Clement Attlee put down a letter from Canada that he'd been trying to read for half an hour down and looked at the ceiling. It hadn't been a good past seven years. He had hoped in 1945 that he was moments away from being able to reshape the face of Britain's society and economic settlement, the builder of a New Jerusalem. Instead, Winston had clung doggedly to power. And in peace time, he had taken the Beveridge Report, and accomplished much of what Attlee had hoped to do. He had established the British Hospitals Service, established the 'cradle-to-grave' welfare state, and put combating the 'Five Giant Evils' at the heart of his domestic policy. And of course, the British people lapped it up. The biggest stick they had to club the National Government had slipped through the fingers over night. Acland talked a big talk of mutualised industries, local soviets and a 'socialism of liberty', but Attlee didn't see that washing with the British public.
He thought back to 1945, when he was the second most powerful man in the land. He had stood before Churchill and said that he would not back the National Government till victory in Asia. He wanted an election now, with peace in Europe. He hadn't known then just how far Herbert had been willing to go to be Leader of the Party. He'd stuck the knife in shortly after that meeting and shook hands with Churchill and a lot of the PLP had looked very apologetically at Clement as he sat on the backbenches, and they voted to keep with Churchill till Victory In Asia.
And Victory, the true victory not the treaty that Churchill claimed ended the war, came very quickly with two American atomic detonations. Clement had struck, and this time had carried a significant chunk of the PLP with him, marching to the Opposition benches. But Morrison had doggedly sat there, clinging to his Leadership and the Labour brand. For the second time, Labour had found itself split thanks to a collaborator leader. But Morrison had enough backing to keep the Labour label, and Clement found himself having to refound, or rather reunite with, the Independent Labour Party.
It had been in 1947 that Acland had come to the fore. By-elections were eroding the National Government's majority, and while the ILP was performing well, it was Common Wealth and the Progressives who were really storming ahead, and while the ILP was larger for now, Acland was building quite a following. Clement could feel the years leaning on him, the frustrations, the failures. He wanted to relax again and enjoy the years he had left with his wife. He had proposed the merger, not Acland, though he had heard whispers from allies, like Priestley. The Alliance came first, and had borne results, as a spate of resignations as several MPs became increasingly decrepit, ILP and Common Wealth alike winning seats with increased numbers. And then came the formal union, under the Common Wealth banner. Clement had been happy to take a back seat to Acland, and the younger man had raced into the leadership role. Clement found himself a comfortable role as spokesman for Dominion Affairs, as Acland assembled his Cabinet-In-Waiting, and he was happy.
That hadn't lasted long. While the National Government whithered, Common Wealth grew, but he became concerned about how far the party was drifting away from the course being set by the government. While the National Government hadn't introduced nationalisations, there was increasing 'managerialism' in the workplace, and while Attlee and many of his allies thought this a not altogether bad thing, Acland's plans were far more radical. He was particularly concerned by Acland's resolve to abolish the nuclear weapons programme that was being undertaken by Churchill. Poor old Bevin had been summarily dismissed to the backbenches by Acland for his opposition to the Leader's policy, and when he had died not long after, Clement couldn't find it in his heart to forgive Acland.
Perhaps he might have taken Bevin's place, but now it seemed that Acland was determined to keep men such as himself, old men of the old world, away from power. He had been kept at Dominion Affairs, reading letters from Australia and Canada and dying slowly of boredom. Now, finally, something interesting was happening. Acland's time of triumph approached, and yet he was also uniquely vulnerable. For the past five years, he had been left to his own devices, all the big personalities happy to see their numbers grow while a future general election was a nebulous thing on the horizon, but now that it hoved into view, awful and concrete, these personalities clamoured for influence. It hadn't shown at PMQs but beneath the surface, Common Wealth was restive. Acland believed himself invulnerable, but Clement had plans to disabuse him of that fact. He looked at the man sitting opposite him.
'Well then, Nye,' he smiled, 'what are we to do?'