Clement Attlee

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Let us assess this gentle-voiced crypto-woman.

― , Monday, 10 October 2005 15:30 (twenty years ago)

On his watch: nationalised utilities, created NHS and welfare state, pulled out of India and Palestine. Was robbed in '51 election.

― beanz (beanz), Monday, 10 October 2005 15:37 (twenty years ago)

"Clem the Gem", they didn't call him that for nothing. Biggest fucking sex symbol this country ever fucking produced.

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Monday, 10 October 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

Stafford Cripps

― dont blame me i voted for stalin, Monday, 10 October 2005 16:17 (twenty years ago)

Slightly dud for not reining in MI5/6 at the very start, which bit Labour twenty/thirty years down the line (hi Robin!), but Classic overall. Especially for the brazen way he dealt with the information that the party wanted him to resign (in front of the plot masters, he phoned Ernie Bevin, their preferred candidate, and simply said: "Ernie, some people here think you want my job." *pause* "Though not." And that was the end of that).

― carson dial (carson dial), Monday, 10 October 2005 16:58 (twenty years ago)

the nationalised utilities thing was a bit of a cock-up, n'est-ce pas?

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:38 (twenty years ago)

The withdrawals from India and Palestine were cock-ups with horrendous consequences, the Welfare State model his government did so much to introduce is starting to look seriously flawed, and he did little to shift the real balance of power. The fact that he's still regarded as the greatest Labour Prime Minister says more about the Labour Party than it does about Atlee's government.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:56 (twenty years ago)

word. when people talk about the independence of india and pakistan, are they just ignorant of the 7-figure death-toll involved or what?

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:59 (twenty years ago)

Hey it was all a cock up. I didn't suggest C or D. The empire thing was particularly badly managed. But – "the Welfare State model his government did so much to introduce is starting to look seriously flawed" - well if it's only starting to look flawed now, it's lasted pretty well. Of course that's not the case though. The NHS was inadequate by the 1960s. But you can hardly blame him for that - if nothing changes for 15 years, what do you expect.

I think he was on balance a Good Thing because you've got to compare what he achieved with what life was like before and during the war.

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:06 (twenty years ago)

This Clemont Hatlee guy is just another Eurotrash socialist and God's United States of America doesn't need his one world order antichrist liberal propagranda.

― Will O'Really, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:08 (twenty years ago)

that's the thing though -- most of the 'labour reforms' kind of were on-track during the wartime coalition govt. obv better than a churchill victory in '45, or, lord know, the kind of shit france and italy had to put up with in the same period.

xpost

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:09 (twenty years ago)

Grebtest PM evah.

The legacy of his government is everything that I'm proud of in this country. I suspect Attlee wouldn't personally be my cup of tea, but who gives one. He was proud to lead a cabinet primus inter pares. The one blot on his copybook was the commissioning of the bomb without cabinet approval, never mind parliament. Still, on the scale, it's pretty good, compared to the current incumbent, who's legacy will be that he squandered the most impressive legacy a Labour PM has ever had and made cock all difference to the political culture of the country save for cheapening that culture with a supine refusal to lead debate on anything that challenged the Thatcherite 'settlement'.

It's really easy to see flaws with the model of nationalisation chosen, but that was the party policy. The die had been cast in 1918 on the whole localism / mutuality / nationalisation schtick. And to say that the welfare model was flawed is just cock rot. It saved millions of people, and elevated lives like nothing else in this country's history and was the first time in our history that the social contract started to actually take on a real meaning in the world.

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:15 (twenty years ago)

the attlee government effected a pretty significant social change and i'm not writing off the welfare state, but i don't see any long-lasting shift in the political settlement; the economic record is harder to read because of the war, but it wasn't a great success.

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:18 (twenty years ago)

That's what I mean – whatever emergency measures for relief were taken during the war, a Conservative victory would have meant no welfare state anywhere near to the form we have it

xxpost

Yes I think the welfare setup now is surprisingly ok considering we had Thatcher and it's a constant source of anger that TB is taking the piss with it now and not fixing it like he had the chance

xpost

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:19 (twenty years ago)

xx post

Which is why the gap between rich and poor in this country is wider than ever?

Atlee might be in some sense the Greatest PM Evah. My point is that that doesn't amount to very much in the grand scheme of making the world a better place. Advances in technology have probably done more to improve people's lives over the last 60 years, and as was pointed out above a lot of welfare and labour legislation would probably have happened anyway.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:19 (twenty years ago)

a lot of welfare and labour legislation would probably have happened anyway.

I can't take that for granted

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:20 (twenty years ago)

Hein? Butskellism?

xpost - he might not have been a huge influence in terms of making the world a better place, but who has? Most leaders, outside of wartime, can either screw things up royally, or can try and advance the just causes. Attleee was the most successful UK PM in the latter respect.

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:21 (twenty years ago)

A welfare system designed to keep you alive until you can get yourself back into a shitty job doesn't seem all that great to me. Nor to the people who currently prefer to use that system rather than get a shitty job, presumably.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:22 (twenty years ago)

It's a better welfare system which lets you rot. people die that way. People become bored, listless, drug addicted, communities get hollowed out, human relationships become strained, or 'de-industrialised Britain' as it's called.

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:24 (twenty years ago)

mind you it is always hard to read a government's economic record, given that the government can only do so much to work with the way the wind is blowing. so all euro economies are in a similar post-industrial slump now, but am i wrong in thinking the transition was more violent and traumatic here (and that, being pre-eminent at one stage, we might have handled this better)? i don't know, but the final crash-dive of the uk industrial economy 1976-84 (or whenever) had roots going back a long way.

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:26 (twenty years ago)

Not sure what you're arguing here. What about the welfare system should have been different? Considering this was not long after the war so weird socio-economic conditions e.g. still a housing shortage, lower unemployment though dependent on location, less disposable income, lots of young families

xxxpost

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:28 (twenty years ago)

I guess what I'm arguing is that the Welfare State has been as much a tool of capitalist interests as any other Parliamentary innovation. If Attlee's greatness consists in doing just enough to stop the working class getting politically active, or channelling that activity into actions that were tolerable to capitalism, then fuck him. It's not his fault, he's just symptomatic of the Labour Party's institutional inability to see the Big Picture.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:34 (twenty years ago)

I'm agreeing with Dave Boyle wholeheartedly on this thread

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 09:15 (twenty years ago)

I'm agreeing with Dadaismus wholeheartedly on this thread

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 09:22 (twenty years ago)

He tried to nationalise sugar! (I read this in the Metro this morning)

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 09:27 (twenty years ago)

i always thought churchill's gag about him was v. funny. something like: Attlee is a very modest man, and deservedly so. his gag about his minister of finance was even better tho -- There but for the grace of god.. goes god.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:00 (twenty years ago)

"He has a lot to be modest about. mhahahaahahahahaammmmahashahahaa"

― , Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:17 (twenty years ago)

Another Churchill one about Attlee:

"An empty taxi drew up outside 10 Downing Street, and out stepped Clement Attlee"

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:22 (twenty years ago)

The Churchill line about Stafford Cripps, "There but for the grace of God, goes God" is sheer genius and, apparently, extremely accurate

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:23 (twenty years ago)

Attlee on Churchill:

'I won. Mwhahahahaha'

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:42 (twenty years ago)

Was Attlee the "desiccated calculating machine"? Or was that Gaitskell?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:46 (twenty years ago)

'twas Gaitskell! And Bevan said it of course.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:50 (twenty years ago)

I am agreeing entirely with Dave Boyle on this thread.

― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 16:43 (twenty years ago)

I am agreeing with Will O'Really wholeheartedly on this thread

― o rly?, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 17:31 (twenty years ago)

'grebtest prime minister of the century' is not a great achievement, is it? and maybe asquith was 'grebter' anyway?

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 12 October 2005 08:04 (twenty years ago)

What was grebt about Asquith, Henry? Most of what I know about him is from A.J.P. Taylor and he rips the piss mercilessly.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

all went tits up for asquith, but i wouldn't listen to the arch-tory ajp on anything. most of the groundwork for the welfare state was laid by asquith.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 13 October 2005 07:58 (twenty years ago)

What's your problem with Attlee anyway NRQ?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 07:59 (twenty years ago)

he's ok, just not great. i don't think state ownership of utilities = socialism where the state itself remains structurally unchanged. i was also disputing how epochal the '45 govt really was. in terms of foerign policy he was atlantacist as churchill.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:02 (twenty years ago)

And have you looked at what else Asquith and the Liberals believed in at the time?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:08 (twenty years ago)

oh sure, but, as with people who boost attlee, it's impressive only in context, ie 'they're better than the tories'. attlee's britain was nobody's idea of a socialist utopia.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:20 (twenty years ago)

Utopias were pretty hard to build in 1945. There was the little matter of having just fought fascism for 6 years to recover from.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:22 (twenty years ago)

I'd say the context makes it even more impressive.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:23 (twenty years ago)

but a lot of the reforms came directly out of the struggle against fascism, they weren't made *against* that tendency. to win the war, there had to be some social reforms, because the old lot couldn't win without them. in the same way the war made maintenance of the empire in the east impossible, so crediting attlee for this (catastrophically handled) policy again seems a bit much.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:26 (twenty years ago)

Personally, I don't credit Attlee for Indian independence - likewise, I don't blame him for how it was handled, catastrophically or otherwise. You think wartime social reforms were set in stone? A Tory government and most Labour governments would have rolled them back as soon as it was safe to do so - not carry on advancing them.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:31 (twenty years ago)

... no need to mention the Liberals by this stage of course!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:33 (twenty years ago)

but the tories, when they got in power in the '50s, didn't particularly roll the welfare state back, and no post-attlee labour government has extended it. there's no need to mention the liberals only to the extent that the modern labour party is basically the liberal party, in its beliefs and most of its traditions. blair's favourite act, the parliament act, is of course a liberal measure.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 13 October 2005 08:38 (twenty years ago)

the tories, when they got in power in the '50s, didn't particularly roll the welfare state back, and no post-attlee labour government has extended it

This is exactly why the Attlee govt was fantastic - it changed the landscape decisively. That's what great governments do.

So what if the contest to be best PM isn't the world's greatest and seems somewhat limited. If you're a PM, you will always be measured against your fellow office-holders. There's no way to evade that. You're also saying that 1945 wasn't a socialist utopia, when I don't recall anyone actually arguing it was so.

One thing that's not been mentioned is the inheritance of Attlee was really poor - taking over in 1935 and leading it to power and then what they did with that power - an amazing achievement.

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 13 October 2005 09:16 (twenty years ago)

seven years pass...

"i wouldn't listen to the arch-tory ajp on anything."

???

― Freedom, Monday, 13 May 2013 17:12 (twelve years ago)

i wouldn't listen to the closet-tory nrq on anything

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 13 May 2013 19:27 (twelve years ago)

Well, I was just baffled as to what the basis for considering Taylor a Tory - let alone an arch one - could possibly be.

― Freedom, Friday, 17 May 2013 18:01 (twelve years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.