Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister

by Michael Jago

Shortlisted for Political Biography of the Year at The Paddy Power Political Book Awards 2015.

Elected in a surprise landslide in 1945, Clement Attlee was the first ever Labour leader to command a majority government. At the helm for twenty years, he remains the longest-serving leader in the history of the Labour Party. When he was voted out in 1951, he left with Labour's highest share of the vote before or since. And yet today he is routinely described as 'the accidental Prime Minister'.

A retiring man, overshadowed by the flamboyant Churchill during the Second World War, he is dimly remembered as a politician who, by good fortune, happened to lead the Labour Party at a time when Britain was disillusioned with Tory rule and ready for change. In Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister, Michael Jago argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Raised in a haven of middle-class respectability, Attlee was appalled by the squalid living conditions endured by his near neighbours in London's East End. Seeing first-hand how poverty and insecurity dogged lives, he nourished a powerful ambition to achieve power and create a more ega in 1935, Attlee was single-minded in pursuing his goals, and in just six years from 1945 his government introduced the most significant features of post-war Britain: the National Health Service, extensive nationalisation of essential industry, and the Welfare State that Britons now take for granted.

A full-scale reassessment, Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister traces the life of a middle-class lawyer's son who relentlessly pursued his ambition to lead a government that would implement far-reaching socialist reform and change forever the divisive class structure of twentieth-century Britain.

Genres: Biography, History, Politics, Nonfiction

388 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2014

About the author

Michael Jago read Ancient History and Philosophy at University College, Oxford before settling in the USA in 1980. For fifteen years he ran an educational travel business, focusing on the battlefields of Western Europe. Previously a publisher and editor of a number of journals, he now specialises in biography.

Reviews

[William Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light spread of information about the 62nd Prime Minister of the UK from birth to death. Attlee, like his health secretary Aneurin Bevan, is notoriously revered by the left of the Labour party especially for the establishment of the welfare and socialist basis of UK life that remains today. A significant chunk of the book focuses on Attlee's character but especially the Attlee-Bevan divisions in the late 1940s. Thus, whilst generally light on details, Jago's Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister is a good introduction to a different perspective of the historic 1945 Labour Government that brought health security but also performed austerity during the post-war period.

[Matthew Eyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good And a great antidote to all those Churchill Ian who give him only a footnote in History. This superb, measured account places Attlee as he really was A man who got a lot done, a man of his class who got on well with Nobbity Salisbury & Co, and most of all the man who co-ordinated all the unglamorous jobs during WW2 that ensured we hung in there until the Americans came in. If Boris J had had someone even half as good as "Clem" he might still be PM. I wonder what Atlee would have made of Dominic Cummings....

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very informative & well researched, and it starts off interestingly enough...but post-Labour victory, in 1945, it takes a turn for the dull. Much of the remainder of the book is a dry review of international relations, economics, and policy analysis...and Mr. Attlee is, unfortunately, the least interesting person in these pages. It's a bit hard to admit, but Clement Attlee seems to be a far more interesting man before & after his time as Prime Minister; this biography reflects this reality.

[David P · Rating 4 out of 5]

This proved a fascinating insight into a man, and an era that I knew all too little about.