Attlee, Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl 1883-1967
English Labour statesman

Born in Putney, near London, he was educated at University College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar in 1905. Through Haileybury House, a boy's club in the Stepney slums, he developed a practical interest in social problems which, alongside the works of John Ruskin and William Morris converted him to socialism, and in 1910 he became secretary of Toynbee Hall in east London. A lectureship at the newly founded London School of Economics (1913-23) was interrupted by service in World War I, in which he was wounded, and attained the rank of major. In 1919 he became the first Labour Mayor of Stepney, and in 1922 he entered parliament and became Ramsay MacDonald's parliamentary secretary (1922-24), Under-Secretary of State for War (1924), served on the Simon Commission on India (1927-30) and was Postmaster-General (1931) but did not become a member of the coalition government. One of the few Labour MPs to retain his parliamentary seat in the following election, he became Deputy Leader of the Opposition (1931-35) under George Lansbury, whom he succeeded as Leader in 1935, and paved the way for Churchill's wartime premiership by refusing to commit his party to a coalition under Neville Chamberlain. He was Dominions Secretary (1942-43) and Deputy Prime Minister (1942-45) in Churchill's War Cabinet. As Leader of the Opposition he accompanied Sir Anthony Eden to the San Francisco and Potsdam conferences (1945), and returned to the latter as Prime Minister after the 1945 Labour victory. Despite severe economic problems during his six years in office, he carried through a vigorous programme of nationalization and reform - the National Health Service was introduced and independence was granted to India (1947) and Burma (1948). Labour's foreign policy of support for NATO in the face of Russian intransigence, particularly the necessity for re-arming the Germans and the manufacture of British atom bombs, precipitated continuing party strife which at times taxed even Attlee's competent chairmanship. He earned affection and respect by his sheer lack of dogma, oratorical gifts or showmanship and by his balanced judgment, and quiet yet unmistakable authority which belied the public image of 'Little Clem'. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1951 to 1955 when he resigned and accepted an earldom. His many books include The Labour Party in Perspective (1937), with supplement Twelve Years Later (1949), and an autobiography, As It Happened (1954).