Clement Attlee (Labour)
1945-1950
The Prelude
Labour's long spell in power began rather unexpectedly. Heading into the 1945 general election, the first held since the war's end, Winston Churchill was the most popular Prime Minister in memory. His iconic image as “the Man who Won the War” resounded with the people, and wherever he went during the election campaign he was met with huge cheering crowds. However, the man is separate from the party he leads, and never has this been more clear than in 1945 – Churchill's actual policies were felt too close to the austerity policies pursued during the Great Depression of the 1930s, which had poor effect against the mass unemployment and economic hardship of that period.
Labour, on the other hand, promised a new tack. Their now-legendary 1945 manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, featured a bold vision of a welfare state, a New Jerusalem forged from the ashes of the old order, in which no child would be left behind, no sick or injured left untreated, and no elderly left uncared for. It was a vision that held appeal in a land devastated by a decade of economic depression and war, and in the end the Conservatives found themselves trounced by a margin of two to one in seats. For the first time ever, Britain had a majority Labour government, and when Clement Attlee went to the Palace on the morning after the election it was at the head of a government unlike any other thus far in the nation's history.
Immediately the Labour Government set to work implementing its policies. Large swathes of the economy – coal, steel, the railways, the Bank of England, the electric grid – were brought under public ownership, and large subsidies for council housing was introduced, leading to a massive surge in home construction. Most boldly of all, the government set about consolidating the various private and charitable health trusts and insurance systems into a single unified National Health Service, which would cover every British subject regardless of income and whose services would be free at point of use. However, all was not well, as the post-war economic slump forced the government to maintain rationing schemes for a variety of consumer goods, a situation that made the government in general and Chancellor Sir Stafford Cripps in particular deeply unpopular with the British public.
By the 1950 general election, however, the situation had improved to the extent that most of the rationing could be done away with, and Labour entered its first election defending a majority government with a message of prosperity delivered and the need for continued economic planning in order to safeguard this prosperity. It must've resounded with the electorate, for the Labour Government was returned. Their majority was smaller than in 1945, to be sure, but still a solid workable mandate to continue their policies.
It was not, however, Attlee's task to carry its policies into the new decade, for in May of 1950, after an evening of negotiations with visiting French and American dignitaries, he slumped out of his Hackney carriage and collapsed onto the pavement. The distressed bystanders called an ambulance, but by the time it arrived it was too late. The architect of the New Jerusalem, the second in a row of Labour Prime Ministers that was to span the history of modern Britain until the present, and the first one to head a pure Labour government without needing Liberal support, was dead. He was mourned by a nation, and the grandees of his party turned to selecting a new man to lead the country. Their choice was unexpected, but in hindsight, not a bad one.
