Attlee & Bread

Clement Attlee is indisputably one of the greatest leaders of the modern age. And in these times when politics is dominated by posturing and rigidity, it is worth looking back on the qualities that enabled Attlee to transform his country for the better, despite all the threats and obstacles he faced in the 1930s/40s.

Attlee was not one for setting out inviolable ideological principles, or for uncompromisingly refusing to work with anyone not signing up to those principles. His focus was always on what people actually needed, and how their unfair deprivations could in practice be remedied.

He praised charitable works. He appreciated intellectual critiques of an exploitative economy. But above all, he recognised that unless political power was obtained to bring in changes on a large enough scale, all that were wrong with society would persist with the attendant suffering.

His greatness came from his steadfast determination to use the power of government to implement what would genuinely help people. To defeat the Nazis, he would work with Winston Churchill in a coalition government. To rebuild Britain after the Second World War, he would defeat Churchill in the 1945 elections to establish a new state-citizens partnership that was to provide unprecedented security for all.

Against Conservatives who said the country was in too much debt to do anything for the people, he had the courage to put forward a programme that would pave the way for the prosperity to come in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite those to his right and left within the Labour Party worrying that he was doing too much or too little, he steered the post-war government forward to secure more for the British people than anyone could have imagined.

What we should remember most about Attlee is the fact that he never doubted that his actions as a political leader were to be judged by how much they improved the everyday quality of life for people, especially those who had to endure the greatest hardship.

Let us leave the final words to Attlee himself, with this poem he wrote in 1912, a decade before he became MP for the East London constituency of Limehouse:

“In Limehouse, in Limehouse, before the break of day,
I hear the feet of many men go upon their way,
Who wander through the City,
The grey and cruel City,
Through streets that have no pity,
The streets where men decay.

In Limehouse, in Limehouse, by night as well as day,
I hear the feet of children who go to work or play,
Of children born of sorrow,
How shall they work tomorrow
Who get no bread today?

In Limehouse, in Limehouse, today and every day
I see the weary mothers who sweat their souls away:
Poor, tired mothers, trying
To hush the feeble crying
Of little babies dying
For want of bread today.

In Limehouse, in Limehouse, I’m dreaming of the day
When evil time shall perish and be driven clean away,
When father, child and mother
Shall live and love each other,
And brother help his brother
In happy work and play.”