Clement Attlee — Quiet Revolutionary

Abstract

Clement Richard Attlee was born nine years later than Winston Churchill, in 1883, and came from rather lower down the social scale. Instead of Blenheim Palace, he was born in a solid middle-class house near Putney Hill. Yet he had a better start in life than the man he was to succeed as Prime Minister 62 years later. He was raised in a loving and stable family which had no financial worries, as his father, Henry Attlee, was a prosperous City solicitor. A God-fearing man, who took family prayers each morning before breakfast, he was a Gladstonian Liberal of advanced views, who was a ‘pro-Boer’ during the South African War. Clement’s mother, Ellen, was a cultured and educated woman, who apparently found complete fulfilment in looking after her husband and their family of five boys and three girls. Unlike her husband, she was Conservative, with both a large and a small ‘c’.