Clement Attlee

Biography

Clement Attlee was born in Putney in 1883, the son of a prosperous London solicitor. He was educated at Haileybury College and University College, Oxford, and qualified as a barrister, but volunteer work at a boys' club in Stepney exposed him to East End poverty and turned him to socialism. He joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908, worked for Beatrice Webb and at Toynbee Hall, and from 1912 lectured at the London School of Economics.

He served in the First World War at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and on the Western Front, rising to major. Back in Stepney he became mayor in 1919, and in 1922 he was elected MP for Limehouse. He was a junior minister in the first Labour government, sat on the Simon Commission on India from 1927, and held office again in 1930–1931. After Labour's collapse in 1931 he became deputy leader and in 1935 succeeded George Lansbury as party leader.

In May 1940 he took Labour into Winston Churchill's wartime coalition, serving as Lord Privy Seal, dominions secretary and Lord President, and from 1942 as deputy prime minister. Labour's landslide in the July 1945 election made him prime minister. His government created the National Health Service, extended national insurance, nationalised major industries and granted independence to India and Pakistan, while helping to found NATO and committing troops to Korea.

Re-elected narrowly in 1950, he lost office in 1951, led the opposition until 1955, and then retired with an earldom. He died in 1967.