Clement Attlee (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 26 July 1945 to 26 October 1951, interrupting Winston Churchill's two terms in office. From 1942 to 1945, Attlee had also served as Britain's first Deputy Prime Minister, preceding Herbert Morrison. Attlee was considered to be one of Britain's greatest Prime Ministers due to his role in leading the UK Labor Party, creating the welfare state, and building a coalition against Joseph Stalin during the Cold War.
Biography[]
Clement Attlee was born in Putney, Surrey, United Kingdom on 3 January 1883. Attlee, the seventh of eight children, was educated at Haileybury and read history at Oxford. After leaving university, he went to London to study law and qualify as a lawyer, and he volunteered at Toynee Hall in the poor East end of London. Attlee became a socialist as a result of this experience, and he joined the Fabian Society in 1907 and the Independent Labor Party in 1908. He also worked as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, but his career was cut short when he joined the British Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914; he served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, rising to Major. On discharge from the army in 1919, he returned to London, became Mayor of Stepney, and was endorsed as a UK Labor Party MP, winning election in 1922. Attlee served as Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's Private Secretary, and he served as Under-Secretary at the War Office in 1924. In 1927, he examined British rule in India. In 1930, he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and he became Postmaster-General a year later.
Prime Minister[]
Attlee in 1940
Attlee opposed MacDonald's formation of the 1931 national government, and he was elected Labor leader in 1935. From May 1940, he served as Lord Privy Seal, and he became Deputy Prime Minister in 1942 and Dominions Secretary. Attlee gained a reputation as a skillful manager of disagreements and disputes among colleagues, and his party won the general election in 1945. As Prime Minister, he oversaw the granting of independence to India, Pakistan, and Burma in 1947, withdrew from Palestine a year later, and (unsuccessfully) attempted to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union. However, he was best remembered for his domestic affairs, adhering to Keynesian economics. He also introduced a national health service, nationaliuzed the Bank of England and the gas, coal, electricity, and railway industries, relocated industries and planned new towns, and pursued full employment. Attlee also generated policies of public spending at a time of record public debt, and he maintained tight control over public consumption. The government's popularity declined due to the maintenance of wartime rationing and the slowness of his government's house-building policies, and the party won a majority of only five seats in the 1950 general election. In 1951, his party lost to the Conservative Party, and he remained leader of the opposition until 1955, when he went to the House of Lords. Attlee lacked charisma and a good public image, but he transformed the party into a stable pillar of the British political system before resigning as Labor Party leader in 1955.