Even then he might not have survived but for the outbreak of war and formation of a coalition in which he became deputy prime minister.Ĭome the end of the war, he went on to lead a government which, in the teeth of almost insurmountable difficulties, established a comprehensive system of social insurance, providing unemployment pay, sickness benefit, maternity leave, widow’s benefit, family allowances (child benefit) and a one-off death grant to help with funeral costs. He might never have become leader but for the Labour split of 1931, which meant that, even four years later, competition for the top job was not as stiff as it might have been. As with most successful politicians, luck played a part. Elected as the MP for Limehouse in 1922, he was a junior minister in the first Labour governments. Add to that the destruction and misery wreaked by the first world war and it’s evident what propelled Attlee into politics. In the pit villages of Yorkshire, the infant mortality rate was 250 in every thousand – and this in what was then the richest and most powerful country in the world. In the 1890s, when Attlee was growing up, only one child in 270 went into secondary education. Death by starvation was not unknown in the early years of the 20th century. Destitution meant the workhouse and the dreaded means test. One has to pinch oneself to recall that until little more than 100 years ago unemployment and old age often meant hunger, malnutrition and destitution. Destined to follow his father into the law, he opted instead to run a boys’ club in the east London docklands and this was the experience that shaped his politics. Born in the late Victorian era, the son of a prosperous lawyer, educated at a leading public school (to which he remained attached for the rest of his life), a patriot with a distinguished war record, he could so easily have ended up on the other side. Everything about Attlee suggested a small-c conservative.

Clement Attlee by John Bew