Robert Pearce - Attlee

PROFILES IN POWER

ELIZABETH I
Christopher Haigh

RICHELIEU
R. J. Knecht

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS (2nd Edn)
Michael Roberts

OLIVER CROMWELL
Barry Coward

PETER THE GREAT (2nd Edn)
M. S. Anderson

JOSEPH II
T. C. W. Blanning

NAPOLEON
Geoffrey Ellis

ALEXANDER I
Janet M. Hartley

DISRAELI
Ian Machin

JUREZ
Brian Hamnett

CAVOUR
Harry Hearder

NAPOLEON III
James McMillan

FRANCIS JOSEPH
Steven Beller

ATATRK
A. L. Macfie

LLOYD GEORGE
Martin Pugh

HITLER
Ian Kershaw

CHURCHILL
Keith Robbins

ATTLEE
Robert Pearce

NASSER
Peter Woodward

DE GAULLE
Andrew Shennan

FRANCO
Sheelagh Ellwood

MACMILLAN
John Turner

KENNEDY
Hugh Brogan

CASTRO (2nd Edn)
Sebastian Balfour

ATTLEE

Robert Pearce

First published 1997 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited
Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Addison Wesley Longman Limited 1997

The right of Robert Pearce to be identified
as author of this Work has been asserted by
him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without either the prior written permision of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

ISBN 978-0-582-25690-3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pearce, R. D. (Robert D.)
Attlee / Robert Pearce.
p. cm. (Profiles in power)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-25691-7 (hardcover). ISBN 0-582-25690-9 (paper)

1. Attlee, C. R. (Clement Richard), 18831967. 2. Great Britain Politics and government 20th century. 3. Prime ministers Great Britain Biography. 4. Labour Party (Great Britain) Biography.

I. Title. II. Series: Profiles in power (London, England)

DA585A8P43 1997

941.0854092-dc21

Set by 8 in 10/12pt New Baskerville

.......

The 1935 General Election and the
Leadership Contest

Attlees Governments, 194551:
Domestic Affairs

Attlees Governments, 194551:
Foreign and Imperial Affairs

Anti-Climax: Opposition and After,
195167

.......

Every work of history is a collaborative venture, and I therefore wish to thank the historians, mostly unknown to me personally, from whose work I have profited. Some of them, but alas not all, are mentioned by name in the references and bibliography. My interest in Attlee goes back over twenty years and has occasioned numerous archival forays on his papers and those of his contemporaries. Thanks go to the many librarians and archivists who have aided my work, and especially to those at the Bodleian, the British Library and Churchill College. I am grateful to Bill Golant, for first stimulating my interest in Attlee, as in so much else, to Kenneth Harris, for advice on sources, and to John Swift, for acting as a diligent research assistant during the early part of the work. I am also appreciative of the stimulating comments provided by the general editor of this series, Professor Keith Robbins, and the staff at Addison Wesley Longman. As so often in the past, Martin Anthony and Roger Butler generously provided accommodation and hospitality during my trips to London and Oxford respectively. My greatest debt of all is to Janet Copeland, to whom this book is dedicated.

Lancaster,
July 1996

.....

Clement Richard Attlee (18831967) was the longest-serving leader of any major political party in twentieth-century Britain: he led Labour for twenty years. In addition, he was Prime Minister, from 1945 to 1951, during a period of unparalleled and highly controversial reform in domestic, foreign and imperial affairs: the welfare state was completed, a substantial portion of industry was nationalised, the Cold War started and the Empire began to be transformed into the multiracial Commonwealth. Without doubt he was one of the most successful figures in Labour history and one of the most significant in modern British politics. Yet he is also one of the most inscrutable.

Most students feel ambivalent about Attlee. This is partly because he was deliberately elusive. He was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to open himself up to questioners, his three stock answers being Yes, No, and I dont know, while his memoirs, As It Happened, constitute one of the least revealing autobiographies ever written. He was virtually a stranger to many of his colleagues, some of whom misjudged him entirely. For instance, while Attlee was an agnostic, who could not believe in the mumbo-jumbo of religion, several figures believed him to be a convinced Christian. Arthur Moyle, his PPS, once remarked that he had worked for that man for twenty years, yet still know nothing about him.2 Into his impenetrable silences could be read delphic understanding, personal inadequacy or anything in between leaving plenty of room for misunderstanding. Hence it is not surprising that several Clem Attlees stalk the pages of modern history.

There is Attlee meek and mild, the modest man who, as Churchill quipped, had plenty to be modest about. He was the shy and retiring sort who did not angle and plot for political advancement, and nor did he particularly deserve it. He had greatness (of a sort) thrust upon him by a series of lucky breaks and by the unsuitability of his rivals. Bathos might almost have been his middle name: determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle, as Nye Bevan believed, he brought to the fierce struggle of politics the tepid enthusiasms of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match.3

There are several variations on this theme, in all of which Attlee is so colourless, characterless or self-effacing that he disappears as a human being. In the first, he is simply a void. The classic exposition of this came in Angus Wilsons short story The Wrong Set: An empty taxi drove up to No. 10 and Mr Attlee got out.4 He may have attended, or even chaired, numberless meetings, but it is almost as if their official records have been doctored to omit all mention of him. Similarly, he may have been a member of the Simon Commission on Indian constitutional reform, appointed in 1928, but one may search the memoir of his fellow commissioner Edward Cadogan in vain for any acknowledgement of this fact. He was often next to invisible. At best, he was a small man in every respect: drab, dreary and little, according to the head of the Foreign Office during the Second World War.5