THE TROUBLE WITH CLEM

There is at present a Coalition “ring-fence” protecting spending on The National Health Service, the great icon of Britain’s Welfare State. That ring-fence may soon have to tumble down, as every week news emerges of waste, inefficiency and horrendous patient neglect in some NHS establishments. A similar “ring-fence” surrounds the reputation of Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister whose administration introduced The Welfare State between 1945 and 1951. “Britain’s greatest prime Minister in the 20^th Century” is the kind of pious claptrap one hears and it is almost in bad taste to disagree. Well, I believe Clem Attlee’s virtues are wildly overrated: his talents were modest, his policies often misguided and his legacy an economically burdened Britain only Margaret Thatcher was able to unravel 40 years later.

Clement Attlee with his pipe

Clement Attlee (1883-1967) was the seventh of eight children of a prosperous London solicitor and he was educated at Haileybury public school and at University College, Oxford, graduating in 1904. Although he was called to the Bar in 1906, Attlee became radicalised working at Haileybury House in London’s East End, where he saw the evils of slum life and poverty. He was convinced that private charitable effort was not enough and campaigned in favour of Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act and joined the Independent Labour Party (the ILP) in 1909. He lectured at the London School of Economics and was busy in Socialist politics.

When the 1914-18 War came he joined up – a brother was a pacifist – and he saw action at Gallipoli and was wounded in Mesopotamia. He was known throughout the inter-war years as “Major” Attlee. He was Mayor of Stepney in 1919 and entered parliament as a Labour member in 1922. He was a junior minister in the first Labour Government of 1922-3, served on the Simon Commission on India and joined MacDonald’s cabinet in 1930. Like all Labour politicians, in hindsight he deprecated MacDonald when he formed the National Government in 1931. In the subsequent election Attlee and his senior, pacifist fruitcake George Lansbury, were the only cabinet members to keep their seats. Lansbury was Party Leader until 1935 when union leader Ernest Bevin brutally burst his bubble and he resigned. By default, Attlee became Party Leader.

 Attlee swallowed all the socialist nostrums of the era: total disarmament by Britain: support for the disintegrating League of Nations: a Republican victory in Spain: admiration of Stalin’s Soviet Union: cheers for Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in Munich. At the 11th hour in 1938, he agreed to back rearmament but would have preferred Halifax over Churchill as Prime Minister when Neville Chamberlain resigned. In the dire emergency of 1940, Attlee brought Labour into the Coalition War Cabinet, acting as Churchill’s deputy. On almost every issue, Attlee had been completely wrong.

Attlee’s performance in the war cabinet was much better. He chaired a number of cabinet committees, always those concerned with civilian, domestic matters. He was an excellent chairman, crisp and precise, concluding business rapidly, unlike verbose Churchill, who concentrated on military affairs. Attlee was useful but by no means inspiring or game-changing. It was a huge surprise to Clem and to the nation when Labour won a landslide victory in 1945.

Herbert Morrison

Ernest Bevin

 

        

Attlee was able to assemble a cabinet well experienced by wartime portfolios. The two most influential were Herbert Morrison, a very effective Home Secretary, now Lord President of the Council and Ernest Bevin, blunt, stout-hearted Foreign Secretary. Finance was well-covered by Hugh Dalton, Sir Stafford Cripps and later Hugh Gaitskell. Newcomer, Welsh firebrand Aneurin Bevan, was given the Health portfolio. Playing these “big beasts” against each other when unity was impossible was one of Clem’s skills. Bevin and Morrison were often at daggers drawn: when someone remarked that Morrison was his own worst enemy, “Not while I’m around” growled Bevin.

There were at least two attempts to drop Clem, but he managed to side-step them. He was rather shy and he did not glad-hand comfortably. His platform oratory was flat and an American verdict was that he was “as charismatic as a gerbil”. His reputation mainly rests on the domestic programme he introduced. Largely based on Liberal William Beveridge’s famous 1943 Report, which anyhow enjoyed cross-party support, a comprehensive National Insurance Scheme was launched giving universal pension, unemployment and disability benefits. More controversially “the commanding heights of the economy” were nationalised, coal mining, iron and steel, road transport, the railways, civil aviation and most utilities (many long municipalised). About 20% of British industry came into “public ownership” in the name of efficiency. Most of this was a mistake: iron and steel and road haulage were soon enough denationalised. The railways and the coal mines were a drag on the economy for a generation and far from efficient. The bureaucratic delays and incompetence of the gas boards and of the telephone monopoly were legendary.

NHS eulogised at opening of London Olympics 2012

                       

The jewel in the crown was the National Health Service, providing universal free medical and hospital treatment at the point of use. This was certainly a boon to every family as it relieved them of financial anxiety at difficult times and greatly enhanced health standards. Aneurin Bevan bullied the resisting medical profession to accept new state contracts. Yet it was a highly expensive triumph; it was magnificent but it was unaffordable – a more gradual approach would have been prudent. Demand for medical services is unlimited; without some kind of financial or moral deterrent. GP’s surgeries overflow with the neurotic and hypochondriac: accident and emergency departments are flooded by those with minor and non-urgent ailments. A population growing older compounds the problem and drugs are ever more effective and more expensive. Attlee’s government should have foreseen these problems, deriving from human nature and actuarial certainties; successive governments have been lax in tackling them to the nation’s impoverishment.

Clem’s overseas policies will not detain us. Britain could not afford global commitments so a policy of “scuttle” was initiated. The curtain came down on the British Raj in India; Greece, Palestine and Burma were abandoned. Involvement in Berlin and Korea could not be avoided and a momentous decision was taken to build a British nuclear capability, a major expense. Britain was a loyal member of NATO, but inevitably a junior partner to the US. Clem was credited with persuading Truman not to nuke the Red Chinese when they intervened in Korea, but this was probably a false alarm.

The Attlee administration ran out of steam. Cripps and Bevin died, Morrison was miscast as Foreign Secretary, Bevan and Harold Wilson, shamelessly grandstanding when Gaitskell introduced minor charges for specs and teeth in the NHS, resigned from the cabinet. Winning only a thin majority in 1950, Labour lost power in 1951, unelectable for the next 13 years. Clem held on to the leadership, mainly to block Morrison and Bevan; we have a glimpse of him touring the USSR and Red China in 1954 credulously singing the praises of Malenkov and expatiating upon the happiness of the Chinese peasant under Chairman Mao. Attlee was soundly defeated by Anthony Eden in 1955 and retired from public life.

Churchill always spoke well of Attlee, admiring his patriotism and being grateful for his stalwart wartime support. The Labour government of 1945-51 was a great reforming ministry and Clem presided over it. Yet he left no personal mark on any of its policies, no memorable phrase ever fell. from his lips. Certainly he was a gifted chairman but to say only that is damning with faint praise. Of his Labour successors, Gaitskell was more inspirational, Wilson more politically adept and Blair more persuasive.

Clem was famously laconic. “Not up to the job” was his deadly riposte to a minister enquiring why he was being dismissed. Moving to the Right in his old age, one of his last recorded remarks, which would gladden the heart of any Eurosceptic, was; The so-called Common Market of six nations. Know them all well. Very recently this country spent a great deal of blood and treasure rescuing four of 'em from attacks by the other two.

Clem undoubtedly rendered great service to his country and died laden with honours. In the pantheon of great 20^th century Prime Ministers he surely ranks well below Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Attlee’s virtues are elusive and the oft-repeated remark that he was “a modest little man, with plenty to be modest about” is not so far off the mark.

SMD

 3.07.13

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2013