Attlee Clement Richard - CLEMENT ATTLEE: the inevitable prime minister

W hen I adduced the subtitle The Inevitable Prime Minister, my intention was to gainsay the myth that Clement Attlee came from nowhere, that his elevation in 1945 was an accident or electoral mistake. More than any party leader in the twentieth century, he earned his status, and more than any member of the War Cabinet, except Winston Churchill himself, he contributed, without a hint of partisanship, to the national cause.

Thus, given that Britain was at peace in 1945 and that the electorate wished for change, and given that Clement Attlee was the established leader of the party of change, it was hardly surprising that, after a decade in that role, he replaced the redoubtable Churchill at the helm.

Unsurprisingly, the word inevitable, applied to Clement Attlees path to Downing Street, drew a reaction of surprise from critics. John Bew pointed out that nothing is inevitable, and Jack Straw, in a comprehensive and sympathetic lecture to the Middle Temple in 2015, took issue with the word as though it somehow devalued the premiership of a remarkable, unique man.

Since 1945, the Churchill legend has waxed and waxed. That is hardly surprising as, absent that indefatigable pugnacity, the Second World War might have taken a very different course. That alone could be used to demolish the idea that the events of 1945 were inevitable.

But if we take the outcome of the war as established historical fact, consider the electorates desire for change in July 1945, and look back at the evolution of the Labour Party in the preceding two decades, the outstanding figure, the only electable leader, in place since 1935, was Clement Attlee. It was no accident or temporary wave of populism that ushered in six remarkable years of his leadership.

Within the Labour Party, moreover, not every observer agreed with that causality. Even as Attlee prepared to kiss hands with King George VI in July 1945, Herbert Morrison was agitating to replace him. Principally because of the unwavering support of Labours strong man Ernest Bevin, Morrisons machinations were circumvented. Not inevitable, perhaps, but when Violet Attlee drove their modest saloon car to Buckingham Palace, it was the correct, the only sensible outcome.

In a little under forty years, the Labour Party had developed from a fringe party that boasted one charismatic Member of Parliament to a movement that achieved a landslide victory with nearly twelve million votes and 393 seats in 1945. Along the way, the partys leadership had seen a variety of individuals and a shifting platform as Keir Hardie, George Lansbury and Ramsay MacDonald experimented with different ideological clothing. From the mid-1920s onwards, Attlee had been at the ideological and strategic centre of the party. His confirmation as leader in 1935 was, if not inevitable, logically entailed.

From 1935 to 1945 there was a single thread that dominated the course of events: how Britain would respond to the mounting territorial ambitions of Nazi Germany. Once again, Attlee was consistent, first as the Leader of the Opposition, later as a member of the War Cabinet and, from 1942, as a busy and massively supportive Deputy Prime Minister. Time and again, as Churchills missions kept him at Placentia Bay, Casablanca, Tehran, Yalta, it was Attlee who chaired the War Cabinet and corralled ministers support for the PM.

To his brother Tom he wrote that it is obviously futile to try to put on Sauls armour and that he was holding the baby and would not try to stretch the bow of Ulysses. His unimpeachable loyalty to the cause, first of the party, later of an embattled nation, uniquely qualified him to lead the party and the nation when the need arose.

From this sequence of events, this evolution of the Labour Party and the role of its leader, comes the statement that Attlees elevation was inevitable. Granted that events could have derailed that progress, granted that from 1940 to 1944 Britains fate itself hung in the balance, but on the premise that after Pearl Harbor the defeat of Germany was inevitable, no force could keep Labour from power. Ipso facto, Morrison and Laski notwithstanding, there was no movement powerful enough to keep Attlee from Downing Street.