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Clem Attlee
One of only two post-war Prime Ministers who can claim to have changed the society in which we live, Clem Attlee was the architect of the NHS and the Welfare State. This is a biography of the Labour leader.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1997
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November 27, 2018
I’ve voted Labour all my life, except for a period after Tony Blair led us into war on Iraq, and even then, could not have voted Conservative. We watched the news as a family when I was young, and I have a clear memory of the Labour politicians of my youth: Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Dennis Healey (I bumped into him once on Charing Cross Road and he gave me a lovely twinkly smile from beneath those bushy eyebrows). They were the bright young things when Clem Attlee was Prime Minister, and although I knew his name, I was sadly unaware of the extent of this man’s huge contribution to the quality of life for British people over the last 70 years. After reading Francis Beckett’s beautifully written and accessible biography of the man, I feel better informed.
Clem Attlee was a small, quiet man, from a middle-class background. He was educated at Haileybury, a boarding school, and Oxford, following his father into a law practice. Had it not been for some voluntary work he undertook in the East End of London, this ex-Major, who saw active service in the First World War (he was the last but one soldier to leave Gallipoli when it was evacuated), might have lived an altogether different life.
One evening in 1906, Attlee went along with his brother on a visit to a youth club in Durham Road, Stepney. Haileybury House had been built by old boys of their former school who had decided, in 1890, to do something to help clergy active in the working-class areas of the big cities. One of the growing influences leading to this work was a pamphlet published by the Revd Andrew Mearns in 1883 - The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor.
A shy young man, Attlee found the evening uncomfortable, but he learned enough to want to come again - the start of a process which opened his eyes to the appalling conditions suffered by those less fortunate than the prosperous Edwardian middle and upper classes, and the real meaning of poverty. His involvement increased from that night on - he felt for the first time in his life he was doing something with a purpose. He realised, as Andrew Mearns had written, that only large-scale action by the state could have any serious impact - unless society was organised so as to eliminate it, the wretchedness he saw around him would continue for ever.
By 1907, Attlee was a socialist, and he began his political career as a member of the Stepney branch of the Independent Labour Party. He very quickly took on the onerous and painstaking duties of branch secretary, giving his time and skills unstintingly. His closeness and work with the ordinary East End people and orderly upward progress through the rank and file of the local Labour group gave him an invaluable insight into their real problems, aims and ambitions. As Beckett relates:
'He took on all the humble, time-consuming jobs which have to be done, and which ambitious politicians generally consider are for lesser mortals, because, like Jim Callaghan, Clem Attlee liked all that. He cut up loaves to feed dockers' children during the 1911 dock strike, and stood at the bottom of Petticoat Lane with his brother Tom holding collecting boxes during the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union strike in 1913. He carried the Stepney Independent Labour Party branch banner on demonstrations through Central London. He went to court to plead mitigation when a half-starving boy was caught thieving.'
Beckett’s book outlines the life of a man who dedicated himself to working, for 16 hours a day for 45 years or so, for the good of the many, not the few. He became Mayor of Stepney, then its MP in 1922, a junior minister in Labour governments in the 20s and 30s, and party leader in 1935.
Attlee's commitment to realising his ambition of bringing about fundamental changes for the working-classes achieved, with his fellow Labour party workers, the radical creation of what we benefit from today. Most people of my generation (born in the 1950s) and those since have no knowledge or experience of what life was like before the welfare state - we’ve taken it for granted.
He was in many ways, a very unusual man. He led a quiet and modest home life, dedicated to his wife and children, never ‘taking work home’ to his family. He liked mending things in his spare time. He never read the papers or watched television. He worked steadily towards his aims, not swayed by the opinion of others. He was not a pacifist, though his older brother Tom was a conscientious objector, but had been appalled by the waste of life he witnessed in the Great War, and was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and later the United Nations. His early experience of social work contributed to his writing The Social Worker,and teaching the subject at the LSE. He had very definite views about charity: he thought that if a rich man wanted to help the poor, he should pay his taxes willingly, not dole out money at whim. He wrote:
Charity ‘tends to make the charitable think that he has done his duty by giving away some trifling sum, his conscience is put to sleep and he takes no trouble to consider the social problem any further’.
Attlee served in Churchill's coalition government as Deputy Prime Minister during the Second World War, effectively running the country while Churchill concentrated on the business of fighting the war. Attlee was a staunch patriot, but once the war was over, he had an iron resolve to ensure that, unlike the aftermath of the First World War, when so many were thrown onto the streets, this time the opportunity to effect real change in the social welfare of the majority of the British people would not be lost. After the war, Attlee led the most influential reforming government of the last century, implementing the recommendations of the Beveridge Report, establishing the NHS and nationalising a fifth of the UK economy including the coal mining and steel industries.
There are many similarities between Clem Attlee and Jeremy Corbyn - both suffered/suffer at the hands of the media - in Attlee's case, the rich owners of large-circulation newspapers. Both had to contend with members of their own party complaining that they weren't leadership material, and regularly plotting to replace them. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes!
I believe that if Clem Attlee was alive today, he would be horrified at the way his life's work has been steadily undermined in the intervening years, a process begun during the Margaret Thatcher years, of course, and now being greatly accelerated.
If you need just one out of many reference points from a welter of current revelations about how the welfare state and NHS are being relentlessly deconstructed, please read this article about the Naylor report, about which many of us had been ignorant until this week!
www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nay...
If you have more time available, and I can promise you, it will be very worthwhile reading it, I highly recommend you read Francis Beckett's book. Towards the end of it, there is a little story of an incident, near the end of Attlee's life, which illustrates his modesty and humility. In 1912, the London School of Economics initiated took over a small School of Sociology, and Attlee was appointed its very first lecturer. In 1962:
'The LSE's Social Administration Department, where he had once taught, sent round a standard invitation to all of its former staff to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The organisers thought that the early staff members had died, but just as the platform was settling down in the Shaw Library, someone noticed a small, elderly man arriving inconspicuously and taking a seat at the back. Bernard Crick remembers: 'One of the platform party ran to the back in embarrassment to apologise and try to persuade him to come up to the front. He refused, or rather demurred. The audience, as he was recognised, rose to its feet and applauded. Only then would he join the platform. Afterwards they asked when his car was coming. "No car, came from Kings Cross on the 68 bus. A very reliable route." They had great difficulty persuading him to take a lift back.'
Clem Attlee was a small, quiet man, from a middle-class background. He was educated at Haileybury, a boarding school, and Oxford, following his father into a law practice. Had it not been for some voluntary work he undertook in the East End of London, this ex-Major, who saw active service in the First World War (he was the last but one soldier to leave Gallipoli when it was evacuated), might have lived an altogether different life.
One evening in 1906, Attlee went along with his brother on a visit to a youth club in Durham Road, Stepney. Haileybury House had been built by old boys of their former school who had decided, in 1890, to do something to help clergy active in the working-class areas of the big cities. One of the growing influences leading to this work was a pamphlet published by the Revd Andrew Mearns in 1883 - The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor.
A shy young man, Attlee found the evening uncomfortable, but he learned enough to want to come again - the start of a process which opened his eyes to the appalling conditions suffered by those less fortunate than the prosperous Edwardian middle and upper classes, and the real meaning of poverty. His involvement increased from that night on - he felt for the first time in his life he was doing something with a purpose. He realised, as Andrew Mearns had written, that only large-scale action by the state could have any serious impact - unless society was organised so as to eliminate it, the wretchedness he saw around him would continue for ever.
By 1907, Attlee was a socialist, and he began his political career as a member of the Stepney branch of the Independent Labour Party. He very quickly took on the onerous and painstaking duties of branch secretary, giving his time and skills unstintingly. His closeness and work with the ordinary East End people and orderly upward progress through the rank and file of the local Labour group gave him an invaluable insight into their real problems, aims and ambitions. As Beckett relates:
'He took on all the humble, time-consuming jobs which have to be done, and which ambitious politicians generally consider are for lesser mortals, because, like Jim Callaghan, Clem Attlee liked all that. He cut up loaves to feed dockers' children during the 1911 dock strike, and stood at the bottom of Petticoat Lane with his brother Tom holding collecting boxes during the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union strike in 1913. He carried the Stepney Independent Labour Party branch banner on demonstrations through Central London. He went to court to plead mitigation when a half-starving boy was caught thieving.'
Beckett’s book outlines the life of a man who dedicated himself to working, for 16 hours a day for 45 years or so, for the good of the many, not the few. He became Mayor of Stepney, then its MP in 1922, a junior minister in Labour governments in the 20s and 30s, and party leader in 1935.
Attlee's commitment to realising his ambition of bringing about fundamental changes for the working-classes achieved, with his fellow Labour party workers, the radical creation of what we benefit from today. Most people of my generation (born in the 1950s) and those since have no knowledge or experience of what life was like before the welfare state - we’ve taken it for granted.
He was in many ways, a very unusual man. He led a quiet and modest home life, dedicated to his wife and children, never ‘taking work home’ to his family. He liked mending things in his spare time. He never read the papers or watched television. He worked steadily towards his aims, not swayed by the opinion of others. He was not a pacifist, though his older brother Tom was a conscientious objector, but had been appalled by the waste of life he witnessed in the Great War, and was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and later the United Nations. His early experience of social work contributed to his writing The Social Worker,and teaching the subject at the LSE. He had very definite views about charity: he thought that if a rich man wanted to help the poor, he should pay his taxes willingly, not dole out money at whim. He wrote:
Charity ‘tends to make the charitable think that he has done his duty by giving away some trifling sum, his conscience is put to sleep and he takes no trouble to consider the social problem any further’.
Attlee served in Churchill's coalition government as Deputy Prime Minister during the Second World War, effectively running the country while Churchill concentrated on the business of fighting the war. Attlee was a staunch patriot, but once the war was over, he had an iron resolve to ensure that, unlike the aftermath of the First World War, when so many were thrown onto the streets, this time the opportunity to effect real change in the social welfare of the majority of the British people would not be lost. After the war, Attlee led the most influential reforming government of the last century, implementing the recommendations of the Beveridge Report, establishing the NHS and nationalising a fifth of the UK economy including the coal mining and steel industries.
There are many similarities between Clem Attlee and Jeremy Corbyn - both suffered/suffer at the hands of the media - in Attlee's case, the rich owners of large-circulation newspapers. Both had to contend with members of their own party complaining that they weren't leadership material, and regularly plotting to replace them. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes!
I believe that if Clem Attlee was alive today, he would be horrified at the way his life's work has been steadily undermined in the intervening years, a process begun during the Margaret Thatcher years, of course, and now being greatly accelerated.
If you need just one out of many reference points from a welter of current revelations about how the welfare state and NHS are being relentlessly deconstructed, please read this article about the Naylor report, about which many of us had been ignorant until this week!
www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nay...
If you have more time available, and I can promise you, it will be very worthwhile reading it, I highly recommend you read Francis Beckett's book. Towards the end of it, there is a little story of an incident, near the end of Attlee's life, which illustrates his modesty and humility. In 1912, the London School of Economics initiated took over a small School of Sociology, and Attlee was appointed its very first lecturer. In 1962:
'The LSE's Social Administration Department, where he had once taught, sent round a standard invitation to all of its former staff to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The organisers thought that the early staff members had died, but just as the platform was settling down in the Shaw Library, someone noticed a small, elderly man arriving inconspicuously and taking a seat at the back. Bernard Crick remembers: 'One of the platform party ran to the back in embarrassment to apologise and try to persuade him to come up to the front. He refused, or rather demurred. The audience, as he was recognised, rose to its feet and applauded. Only then would he join the platform. Afterwards they asked when his car was coming. "No car, came from Kings Cross on the 68 bus. A very reliable route." They had great difficulty persuading him to take a lift back.'
April 28, 2013
A positive picture of an underrated Prime Minister.
While aware of Attlee I never really had much of a feel for his character or objectives; reading his biography it is plain I am far from alone. I suppose a quiet man with very noisy and driven contemporaries was always going to fade into the background. No doubt this was exacerbated by his intensely private nature and an unwillingness to commit many of his inner thoughts to paper.
Does this biography do much to redress the balance? Well, yes and no. I do think it tells us more about Attlee’s very real commitment to socialism and how he arrived there. Indeed, if nothing else you’ll be left with the sense he was a reserved Victorian with a quiet, but burning passion, to see social justice. Beyond that though, well we know he liked cricket, his old school, Oxford and not a lot else; I sense Attlee would have liked it this way. (Particularly as he burnt his most personal correspondences.)
Where this book really does shine is telling the history of a very turbulent labour party and how Attlee was probably the right man, if not the only man, to harness the creative power and anger of his contemporaries. At times the book seems a tragic read when especially when internecine infighting or external events, like the end of lease lend, put a stop to further reform. However, the real tragedy only hits when you reflect on the contrast with today’s politics, everyone has lost their passion, we are all shades of boring grey in contrast to the brilliant and volatile players of Attlee’s day… But I digress, read this book and feel appreciative of the man, and government, that put an end to the worst inequalities in British society.
While aware of Attlee I never really had much of a feel for his character or objectives; reading his biography it is plain I am far from alone. I suppose a quiet man with very noisy and driven contemporaries was always going to fade into the background. No doubt this was exacerbated by his intensely private nature and an unwillingness to commit many of his inner thoughts to paper.
Does this biography do much to redress the balance? Well, yes and no. I do think it tells us more about Attlee’s very real commitment to socialism and how he arrived there. Indeed, if nothing else you’ll be left with the sense he was a reserved Victorian with a quiet, but burning passion, to see social justice. Beyond that though, well we know he liked cricket, his old school, Oxford and not a lot else; I sense Attlee would have liked it this way. (Particularly as he burnt his most personal correspondences.)
Where this book really does shine is telling the history of a very turbulent labour party and how Attlee was probably the right man, if not the only man, to harness the creative power and anger of his contemporaries. At times the book seems a tragic read when especially when internecine infighting or external events, like the end of lease lend, put a stop to further reform. However, the real tragedy only hits when you reflect on the contrast with today’s politics, everyone has lost their passion, we are all shades of boring grey in contrast to the brilliant and volatile players of Attlee’s day… But I digress, read this book and feel appreciative of the man, and government, that put an end to the worst inequalities in British society.
August 21, 2015
As the Labour Party is trying to tear itself apart rather than pick a new leader, it seemed like a good time to read up on their greatest Prime Minister*.
At times, this book felt like it was a satire on the current state of British politics, dressed up as the biography of an unjustly forgotten politician. There's the tyranny of charity- the way the 'Big Society' could never work because the donor gets to decide who the deserving poor are, and punishes anyone not behaving the way they are expected to. Inequality propped up by the system (and Tory support for that system). Other Labour PMs who were more interested in having the post on their CV than doing anything useful with it. The big egos with talents that don't match up, who think they should be running the party rather than the quiet little man who's a little too far to the Left for their liking. (They failed, and the little man oversaw the creation of the NHS, welfare state and much more.) Trouble with the unions and even, after losing the 1951 election, a vote from the membership that had the Party establishment crying that there had been a (non-existent) Communist infiltration.
Clement Attlee was a son of an upper middle class family who seemed destined for dissatisfied normality, until he started doing charitable work in the East End. Appalled by the inequality he saw there, he shifted, gradually, to socialism and, eventually, membership of the Labour Party. Never the greatest public speaker, he nevertheless garnered respect for his organisational abilities, commitment and fairness.
Attlee quietly worked his way to leadership, outmanoeuvring the more flamboyant candidates who believed they had an automatic right to the post. He acted as deputy to Churchill in the Second World War, and surprised many by becoming Prime Minister in 1945. His one full term in power (the second saw a vastly reduced majority and the Government fell apart due to party infighting) changed the nation drastically. Despite terrible finances, exacerbated by the behaviour of the USA, the NHS and welfare state were created, and key industries nationalised. Everything the Tories have been trying to destroy ever since was created between 1945 and 1948.
After defeat in the 1951 election, Attlee stayed at the head of the Labour Party, something that would never happen nowadays. He remained in place until he could be sure that his role would go to someone on the Left of the party, understanding how bad a drift toward the Tories would be in the long run. In retirement, he quietly faded away, so that most of us, nowadays, know very little about him.
Attlee himself didn't help much in preserving his memory, either. He kept no diary, and wasn't given to long winded explanations of his stances. As portrayed in this book, you could almost think of him as the biggest of egos in a profession full of big egos. Unlike the others, however, this ego wasn't tied to an insecurity that needed everyone to know how great he was. Attlee was always confident of his own decisions, and rarely felt the need to explain them. He comes across as a man so confident that he barely cared what others said of him.
The introduction of the book says it was written in 1997. Still, it managed to get in some barbed comments about the Blair style of leadership, even at that early stage. But if it was a sly satire written about the state of the nation in 2015, the message would be fairly obvious. It's the little man, with the unfashionable ideas and poor presentation skills, who could be the one Labour really needs if it is to survive and prosper**.
*Sure, Blair was PM for much longer, and did achieve some good, but he didn't change the country as drastically and positively as Attlee. And let's not get started on all the negatives tied to Blair's time in power.
** I'm a member of the Green Party. I'm most interested in Labour as the party we're replacing, ideologically, as it slides to the Right and makes itself irrelevant as any sort of opposition.
At times, this book felt like it was a satire on the current state of British politics, dressed up as the biography of an unjustly forgotten politician. There's the tyranny of charity- the way the 'Big Society' could never work because the donor gets to decide who the deserving poor are, and punishes anyone not behaving the way they are expected to. Inequality propped up by the system (and Tory support for that system). Other Labour PMs who were more interested in having the post on their CV than doing anything useful with it. The big egos with talents that don't match up, who think they should be running the party rather than the quiet little man who's a little too far to the Left for their liking. (They failed, and the little man oversaw the creation of the NHS, welfare state and much more.) Trouble with the unions and even, after losing the 1951 election, a vote from the membership that had the Party establishment crying that there had been a (non-existent) Communist infiltration.
Clement Attlee was a son of an upper middle class family who seemed destined for dissatisfied normality, until he started doing charitable work in the East End. Appalled by the inequality he saw there, he shifted, gradually, to socialism and, eventually, membership of the Labour Party. Never the greatest public speaker, he nevertheless garnered respect for his organisational abilities, commitment and fairness.
Attlee quietly worked his way to leadership, outmanoeuvring the more flamboyant candidates who believed they had an automatic right to the post. He acted as deputy to Churchill in the Second World War, and surprised many by becoming Prime Minister in 1945. His one full term in power (the second saw a vastly reduced majority and the Government fell apart due to party infighting) changed the nation drastically. Despite terrible finances, exacerbated by the behaviour of the USA, the NHS and welfare state were created, and key industries nationalised. Everything the Tories have been trying to destroy ever since was created between 1945 and 1948.
After defeat in the 1951 election, Attlee stayed at the head of the Labour Party, something that would never happen nowadays. He remained in place until he could be sure that his role would go to someone on the Left of the party, understanding how bad a drift toward the Tories would be in the long run. In retirement, he quietly faded away, so that most of us, nowadays, know very little about him.
Attlee himself didn't help much in preserving his memory, either. He kept no diary, and wasn't given to long winded explanations of his stances. As portrayed in this book, you could almost think of him as the biggest of egos in a profession full of big egos. Unlike the others, however, this ego wasn't tied to an insecurity that needed everyone to know how great he was. Attlee was always confident of his own decisions, and rarely felt the need to explain them. He comes across as a man so confident that he barely cared what others said of him.
The introduction of the book says it was written in 1997. Still, it managed to get in some barbed comments about the Blair style of leadership, even at that early stage. But if it was a sly satire written about the state of the nation in 2015, the message would be fairly obvious. It's the little man, with the unfashionable ideas and poor presentation skills, who could be the one Labour really needs if it is to survive and prosper**.
*Sure, Blair was PM for much longer, and did achieve some good, but he didn't change the country as drastically and positively as Attlee. And let's not get started on all the negatives tied to Blair's time in power.
** I'm a member of the Green Party. I'm most interested in Labour as the party we're replacing, ideologically, as it slides to the Right and makes itself irrelevant as any sort of opposition.
April 6, 2025
A pretty strong biography of an absolute geezer, if you're looking for a linear, historical and non-overwhelming insight into the formation of the welfare state, the self-destructive impulses of the Labour Party and also a great political overview of pre-War Britain, this is a great resource. Having little to no knowledge of the latter topic, I am pretty grateful to have learned about (in particular reflection to my family roots) the levels of devastation in the East-End, Gallipoli, the failures of the MacDonald governments, and the policies of appeasement that set the groundwork for the Second World War.
Through quiet perseverance, Clement Attlee was able to radically reshape the country and directly attack the inequality that lies at the heart of the British class system. In a time of fierce austerity, continued rationing and recovery/rebuilding from the war, his government (with no undue credit given to Health (and Housing) minister Aneurin Bevan) introduced the National Health Service, granted the independence of India (and thereby the end of Britain's colonial empire), and nationalised 20% of the country's industries. Attlee was unassuming, and often underestimated, his sensibility and succinct, direct style of speaking didn't specifically hide a passion for socialism, but it definitely made it palatable for a country tired of it's divisions, and in 1945, united in equal standing in a fight against fascism, for the core tenants of democracy and equality.
Problems with the legacy lie in the failures of an any future Labour government (or any other government for that matter) to live up to the example set. Thatcher at-least tried her best to undo it all, with an opposition divided in bitter internal recrimination. I don't feel it harsh or idealistic to say that Attlee would not have been as blind as the Foot's, or Kinnock's of the era. It can be a bitter read at times, lamenting on how effective a government once was, eighty years before my time, but whatever. Wilson, Callaghan, Blair, Brown, Starmer, they crumble in comparison.
Beckett allows a certain amount of insight into the failures of Attlee's government, at home: the 1947 winter crisis, reliance on American loans, devaluation of the pound. In the foreign office: withdrawal from Palestine, the partition of India. Both of which would set the scene for warfares and conflicts some of which are still un-ended, but perhaps this says more about the devastating legacy of colonial rule and oppression. Perhaps more could've been said on the topics, but maybe then it would cease to be a comprehensive biography on the subject. Also, there's maybe a bit too much poetry because, honestly, his poetry sucked. But then if you were not include this it would cease to be a comprehensive biography...
Clement Attlee in a way represents an English sensibility that means nothing to me at all: cricket, public schools, and a stiff-upper-lip. It's wild how beneath that Edwardian exterior was a iconoclast with a burning, radical drive for social justice.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I would recommend the 2015 edition, it provides a stronger context for many details and brings to light a connection between the author's father with Attlee, before turning to the 'squalid wastelands of fascist politics.' A little plot-twist I thought was also wild.
Through quiet perseverance, Clement Attlee was able to radically reshape the country and directly attack the inequality that lies at the heart of the British class system. In a time of fierce austerity, continued rationing and recovery/rebuilding from the war, his government (with no undue credit given to Health (and Housing) minister Aneurin Bevan) introduced the National Health Service, granted the independence of India (and thereby the end of Britain's colonial empire), and nationalised 20% of the country's industries. Attlee was unassuming, and often underestimated, his sensibility and succinct, direct style of speaking didn't specifically hide a passion for socialism, but it definitely made it palatable for a country tired of it's divisions, and in 1945, united in equal standing in a fight against fascism, for the core tenants of democracy and equality.
Problems with the legacy lie in the failures of an any future Labour government (or any other government for that matter) to live up to the example set. Thatcher at-least tried her best to undo it all, with an opposition divided in bitter internal recrimination. I don't feel it harsh or idealistic to say that Attlee would not have been as blind as the Foot's, or Kinnock's of the era. It can be a bitter read at times, lamenting on how effective a government once was, eighty years before my time, but whatever. Wilson, Callaghan, Blair, Brown, Starmer, they crumble in comparison.
Beckett allows a certain amount of insight into the failures of Attlee's government, at home: the 1947 winter crisis, reliance on American loans, devaluation of the pound. In the foreign office: withdrawal from Palestine, the partition of India. Both of which would set the scene for warfares and conflicts some of which are still un-ended, but perhaps this says more about the devastating legacy of colonial rule and oppression. Perhaps more could've been said on the topics, but maybe then it would cease to be a comprehensive biography on the subject. Also, there's maybe a bit too much poetry because, honestly, his poetry sucked. But then if you were not include this it would cease to be a comprehensive biography...
Clement Attlee in a way represents an English sensibility that means nothing to me at all: cricket, public schools, and a stiff-upper-lip. It's wild how beneath that Edwardian exterior was a iconoclast with a burning, radical drive for social justice.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I would recommend the 2015 edition, it provides a stronger context for many details and brings to light a connection between the author's father with Attlee, before turning to the 'squalid wastelands of fascist politics.' A little plot-twist I thought was also wild.
January 9, 2021
I found this book very illuminating and I was immediately attracted to the no nonsense humanity of this very middle class boy living in Putney and going to a public school.
I now understand this man's greatness and his ability to never lose the sight of what he was in politics for, which was to improve immeasurably the lot of the working class
Bravo
I now understand this man's greatness and his ability to never lose the sight of what he was in politics for, which was to improve immeasurably the lot of the working class
Bravo
December 2, 2024
As biographies go there are better ones out there. This one ends with his death. No discussion of legacy or being remembered. He goes to hospital and dies - the end. Very linear. It’s comprehensive and well researched.
June 5, 2021
The first political biography I have read and it was really worthwhile reading about the foundation of the NHS and the modern welfare state. Something unthinkable for the stories at the time and now even after the Thatcher attempt to reinvigorate the Hayekian model fell on its face and has been undone by successive governments from the left and right. Goes to show that capitalism is a well meaning skyhook at best.
February 27, 2021
Easy to read, not overlong portrait, of one our best PMs. He never said in 50 words what he could say in 5 ! Also a clever, witty poet, which I didn't realise. He co-operated fully with Churchill in the war effort, to his credit, then led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1945 election. A priviledged background but genuine concern for the poor in the East End, before entering Parliament.
September 29, 2016
A solid biography, that covers Attlee's entire life. It has the speculative nature of many biographies, and is overly focused on personalities for my taste. The author spends perhaps an undue amount of time relitigating internal Labour politics and disputes, and rather less time than I would have liked on the period between 1945-51. But an enjoyable read and a highly sympathetic and persuasive account of Attlee's life and significance.
January 8, 2023
I thought this was excellent. It was comprehensive and personal, and focused on Attlee's personal life and politics rather than his policies, largely, which was refreshing (this was driven by the use of Attlee's letters to his brother). Overall, I really enjoyed this.
November 4, 2012
a very easy and informative read. Clem deserves more credit than the left give him today, he was so so much more than In the right place at right time.
November 19, 2016
Very insightful and well researched. Learned a lot from it. Would absolutely recommend. 3.5/5
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews