this period and 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. This was used to good effect against US-UK forces in the subsequent Korean War, as well as in several later MiG models.Gordon, Yefim. Mikoyan–Gurevich MIG-15: The Soviet Union's Long-Lived Korean War Fighter, Midland Press (2001), {{ISBN|978-1857801057}}.

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 realised. The Attlee government then became instrumental in the creation of the successful NATO defence alliance to protect Western Europe against any Soviet expansion.{{sfnm |1a1=Morgan |1y=1984 |1loc=ch. 6 |2a1=Thomas-Symonds |2y=2012 |2pp=2–4, 127}} 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. He called it one of the "most bold, enlightened and good-natured acts in the history of nations".{{cite book |last=Field |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Field, Baron Field of Birkenhead |title=Attlee's Great Contemporaries: The Politics of Character |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-5-6BwAAQBAJ&pg=PR38 |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2009 |page=38 |isbn=9781441129444}}

A group of 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 a "third force" of European powers to stand between the US and USSR. However, deteriorating relations between Britain and the USSR, as well as Britain's economic reliance on America following the Marshall Plan, steered policy towards supporting the US. In January 1947, fear of both Soviet and American nuclear intentions led to a secret meeting of the Cabinet, where the decision was made to press ahead with the development of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, an issue which later caused a split in the Labour Party. Britain's first successful nuclear test, however, did not occur until 1952, one year after Attlee had left office.

The London dock strike of July 1949, led by Communists, was suppressed when the Attlee government sent in 13,000 Army troops and passed special legislation to promptly end the strike. His response reveals Attlee's growing concern that Soviet expansionism, supported by the British Communist Party, was a genuine threat to national security, and that the docks were highly vulnerable to sabotage ordered by Moscow. He noted that the strike was caused not by local grievances, but to help communist unions who were on strike in Canada. Attlee agreed with MI5 that he faced "a very present menace".{{cite journal |last=Deery |first=Phillip |title='A Very Present Menace'? Attlee, Communism and the Cold War |journal=Australian Journal of Politics and History |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=69–93 |year=1998 |doi=10.1111/1467-8497.00005}}

File:Bevin Attlee H 42138.jpg (left) with Attlee in 1945]]

Decolonisation was never a major election issue, but Attlee gave the matter a great deal of attention and was the chief leader in beginning the process of decolonisation of the British Empire.{{cite book|author=David Wilsford|title=Political Leaders of Contemporary Western Europe: A Biographical Dictionary|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|url=https://archive.org/details/politicalleaders00wils|url-access=registration|year=1995|page=[https://archive.org/details/politicalleaders00wils/page/21 21]|isbn=9780313286230}}Nicholas Owen, "Attlee governments: The end of empire 1945–51". Contemporary British History 3#4 (1990): 12–16.

In August 1948, the Chinese Communists' victories caused Attlee to begin preparing for a Communist takeover of China. It kept open consulates in Communist-controlled areas and rejected the Chinese Nationalists' requests that British citizens assist in the defence of Shanghai. By December, the government concluded that although British property in China would likely be nationalised, British traders would benefit in the long run from a stable, industrialising Communist China. Retaining Hong Kong was especially important to him; although the Chinese Communists promised to not interfere with its rule, Britain reinforced the Hong Kong Garrison during 1949. When the victorious Chinese Communists government declared on 1 October 1949 that it would exchange diplomats with any country that ended relations with the Chinese Nationalists, Britain became the first western country to formally recognise the People's Republic of China in January 1950.{{cite journal |last=Wolf |first=David C. |title='To Secure a Convenience': Britain Recognizes China – 1950 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=299–326 |year=1983 |s2cid=162218504 |jstor=260389 |doi=10.1177/002200948301800207}} In 1954, a Labour Party delegation including Attlee visited China at the invitation of then Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. Attlee became the first high-ranking western politician to meet Mao Zedong.{{cite news |title=Letter from Mao Zedong to Clement Attlee sells for £605,000 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/15/mao-zedong-clement-attlee-letter-sothebys-auction |newspaper=The Guardian |date=15 December 2015 |access-date=5 January 2020 |archive-date=28 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200728170126/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/15/mao-zedong-clement-attlee-letter-sothebys-auction |url-status=live }}

Attlee orchestrated the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. Attlee in 1928–1934 had been a member of the Indian Statutory Commission (otherwise known as the Simon Commission). He became the Labour Party expert on India and by 1934 was committed to granting India the same independent dominion status that Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa had recently been given.{{sfn|Bew|2017|pp=186–187}} He faced strong resistance from the die-hard Conservative imperialists, led by Churchill, who opposed both independence and efforts led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to set up a system of limited local control by Indians themselves.{{cite book |last=Herman |first=Arthur |title=Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age |year=2008 |pages=321–325}} Attlee and the Labour leadership were sympathetic to both the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Pakistan movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. During the Second World War, Attlee was in charge of Indian affairs. He set up the Cripps Mission in 1942, which tried and failed to bring the factions together. When Congress called for passive resistance in the Quit India movement of 1942–1945, it was the British regime ordered the widespread arrest and internment for the duration of tens of thousands of Congress leaders as part of its efforts to crush the revolt.{{sfn|Bew|2017|p=433}}

Labour's election Manifesto in 1945 called for "the advancement of India to responsible self-government".{{cite book |last=Craig |first=F. W. S. | author-link = F. W. S. Craig |title=British General Election Manifestos: 1918–1966 |year=1970 |page=105}} In 1942 the British Raj tried to enlist all major political parties in support of the war effort. Congress, led by Nehru and Gandhi, demanded immediate independence and full control by Congress of all of India. That demand was rejected by the British, and Congress opposed the war effort with its "Quit India" campaign. The Raj immediately responded in 1942 by imprisoning the major national, regional and local Congress leaders for the duration. Attlee did not object.Herman, Gandhi & Churchill (2008) pp. 486-95. By contrast, the Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, strongly supported the war effort. They greatly enlarged their membership and won favour from London for their decision. Attlee retained a fondness for Congress and until 1946, accepted their thesis that they were a non-religious party that accepted Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and everyone else.Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982) pp. 362–64 Nevertheless, this difference in opinion between the Congress and the Muslim League towards the British war effort encouraged Attlee and his government to consider further negotiations with the Muslim League.

The Muslim League insisted that it was the only true representative of all of the Muslims of India. With violence escalating in India after the war, but with British financial power at a low ebb, large-scale military involvement was impossible. Viceroy Wavell said he needed a further seven army divisions to prevent communal violence if independence negotiations failed. No divisions were available; independence was the only option.David Chandler, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (1994) p. 331 Given the increasing demands of the Muslim League, independence implied a partition that set off heavily Muslim Pakistan from the main portion of India.Harris, Attlee (1982) pp. 367–69. After becoming Prime Minister in 1945 Attlee originally planned to give India Dominion status in 1948.{{Cite web|url=https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-136/churchill-and-india-again-a-again-a-again-a-again/|title=Churchill and India: Again & Again & Again & Again|date=4 July 2013|website=International Churchill Society|access-date=17 May 2021|archive-date=17 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517132627/https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-136/churchill-and-india-again-a-again-a-again-a-again/|url-status=live}}

Attlee suggested in his memoirs that "traditional" colonial rule in Asia was no longer viable. He said that he expected it to meet renewed opposition after the war both by local national movements as well as by the United States.{{cite book| author=Attlee, Clement|title=As It Happened|publisher=Viking Press|date=1954|page=254 }} The prime minister's biographer John Bew says that Attlee hoped for a transition to a multilateral world order and a Commonwealth, and that the old British empire "should not be supported beyond its natural lifespan" and instead be ended "on the right note." His exchequer Hugh Dalton meanwhile feared that post-war Britain could no longer afford to garrison its empire.{{cite book| author=Bew, John|title=Citizen Clem|publisher=Quercus Editions Limited|date=2016|page=414 }}

Ultimately the Labour government gave full independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 through the Indian Independence Act. This involved creating a demarcation between the two regions which was known as the Radcliffe Line. The boundary between the newly created states of Pakistan and India involved the widespread resettlement of millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. Almost immediately, extreme anti-Hindu and anti-Sikh violence ensued in Lahore, Multan and Dacca when the Punjab province and the Bengal province were split in the Partition of India. This was followed by a rapid increase in widespread anti-Muslim violence in several areas including Amritsar, Rajkot, Jaipur, Calcutta and Delhi. Historian Yasmin Khan estimates that over a million people were killed of which several were women and children.Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (Yale UP, 2005) pp. 6, 83–103, 211.{{cite book |author=Peter Lyon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vLwOck15eboC&pg=PA19 |title=Conflict Between India and Pakistan: An Encyclopedia |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2008 |isbn=9781576077122 |page=19}} Gandhi himself was assassinated in January 1948."Gandhi Is Killed By A Hindu; India Shaken, World Mourns; 15 Die In Rioting In Bombay Three Shots Fired" [https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0130.html New York Times 30 January 1948] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170207115225/http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0130.html |date=7 February 2017 }} Attlee remarked Gandhi as the "greatest citizen" of India and added, "this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem. He had become the expression of the aspirations of the Indian people for independence".{{cite book | author=British Broadcasting Corporation | title=London Calling | publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation | issue=nos. 432–457 | year=1948 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_h_HxjR8uz8C | access-date=2023-05-19 | page=4 | archive-date=19 May 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230519013201/https://books.google.com/books?id=_h_HxjR8uz8C | url-status=live }}{{cite book | first1 = H. S. L. | last1 = Polak | author1-link = Henry Polak | first2 = H. N. | last2 = Brailsford | author2-link = H. N. Brailsford | first3 = Frederick | last3 = Pethick-Lawrence | author3-link = Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=YGQfAAAAMAAJ | title = Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of Modern India | publisher = Anmol Publications | year = 1986 | page = 303 | access-date = 26 March 2023 | archive-date = 26 March 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230326070005/https://books.google.com/books?id=YGQfAAAAMAAJ | url-status = live }}{{sfn|Bew|2017|p=441}}

Historian Andrew Roberts says the independence of India was a "national humiliation" but it was necessitated by urgent financial, administrative, strategic and political needs.Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (1994) p. 78. Churchill in 1940–1945 had tightened the hold on India and imprisoned the Congress leadership, with Attlee's approval. Labour had looked forward to making it a fully independent dominion like Canada or Australia. Many of the Congress leaders in the India had studied in England, and were highly regarded as fellow idealistic socialists by Labour leaders. Attlee was the Labour expert on India and took special charge of decolonisation.Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982) pp. 362–387. Attlee found that Churchill's viceroy, Field Marshal Wavell, was too imperialistic, too keen on military solutions, and too neglectful of Indian political alignments.Irial Glynn, "'An Untouchable in the Presence of Brahmins' Lord Wavell's Disastrous Relationship with Whitehall During His Time as Viceroy to India, 1943–7". Modern Asian Studies 41#3 (2007): 639–663. The eventual appointee for new Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, the dashing war hero and a cousin of the King, was put forward by V. K. Krishna Menon as a candidate acceptable to all, in a series of clandestine meetings with Sir Stafford Scripps, and with Attlee.{{Citation |title=Aminossehe, Sherin, ( born 26 Nov. 1976), Director, Infrastructure, since 2019, and Race Champion, Ministry of Defence |date=2022-12-01 |work=Who's Who |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u294527 |access-date=2024-03-13 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u294527 |isbn=978-0-19-954088-4|url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal | author = Moore R. J. | year = 1981 | title = Mountbatten, India, and the Commonwealth | journal = Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics | volume = 19 | issue = 1| pages = 5–43 | doi=10.1080/14662048108447372| doi-access = }}

Attlee also sponsored the peaceful transition to independence in 1948 of Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).{{cite book|author=Paul H. Kratoska|title=South East Asia, Colonial History: Peaceful transitions to independence (1945–1963)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yookbQZ-0yUC|year=2001|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=9780415247849}}

File:VE day Jerusalem 1945.jpg celebrations in British-controlled Jerusalem (1945)]]

One of the most urgent problems facing Attlee concerned the future of the British mandate in Palestine, which had become too troublesome and expensive to handle. British policies in Palestine were perceived by the Zionist movement and the Truman administration to be pro-Arab and anti-Jewish, and Britain soon found itself unable to maintain public order in the face of a Jewish insurgency and a civil war.

During this period, 70,000 Holocaust survivors attempted to reach Palestine as part of the Aliyah Bet refugee movement. Attlee's government tried several tactics to prevent the migration.{{Cite web |title=Cyprus Detention Camps |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/cyprus-detention-camps |access-date=2023-02-08 |website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org |language=en |archive-date=8 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230208005330/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/cyprus-detention-camps |url-status=live }} Five ships were bombed by the Secret Intelligence Service (though with no casualties) with a fake Palestinian group created to take responsibility.{{Cite web |title=Operation Embarrass? You bet: Britain's secret war on the Jews – The Jewish Chronicle |url=https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/operation-embarrass-you-bet-britain-s-secret-war-on-the-jews-1.18403 |access-date=2023-02-08 |website=The Jewish Chronicle |date=21 September 2010 |archive-date=8 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230208005330/https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/operation-embarrass-you-bet-britain-s-secret-war-on-the-jews-1.18403 |url-status=live }} The navy apprehended over 50,000 refugees en route, interning them in detention camps in Cyprus. Conditions in the camps were harsh and faced global criticism. Later, the refugee ship Exodus 1947 would be sent back to mainland Europe, instead of being taken to Cyprus.

In response to the increasingly unpopular mandate, Attlee ordered the evacuation of all British military personnel and handed over the issue to the United Nations, a decision which was widely supported by the general public in Britain.Ellen Jenny Ravndal, "Exit Britain: British Withdrawal From the Palestine Mandate in the Early Cold War, 1947–1948". Diplomacy & Statecraft 21#3 (2010): 416–433. With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the camps in Cyprus were eventually closed, with their former occupants finally completing their journey to the new country.

Attlee remained hostile to Israel years after its establishment. In 1958, describing the Israelis as extremely aggressive against the neighbouring Arab states and describing the Balfour Declaration as a mistake.{{Cite web |date=2015-03-20 |title=Lord Attlee, British Ex-premier, Attacks Israel in House of Lords |url=https://www.jta.org/archive/lord-attlee-british-ex-premier-attacks-israel-in-house-of-lords |access-date=2024-12-09 |website=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |date=2015-03-20 |title=Attlee Explains Why He Thought the Balfour Declaration a "mistake" |url=https://www.jta.org/archive/attlee-explains-why-he-thought-the-balfour-declaration-a-mistake |access-date=2024-12-09 |website=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |language=en-US}}

The government's policies with regard to the other colonies, particularly those in Africa, focused on keeping them as strategic Cold War assets while modernising their economies. The Labour Party had long attracted aspiring leaders from Africa and had developed elaborate plans before the war. Implementing them overnight with an empty treasury proved too challenging.{{cite journal |last=Kelemen |first=Paul |title=Planning for Africa: The British Labour Party's Colonial Development Policy, 1920–1964 |journal=Journal of Agrarian Change |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=76–98 |year=2007 |doi=10.1111/j.1471-0366.2007.00140.x|doi-access=free |bibcode=2007JAgrC...7...76K }} A major military base was built in Kenya, and the African colonies came under an unprecedented degree of direct control from London. Development schemes were implemented to help solve Britain's post-war balance of payments crisis and raise African living standards. This "new colonialism" worked slowly, and had failures such as the Tanganyika groundnut scheme.{{cite journal |last=Hyam |first=Ronald |title=Africa and the Labour government, 1945–1951 |journal=Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=148–172 |year=1988 |doi=10.1080/03086538808582773}}

The 1950 election gave Labour a massively reduced majority of five seats compared to the triple-digit majority of 1945. Although re-elected, the result was seen by Attlee as very disappointing, and was widely attributed to the effects of post-war austerity denting Labour's appeal to middle-class voters.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4393273.stm|work=BBC News|title=1950: Labour majority slashed|date=5 April 2005|access-date=26 April 2012|archive-date=30 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170730074913/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4393273.stm|url-status=live}} With such a small majority leaving him dependent on a small number of MPs to govern, Attlee's second term was much tamer than his first. Some major reforms were nevertheless passed, particularly regarding industry in urban areas and regulations to limit air and water pollution.{{sfn|Morgan|1984|pp=409–461}}H. G. Nicholas, The British general election of 1950 (1999).

By 1951, the Attlee government was exhausted, with several of its most senior ministers ailing or ageing, and with a lack of new ideas.{{sfn|Morgan|1984|p=460}} Attlee's record for settling internal differences in the Labour Party fell in April 1951, when there was a damaging split over an austerity Budget brought in by the Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, to pay for the cost of Britain's participation in the Korean War. Aneurin Bevan resigned to protest against the new charges for "teeth and spectacles" in the National Health Service introduced by that Budget, and was joined in this action by several senior ministers, including the future Prime Minister Harold Wilson, then the President of the Board of Trade. Thus escalated a battle between the left and right wings of the Party that continues today.{{cite book|author=Robert Leach|title=British Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l6McBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA129|year=2011|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|page=129|display-authors=etal|isbn=9780230344228}}{{Dead link|date=February 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Finding it increasingly impossible to govern, Attlee's only chance was to call a snap election in October 1951, in the hope of achieving a more workable majority and to regain authority.Robert Pearce, "The 1950 and 1951 General Elections in Britain: Robert Pearce Asks Why Labour's Period in Office under Clement Attlee Came to an End" History Review (March 2008) v 60 [https://www.questia.com/article/1G1-175181454/the-1950-and-1951-general-elections-in-britain-robert online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019034952/https://www.questia.com/article/1G1-175181454/the-1950-and-1951-general-elections-in-britain-robert |date=19 October 2015 }} The gamble failed: Labour narrowly lost to the Conservative Party, despite winning considerably more votes (achieving the largest Labour vote in electoral history). Attlee tendered his resignation as Prime Minister the following day, after six years and three months in office.Robert Crowcroft and Kevin Theakston. "The Fall of the Attlee Government, 1951". in Timothy Heppell and Kevin Theakston, eds. How Labour Governments Fall (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). pp. 61–82.

Following the defeat in 1951, Attlee continued to lead the party as Leader of the Opposition. His last four years as leader were, however, widely seen as one of the Labour Party's weaker periods.

The period was dominated by infighting between the Labour Party's right wing, led by Hugh Gaitskell, and its left, led by Aneurin Bevan. Many Labour MPs felt that Attlee should have retired following 1951 election and allowed a younger man to lead the party. Bevan openly called for him to stand down in the summer of 1954.Williams, Charles. Harold Macmillan (2009), p. 221 One of his main reasons for staying on as leader was to frustrate the leadership ambitions of Herbert Morrison, whom Attlee disliked for both political and personal reasons. At one time, Attlee had favoured Aneurin Bevan to succeed him as leader, but this became problematic after Bevan almost irrevocably split the party.{{sfn|Beckett|1998}}

Attlee, now aged 72, contested the 1955 general election against Anthony Eden, which saw Labour lose 18 seats, and the Conservatives increase their majority.

In an interview with the News Chronicle columnist Percy Cudlipp in mid-September 1955, Attlee made clear his own thinking together with his preference for the leadership succession, stating:

{{blockquote|Labour has nothing to gain by dwelling in the past. Nor do I think we can impress the nation by adopting a futile left-wingism. I regard myself as Left of Centre which is where a Party Leader ought to be. It is no use asking, 'What would Keir Hardie have done?' We must have at the top men brought up in the present age, not, as I was, in the Victorian Age.{{cite book|title=Prospect and Reality: Great Britain 1945–1955|publisher=Collins|year=1985|author=Thomas Edward Broadie Howarth|isbn=9780002162814|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=62SGAAAAIAAJ|access-date=26 March 2023|archive-date=26 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326070307/https://books.google.com/books?id=62SGAAAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}}}

He retired as Leader of the Labour Party on 7 December 1955, having led the party for twenty years, and on 14 December Hugh Gaitskell was elected as his successor.{{sfn|Bew|2017|p=532}}{{cite book|title=Attlee: A Life in Politics|first=Nicklaus |last=Thomas-Symonds|page=260|year=2010|publisher=I B Tauris|place=London}}

He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.{{Cite web |title=Letters from Thane Read asking Helen Keller to sign the World Constitution for world peace. 1961 |url=https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B149-F04-022.1.8 |access-date=2023-07-01 |website=Helen Keller Archive |publisher=American Foundation for the Blind |archive-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703034807/https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B149-F04-022.1.8 |url-status=live }}{{Cite web |title=Letter from World Constitution Coordinating Committee to Helen, enclosing current materials |url=https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B154-F05-028.1.6 |access-date=2023-07-03 |website=Helen Keller Archive |publisher=American Foundation for the Blind |archive-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703034812/https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B154-F05-028.1.6 |url-status=live }} As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.{{Cite web |title=Preparing earth constitution {{!}} Global Strategies & Solutions {{!}} The Encyclopedia of World Problems |url=http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/strategy/193465 |url-status=live |access-date=2023-07-15 |website=The Encyclopedia of World Problems {{!}} Union of International Associations (UIA) |archive-date=19 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230719215501/http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/strategy/193465 }}

Attlee was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 for his support of the League of Nations and the United Nations, and received further nominations in 1955 and 1964, but was unsuccessful on each occasion.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=550|title=Nomination Archive – Clement Richard Lord Attlee|website=NobelPrize.org|language=en-US|access-date=21 June 2022}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=13391|title=Nomination Archive – Earl (Clement) Attlee|website=NobelPrize.org|language=en-US|access-date=21 June 2022}}

File:President John F. Kennedy with Clement Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, Former British Prime Minister and Labour Party Leader (02).jpg in 1961]]

He subsequently retired from the House of Commons and was elevated to the peerage as Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood on 16 December 1955, taking his seat in the House of Lords on 25 January.{{Hansard|house=lords|url=1956/jan/25/earl-attlee}} He believed Eden had been forced into taking a strong stand on the Suez Crisis by his backbenchers.{{sfn|Bew|2016|p=538}} In 1958, Attlee, along with numerous notables, established the Homosexual Law Reform Society: this campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private by consenting adults, a reform that was voted through Parliament nine years later.{{cite book |last=Harrison |first=Brian |title=Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951—1970 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oVH0fVcMx5cC&pg=PP166 |year=2009 |page=166 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=9780191606786}} In May 1961, he travelled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Kennedy.{{cite web |last=Rowe |first=Abbie |title=MEETING WITH CLEMENT ATTLEE, 1ST EARL ATTLEE, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER AND LABOUR PARTY LEADER, 12:00PM |url=https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1961/Month%2005/Day%2016/JFKWHP-1961-05-16-B |website=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum |date=16 May 1961 |access-date=19 January 2021 |archive-date=26 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210526083048/https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1961/Month%2005/Day%2016/JFKWHP-1961-05-16-B |url-status=live }}

In 1962, he spoke twice in the House of Lords against the British government's application for the UK to join the European Communities ("Common Market"). In his second speech delivered in November, Attlee claimed that Britain had a separate parliamentary tradition from the Continental European countries that comprised the EC. He also claimed that if Britain became a member, EC rules would prevent the British government from planning the economy and that Britain's traditional policy had been outward-looking rather than Continental.{{Hansard|1962/nov/08/britain-and-the-common-market|house=lords|access-date=28 April 2020}}

He attended Winston Churchill's funeral in January 1965. He was frail by that time, and 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 the Labour Party return to power under Harold Wilson in 1964, and also to see his old constituency of Walthamstow West fall to the Conservatives in a by-election in September 1967.Beckett 2015, p.467

Attlee died peacefully in his sleep of pneumonia, at the age of 84 at Westminster Hospital on 8 October 1967.{{sfn|Beckett|1998}} Two thousand people attended his funeral in November, including the then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the Duke of Kent, representing the Queen. He was cremated and his ashes were buried at Westminster Abbey.{{cite news|title=Prime ministers' funerals from Pitt to Heath|work=BBC News|date=15 April 2013|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22078727|access-date=4 September 2016|last1=Parkinson|first1=Justin|last2=Davies|first2=Chris|archive-date=11 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170311033456/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22078727|url-status=live}}{{cite news|title=Earl Attlee's Remains Interred Aka Service Of Memorial And Burial For Earl Attlee (1967)|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5iUfLJlLfI&hd=1| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/C5iUfLJlLfI| archive-date=30 October 2021|via=Youtube| date=13 April 2014 |work=Warner-Pathé|access-date=18 July 2017|url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}

Upon his death, the title passed to his son Martin Richard Attlee, 2nd Earl Attlee (1927–1991), who defected from Labour to the SDP in 1981. 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 House of Lords Act 1999.{{cite web|title=Hereditary Peers in the House of Lords Since 1999|url=http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-2014-014/LLN-2014-014.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150609014726/http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-2014-014/LLN-2014-014.pdf |archive-date=9 June 2015 |url-status=live|access-date=29 May 2021|website=researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk}}

Attlee's estate was sworn for probate purposes at a value of £7,295,"Attlee the rt hon Clement Richard of 1 Kings Bench Walk Temple London EC4 died 8 October 1967 Probate London 4 January £7295" in Probate Index for 1968 at probatesearch.service.gov.uk, accessed 7 August 2016 (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|7295|1967|r=0}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}}) a relatively modest sum for so prominent a figure, and only a fraction of the £75,394 in his father's estate when he died in 1908."Attlee Henry of 10 Billiter-square London and Westcott Portinscull-road Putney Surrey died 19 November 1908" in Probate Index for 1908 at probatesearch.service.gov.uk, accessed 7 August 2016

File:Clement Attlee by George Harcourt, 1946.jpg, 1946]]

The quotation about Attlee, "A modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about", is commonly ascribed to Churchill—though Churchill denied saying it, and respected Attlee's service in the War cabinet.Arnstein, Walter L. Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present, Chapter 19, p. 363 Attlee's modesty and quiet manner hid a great deal that has only come to light with historical reappraisal. Attlee himself is said to have responded to critics with a limerick: "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".Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982)

His leadership style of consensual government, acting as a chairman rather than a president, won him much praise from historians and politicians alike. Christopher Soames, the British Ambassador to France during the Conservative government of Edward Heath and cabinet minister under Margaret 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".Hennessy, Peter. The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945, Chapter 7, p. 150 The journalist and broadcaster Anthony Howard called him "the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th century".[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogInrBNCaYM Anthony Howard – Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200303054845/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogInrBNCaYM&gl=US&hl=en |date=3 March 2020 }}, video on YouTube.

Thatcher herself wrote in her 1995 memoirs, which charted her life from her beginnings in Grantham to her victory at the 1979 general election, that she admired Attlee, writing: "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".{{cite web |title=Clement Attlee (excerpts from M, Thatcher in primary sources section towards bottom) |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/TUattlee.htm |publisher=Spartacus Educational |access-date=2 August 2017 |archive-date=25 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230725070820/https://spartacus-educational.com/TUattlee.htm |url-status=live }}

Attlee's government 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 creation of the National Health Service and the post-war welfare state, which became key to the reconstruction of post-war Britain. Attlee and his ministers did much to transform the UK into a more prosperous and egalitarian society during their time in office with reductions in poverty and a rise in the general economic security of the population.Tanner, Duncan; Pat Thane & Nick Tiratsoo. Labour's First Century.

File:Clement Attlee statue - Limehouse library.jpg in its former position outside Limehouse Library]]

In foreign affairs, he did much to assist with the post-war economic recovery of Europe. He proved a loyal ally of the US at the onset of the Cold War. Due to 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 nuclear weapons programme, and work on it began in 1947.{{cite book|editor=Regina Cowen Karp|title=Security with Nuclear Weapons?: Different Perspectives on National Security|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zsJZqRhObqYC&pg=PA145|year=1991|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=145ff|isbn=9780198278399}}

Bevin, Attlee's Foreign Secretary, famously stated that "We've got to have it [nuclear weapons] and it's got to have a bloody Union Jack on it". The first operational British nuclear bomb detonated in October 1952, about one year after Attlee had left office. Independent British atomic research was prompted partly by the 1946 US McMahon Act, which nullified wartime expectations of postwar US–UK collaboration in nuclear research, and prohibited Americans from communicating nuclear technology even to allied countries who had participated in the wartime development of the atomic bomb. British atomic bomb research was kept secret even from some members of Attlee's own cabinet, whose loyalty or discretion seemed uncertain.Peter Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, Oxford University Press, 2007.

Although a socialist, Attlee still believed in the British Empire of his youth. He thought of it as an institution that 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 continued the transformation of the empire into the modern-day British Commonwealth.{{cite journal | author = Lloyd Lorna | year = 1997 | title = Britain and the transformation from empire to Commonwealth: The significance of the immediate post-war years | journal = The Round Table | volume = 86 | issue = 343| pages = 333–360 | doi=10.1080/00358539708454371}}

His greatest achievement, surpassing many of these, was perhaps the establishment of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all three major parties subscribed to for three decades, fixing the arena of political discourse until the late-1970s.Peter Clarke, "Attlee: The Making of the Postwar Consensus" in Peter Clarke, A Question of Leadership: Gladstone to Thatcher (Harmondsworth, 1992), pp. 193–21 In 2004, he was voted the most successful British Prime Minister of the 20th century by a poll of 139 academics organised by Ipsos MORI.{{cite web |url=http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=661 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110912105223/http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=661 |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 September 2011 |title=Rating British Prime Ministers |publisher=Ipsos MORI |date=29 November 2004 |access-date=2 October 2011 }}

File:Clement Richard Attlee 1883-1967 Prime Minister lived here (crop).jpg

A blue plaque unveiled in 1979 commemorates Attlee at 17 Monkhams Avenue, in Woodford Green in the London Borough of Redbridge.{{cite web|url=http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/search/attlee-richard-clement-1883-1976|title=ATTLEE, RICHARD CLEMENT (1883–1976)|publisher=English Heritage|access-date=5 August 2012|archive-date=8 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120808025445/http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/search/attlee-richard-clement-1883-1976|url-status=live}}

Attlee was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947.{{Cite journal|last1=Bridges|first1=Lord

|author-link = Edward Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges|doi=10.1098/rsbm.1968.0002|title=Clement Richard Attlee First Earl Attlee. 1883–1967|journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society|volume=14|pages=15–36|year=1968|jstor=769437|doi-access=free}} Attlee was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of Queen Mary College on 15 December 1948.The Times, 16 December 1948, p. 3.

In the 1960s a new suburb near Curepipe in British Mauritius was given the name Cité Atlee{{sic}} in his honour.{{cite web |last1=Luckoo |first1=Priya |title=Cité Atlee souffle ses 50 bougies |date=13 May 2016 |url=https://lexpress.mu/article/281611/cite-atlee-souffle-50-bougies |publisher=L'Express |access-date=13 May 2016 |archive-date=14 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160514120215/http://www.lexpress.mu/article/281611/cite-atlee-souffle-50-bougies |url-status=live }}{{failed verification|date=December 2022}}

File:Attlee QMUL 1.jpg in its new position at Queen Mary University of London]]

On 30 November 1988, a bronze statue of Clement Attlee was unveiled by Harold Wilson (the next Labour Prime Minister after Attlee) outside Limehouse Library in Attlee's former constituency.{{cite web|url=http://www.btinternet.com/~eastlondonpostcard/POM2004/Jan04.htm|title=December03|publisher=Btinternet.com|date=30 November 1988|access-date=2 October 2011|archive-date=16 September 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110916085401/http://www.btinternet.com/~eastlondonpostcard/POM2004/Jan04.htm|url-status=dead}} By then Wilson was the last surviving member of Attlee's cabinet, and the unveiling of the statue would be one of the last public appearances by Wilson, who was by that point in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease; he died at the age of 79 in May 1995.{{cite web|url=http://www.number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/harold-wilson-2|title=Harold Wilson|publisher=Number 10|access-date=2 October 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111011161640/http://www.number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/harold-wilson-2/|archive-date=11 October 2011}}

Limehouse Library was closed in 2003, after which the statue was vandalised. The council surrounded it with protective hoarding for four years, before eventually removing it for repair and recasting in 2009.{{cite web |title=Vandalised Attlee statue being moved to safety |url=http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/vandalised-attlee-statue-being-moved-to-safety-1-670119 |publisher=East London Advertiser |access-date=3 August 2017 |date=12 November 2009 |archive-date=3 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170803130103/http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/vandalised-attlee-statue-being-moved-to-safety-1-670119 |url-status=dead }} The restored statue was unveiled by Peter Mandelson in April 2011, in its new position less than a mile away at the Queen Mary University of London's Mile End campus.{{cite web |title=Lord Mandelson joins Lord Hennessy to unveil Clement Attlee statue |url=http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/hss/46923.html |publisher=Queen Mary University of London |access-date=8 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110818091440/http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/hss/46923.html |archive-date=18 August 2011 |url-status=dead}}

There is also a statue of Clement Attlee in the Houses of Parliament{{cite web |url=https://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/ivor-roberts-jones/clement-richard-1st-earl-attlee-viscount-prestwood-1883-1967-prime-minister-1945-51/s69 |title=Artwork – Clement Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee |website=UK Parliament |access-date=4 January 2019 |archive-date=4 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190104175604/https://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/ivor-roberts-jones/clement-richard-1st-earl-attlee-viscount-prestwood-1883-1967-prime-minister-1945-51/s69 |url-status=live }} that was erected, instead of a bust, by parliamentary vote in 1979. The sculptor was Ivor Roberts-Jones.

{{further|Cultural depictions of British prime ministers#Clement Attlee}}

Attlee met Violet Millar while on a long trip with friends to Italy in 1921. They fell in love{{sfn|Bew|2016|p=115}} and were soon engaged, marrying at Christ Church, Hampstead, on 10 January 1922. It would come to be a devoted marriage, with Attlee providing protection and Violet providing a home that was an escape for Attlee from political turmoil. She died in 1964.{{sfn|Bew|2017|pp=115–118}} They had four children:

• Lady Janet Helen (1923–2019),{{Cite web |title=Janet Helen Attlee Shipton |url=https://www.standard.net/announcements/obituaries/janet-helen-attlee-shipton/article_f7b0e70c-4ba8-5a83-8838-ff4f4635942d.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190216130128/https://www.standard.net/announcements/obituaries/janet-helen-attlee-shipton/article_f7b0e70c-4ba8-5a83-8838-ff4f4635942d.html |archive-date=16 February 2019 |access-date=12 March 2019 |website=Standard-Examiner}} she married the scientist Harold Shipton (1920–2007)"Professor Harold Shipton", The Times (London), 14 May 2007. at Ellesborough Parish Church in 1947.{{cite web |title=Janet Attlee's wedding 1947 |url=http://www.britishpathe.com/video/janet-attlees-wedding |publisher=British Pathe |access-date=27 October 2012 |archive-date=28 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130628074854/http://www.britishpathe.com/video/janet-attlees-wedding |url-status=live }}
• Lady Felicity Ann (1925–2007), married the business executive John Keith Harwood (1926–1989) at Little Hampden in 1955{{cite web |title=Felicity Attlee weds 1955 |url=http://www.britishpathe.com/video/news-flashes-felicity-attlee-weds/query/Attlee |publisher=British Pathe |access-date=27 October 2012 |archive-date=28 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120728135140/http://www.britishpathe.com/video/news-flashes-felicity-attlee-weds/query/Attlee |url-status=live }}[https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/24/obituaries/j-keith-harwood-62-ex-macy-s-executive.html "J. Keith Harwood, 62; Ex-Macy's Executive"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200901062840/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/24/obituaries/j-keith-harwood-62-ex-macy-s-executive.html |date=1 September 2020 }}, The New York Times, 24 May 1989, p. 25.
• Martin Richard, Viscount Prestwood, later 2nd Earl Attlee (1927–1991), married Anne Henderson on 16 February 1955.
• Lady Alison Elizabeth (1930–2016),{{cite web |title=DAVIS – Deaths Announcements – Telegraph Announcements |url=http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/209433/davis |website=announcements.telegraph.co.uk |access-date=24 December 2016 |archive-date=24 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161224095442/http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/209433/davis |url-status=dead }} married Richard Davis at Great Missenden in 1952.{{cite web |title=Mr. Attlee's Daughter Weds – Alison Attlee… 1952 |url=http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mr-attlees-daughter-weds-alison-attlee-to-r-davis |access-date=25 March 2016 |publisher=British Pathe |archive-date=7 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160407002140/http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mr-attlees-daughter-weds-alison-attlee-to-r-davis |url-status=live }}

Although his parents were devout Anglicans, with one of his brothers becoming 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".{{sfn|Brookshire|1995|p=15}}{{cite web|url=https://heritage.humanists.uk/clement-attlee/|title=Clement Attlee|work=Humanist Heritage|publisher=Humanists UK|accessdate=14 April 2023|archive-date=14 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230414104016/https://heritage.humanists.uk/clement-attlee/|url-status=live}}

{{Main|List of awards and honours received by Clement Attlee}}

{{Infobox emblem wide

|image = File:Coronet of a British Earl.svg File:Arms of Clement Attlee.svg

|crest = On a Mount Vert two Lions addorsed Or

|coronet = A coronet of an Earl

|escutcheon =Azure, on a Chevron Or between three Hearts of the Last winged Argent as many Lions rampant Sable

|supporters = On either side a Welsh Terrier sejant Proper

|motto = Labor vincit omnia (Labour conquers all)

}}

• Briggs Plan
• Ethical socialism
• Information Research Department
• Malayan Emergency
• New village
• History of the United Kingdom (1945–present)

{{reflist|group=note}}

{{reflist|30em|refs=

Fifty Facts for Labour, published by the Labour Party, Transport House, Smith Square, London, SW1, October 1951.

{{sfn|Beckett|1998}}

}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book |last=Attlee |first=Clement Richard |title=The Social Worker |year=1920 |publisher=G. Bell |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/socialworker00attliala }}
• {{cite book |last=Beckett |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=Clem Attlee: A Biography |publisher=Blake |isbn=978-1860661013 |author1-link=Francis Beckett}}
• {{cite book |last=Bew |first=John |title=Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee |publisher=Riverrun |year=2016}}
• {{cite book |last=Bew |first=John |title=Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g1jODQAAQBAJ |year=2017 |isbn=9780190203405 }}
• {{cite book |last=Brookshire |first=Jerry Hardman |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tn27AAAAIAAJ |title=Clement Attlee |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1995 |isbn=0-7190-3244-X |location=New York }}
• {{cite book |last=Bullock |first=Alan |title=Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary |year=1983 |chapter=8}}
• Harris, Kenneth. (1982) Attlee W.W. Norton.
• {{cite book |last=Howell |first=David |year=2006 |title=Attlee |series=20 British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century |publisher=Haus Publishing |isbn=1904950647 |editor-last=Beckett |editor-first=Francis}}
• {{cite book |last=Jefferys |first=Kevin |title=The Attlee Governments 1945–1951 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jQWtAgAAQBAJ |date=14 January 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-89894-8 }}
• {{cite book |last=Marr |first=Andrew |title=A History of Modern Britain |publisher=Pan Books |year=2007 |edition=2009}}
• {{cite book |last=Pearce |first=Robert |date=1997 |title=Attlee |publisher=Longman |isbn=0582256909}}
• {{cite book |title=Ten Years of New Labour |first1=Matt |last1=Beech |first2=Simon |last2=Lee |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |date=2008 |isbn=978-0230574434}}
• {{cite book |last=Hill |first=C. P. |title=British Economic and Social History, 1700–1964 |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton Educational |edition=3rd rev. |isbn=978-0713116243 |date=1970}}
• {{cite journal |url=http://staging.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/P/09611/09611(1946-22).pdf |journal=Industrial Safety Survey |volume=XXII |issue=1 |date=1946 |location=Montreal |title=Development of industrial hygiene in Canada |first1=Kingsley |last1=Kay |pages=1–11 |pmid=20279825 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161025114625/http://staging.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/P/09611/09611(1946-22).pdf |archive-date=25 October 2016 }}
• {{cite book |last=Lowe |first=Norman |title=Mastering Modern World History |series=Palgrave Master Series |date=1997 |edition=3rd rev. |isbn=978-0333685235 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan}}
• {{cite book |last=Morgan |first=Kenneth O. |author-link=Kenneth O. Morgan |title=Labour in Power, 1945–51 |publisher=OUP |date=1984 |isbn=978-0192158659}}
• {{cite book |editor1-first=Donald |editor1-last=Munro |title=Socialism: The British Way |date=1948 |publisher=Essential Books}}
• Pearce, Robert. (1967) Attlee Longman.
• {{Cite journal |last1=Reeves |first1=Rachel |last2=McIvor |first2=Martin |year=2014 |title=Clement Attlee and the foundations of the British welfare state |journal=Renewal: A Journal of Labour Politics |volume=22 |issue=3/4}}
• {{cite book |author=Talus |title=Your Alternative Government |location=London |publisher=Eyre and Spottiswoode |year=1945}}
• {{cite book |first=Nicklaus |last=Thomas-Symonds |title=Attlee: A Life in Politics |date=2012 |publisher=I.B.Tauris |isbn=978-1780762159 }}
• {{cite book |last=Vickers |first=Rhiannon |title=The Labour Party and the World |volume=1: The Evolution of Labour's Foreign Policy, 1900–51 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8XbLCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA92 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2013 |isbn=9781847791313 }}
• {{cite book |last=Williams |first=Susan |year=2003 |title=The People's King: The True Story of the Abdication |publisher=Penguin Books |location=London |isbn=0-7139-9573-4}}

{{refend}}

Biographical

{{refbegin|30em}}

• Beckett, Francis. Clem Attlee (1998) – updated and expanded under the title Clem Attlee: Labour's Great Reformer (2015)
• Bew, John. Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, (London: 2016, British edition); Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, U.S. edition)
• Burridge, Trevor. Clement Attlee: A Political Biography (1985), scholarly
• Cohen, David. Churchill & Attlee: The Unlikely Allies who Won the War (Biteback Publishing, 2018), popular
• Crowcroft, Robert. Attlee's War: World War II and the Making of a Labour Leader (IB Tauris, 2011)
• Harris, Kenneth. Attlee (1982), scholarly authorised biography
• Howell, David. Attlee (2006)
• Jago, Michael. Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister (2014)
• Pearce, Robert. Attlee (1997), 206pp
• Thomas-Symonds, Nicklaus. Attlee: A Life in Politics (IB Tauris, 2010).
• Whiting, R. C. "Attlee, Clement Richard, first Earl Attlee (1883–1967)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30498, accessed 12 June 2013] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170029/https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30498 |date=24 February 2024 }} doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30498

{{refend}}

Biographies of his cabinet and associates

{{refbegin}}

• Rosen, Greg. ed. Dictionary of Labour Biography. (Politicos Publishing, 2002); {{ISBN|1-902301-18-8}}
• Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour people: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock (1987)

{{refend}}

Scholarly studies

{{refbegin}}

• Addison, Paul. No Turning Back: The Peaceful Revolutions of Post-War Britain (2011) [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192192671/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224170158/https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192192671/ |date=24 February 2024 }}
• {{cite book|author=Brady, Robert A.|title=Crisis in Britain. Plans and Achievements of the Labour Government...|url=https://archive.org/details/crisisinbritainp0000brad|url-access=registration|year=1950|publisher=University of California Press}}, detailed coverage of nationalisation, welfare state and planning.
• Crowcroft, Robert, and Kevin Theakston. "The Fall of the Attlee Government, 1951", in Timothy Heppell and Kevin Theakston, eds. How Labour Governments Fall (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013). pp. 61–82.
• Francis, Martin. Ideas and policies under Labour, 1945–1951: building a new Britain (Manchester University Press, 1997).
• Golant, W. "The Emergence of CR Attlee as Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1935", Historical Journal, 13#2 (1970): 318–332. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/263794 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170305032037/http://www.jstor.org/stable/263794 |date=5 March 2017 }}
• {{cite book|last=Hennessy|first=Peter|author-link=Peter Hennessy|title=Never Again: Britain 1945–1951|publisher=Penguin Books|edition=2|year=2006|location=London|isbn=0-14-101602-7}} [https://archive.org/details/neveragainbritai0000pete online]
• Jackson, Ben. "Citizen and Subject: Clement Attlee's Socialism", History Workshop Journal (2018). Vol. 86 pp. 291–298. [https://www.academia.edu/download/57528258/Attlee_review_article.pdf online]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}.
• Jefferys, Kevin. "The Attlee Years, 1935–1955", in Brivati, Brian, and Heffernan, Richard, eds., The Labour Party: A Centenary History, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2000. 68–86.
• Kynaston, David. Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008).
• Mioni, Michele. "The Attlee government and welfare state reforms in post-war Italian Socialism (1945–51): Between universalism and class policies", Labor History, 57#2 (2016): 277–297. DOI:10.1080/0023656X.2015.1116811
• Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour in Power 1945–1951 (1984), 564 pp.. an influential scholarly study [https://archive.org/details/labourinpower1940000morg_d0k1 online]
• Ovendale, R. ed., The foreign policy of the British Labour governments, 1945–51 (1984) ·
• Pugh, Martin. Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party (2011) [https://www.amazon.com/Speak-Britain-History-Labour-Party/dp/0099520788/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160922164720/https://www.amazon.com/Speak-Britain-History-Labour-Party/dp/0099520788 |date=22 September 2016 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Raymond |last2=Zametica |first2=John |title=The Cold Warrior: Clement Attlee Reconsidered, 1945-7 |journal=International Affairs |volume=61 |issue=2 |pages=237–252 |year=1985 |jstor=2617482 |doi=10.2307/2617482}}
• Swift, John. Labour in Crisis: Clement Attlee & the Labour Party in Opposition, 1931–1940 (2001)
• Thornton, Stephen. "The brace of the Cabinet: the legacy of Clement Attlee as deputy prime minister." Contemporary British History (2024): 1–24.
• Tomlinson, Jim. Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 (2002) [https://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Socialism-Economic-Policy-1945-1951/dp/0521892597/ Excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160315023314/http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Socialism-Economic-Policy-1945-1951/dp/0521892597 |date=15 March 2016 }}
• Weiler, Peter. "British Labour and the cold war: the foreign policy of the Labour governments, 1945–1951", Journal of British Studies, 26#1 (1987): 54–82. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/175554 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170306125950/http://www.jstor.org/stable/175554 |date=6 March 2017 }}

{{refend}}

{{refbegin}}

• 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.

{{refend}}

;Attlee's other publications

{{refbegin|30em}}

• The Social Worker (1920)
• Metropolitan Borough Councils Their Constitution, Powers and Duties – Fabian Tract No 190 (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)

{{refend}}

{{Commons category|Clement Attlee}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• {{Hansard-contribs|mr-clement-attlee|Clement Attlee}}
• [https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/collections/churchillexhibition/churchill-and-ww2/new-commons-chamber/ Clement Attlee – Thanksgiving Speech 1950 – UK Parliament Living Heritage]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080825210325/http://www.number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/prime-ministers-in-history/clement-attlee More about Clement Attlee] on the Downing Street website.
• {{Internet Archive author|sname=Clement Attlee}}
• {{FadedPage|id=Attlee, Clement R.|name=Clement Attlee|author=yes}}
• {{Librivox author|id=8947}}
• {{UK National Archives ID}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20100505013820/http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people%2FAttlee%2C+Clement Annotated bibliography for Clement Attlee from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues]
• {{NPG name|name=Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee}}
• {{PM20|FID=pe/000740}}
• [https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseoflords/house-of-lords-reform/from-the-collections/from-the-parliamentary-collections-the-parliament-act/clement-attlee/ Drawing of Clement Attlee in the UK Parliamentary Collections]

{{s-start}}

{{s-par|uk}}

{{s-bef |before=William Pearce}}

{{s-ttl |title=Member of Parliament for Limehouse |years=1922–1950}}

{{s-non|reason=Constituency abolished}}

{{s-bef |before=Valentine McEntee}}

{{s-ttl |title=Member of Parliament for Walthamstow West |years=1950–1955}}

{{s-aft |after=Edward Redhead}}

{{s-off}}

{{s-bef |before=Oswald Mosley}}

{{s-ttl |title=Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster |years=1930–1931}}

{{s-aft |after=The Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede}}

{{s-bef |before=George Lansbury}}

{{s-ttl |title=Leader of the Opposition |years=1935–1940}}

{{s-aft |after=Hastings Lees-Smith}}

{{s-bef |before=Kingsley Wood}}

{{s-ttl |title=Lord Privy Seal |years=1940–1942}}

{{s-aft |after=Stafford Cripps}}

{{s-bef |before=The Viscount Cranborne}}

{{s-ttl |title=Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs |years=1942–1943}}

{{s-aft |after=The Viscount Cranborne}}

{{s-new|office}}

{{s-ttl |title=Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
(de facto)|years=1942–1945}}

{{s-aft |after=Herbert Morrison}}

{{s-bef |before=John Anderson}}

{{s-ttl |title=Lord President of the Council |years=1943–1945}}

{{s-aft |after=The Lord Woolton}}

{{s-break}}

{{s-bef |rows=3 |before=Winston Churchill}}

{{s-ttl |title=Prime Minister of the United Kingdom |years=1945–1951}}

{{s-aft |rows=2 |after=Winston Churchill}}

{{s-break}}

{{s-ttl |title=First Lord of the Treasury |years=1945–1951}}

{{s-break}}

{{s-ttl |title=Leader of the Opposition |years=1951–1955}}

{{s-aft |after=Herbert Morrison}}

{{s-break}}

{{s-bef |before=Winston Churchill}}

{{s-ttl |title=Minister of Defence |years=1945–1946}}

{{s-aft |after=A. V. Alexander}}

{{s-ppo}}

{{s-new|office}}

{{s-ttl|title=Chairman of the
New Fabian Research Bureau|years=1931–1934}}

{{s-aft|after=The Viscount Addison}}

{{s-bef |before=J. R. Clynes}}

{{s-ttl |title=Deputy Leader of the Labour Party |years=1932–1935}}

{{s-aft |after=Arthur Greenwood}}

{{s-bef |before=George Lansbury}}

{{s-ttl |title=Leader of the Labour Party |years=1935–1955}}

{{s-aft |after=Hugh Gaitskell}}

{{s-civ}}

{{succession box|title=Mayor of Stepney|years=1919–1920|before=F. J. Miles|after=Thomas Joseph Cahill}}

{{s-reg|uk}}

{{s-new|creation}}

{{s-ttl |title=Earl Attlee
Viscount Prestwood|years=1955–1967}}

{{s-aft |after=Martin Attlee}}

{{s-end}}

{{Navboxes|list=

{{Clement Attlee}}

{{Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom}}

{{Deputy Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom}}

{{Labour Party Leader}}

{{Leaders of the Opposition UK}}

{{Secretary of State for Defence}}

{{Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs}}

{{Churchill War Ministry}}

{{UK Labour Party}}

{{Labour Party leadership election, 1935}}

{{Social democracy|state=collapsed}}

{{Socialism}}

{{World Constitutional Convention call signatories}}

}}

{{Portal bar|Biography|Politics|United Kingdom|Socialism}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Attlee, Clement}}

Category:1883 births

Category:1967 deaths

Category:20th-century prime ministers of the United Kingdom

Category:Academics of Ruskin College

Category:Academics of the London School of Economics

Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford

Category:Alumni of the Inns of Court School of Law

Category:Men's association football players not categorized by position

Category:British anti-communists

Category:British anti-Zionists

Category:British Army personnel of World War I

Category:British Empire in World War II

Category:British Secretaries of State for Dominion Affairs

Category:British socialists

Category:British social democrats

Category:Burials at Westminster Abbey

Category:Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster

Category:Deaths from pneumonia in England

Category:Deputy prime ministers of the United Kingdom

Clement

Category:British agnostics

Category:English men's footballers

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society

Category:Fleet Town F.C. players

Category:Foreign Office personnel of World War II

Category:Knights of the Garter

Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies

Category:Labour Party (UK) hereditary peers

Category:Labour Party prime ministers of the United Kingdom

Category:Leaders of the Labour Party (UK)

Category:Leaders of the opposition (United Kingdom)

Category:Lord Presidents of the Council

Category:Lords Privy Seal

Category:Mayors of places in Greater London

Category:Members of Stepney Metropolitan Borough Council

Category:Members of the Fabian Society

Category:Members of the Order of Merit

Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour

Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom

Category:Ministers in the Attlee governments, 1945–1951

Category:Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945

Category:National Council for Civil Liberties people

Category:People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College

Category:People from Putney

Category:People of the Cold War

Category:South Lancashire Regiment officers

Category:UK MPs 1922–1923

Category:UK MPs 1923–1924

Category:UK MPs 1924–1929

Category:UK MPs 1929–1931

Category:UK MPs 1931–1935

Category:UK MPs 1935–1945

Category:UK MPs 1945–1950

Category:UK MPs 1950–1951

Category:UK MPs 1951–1955

Category:UK MPs 1955–1959

Category:UK MPs who were granted peerages

Category:Postmasters general of the United Kingdom

Category:United Kingdom home front during World War II

Category:World War II political leaders

Category:Earls created by Elizabeth II

Category:Members of the Inner Temple

Category:British Eurosceptics

Category:British people of the Palestine Emergency

Category:Labour Party (UK) mayors

Category:People of the Korean War

Category:World Constitutional Convention call signatories