Clement Attlee Quotes (1883-1967)

“Looking back today over the years, we may well be proud of the work which our fellow citizens have done in India. There have, of course, been mistakes, there have been failures, but we can assert that our rule in India will stand comparison with that of any other nation which has been charged with the ruling of a people so different from themselves.”

“A conscientious, constitutional monarch is a strong element of stability and continuity in our Constitution.”

“The idea that every nation ought to have an atomic bomb, like every woman of fashion ought to have a mink coat, is deplorable.”

“The Russian debacle is rather appalling but quite explicable. Lenin and Trotsky appear to me to be of the SPGB type or the wilder types of the SDP.”

“Progress is not towards, but away from the herd. It is no part of the Socialist idea that there should be in every human activity an orthodox pattern to which all must conform.”

“The idea of the League of Nations was right, but it was not put into practice. This time we must see to it that an international order is established in the world with the power and the will, and not merely the desire, to prevent war breaking out again.”

“In choosing people for specific jobs previous experience should not be a guide. I never put a man in the job which he thought he knew. Often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs.”

“Socialism is not the invention of an individual. It is essentially the outcome of economic and social conditions. The evils that Capitalism brings differ in intensity in different countries, but, the root cause of the trouble once discerned, the remedy is seen to be the same by thoughtful men and women. The cause is the private ownership of the means of life; the remedy is public ownership.”

“I believe I am voicing the feelings of all hon. Members irrespective of party when I say that we all greatly regret his departure from our midst... [I]t is the hope of all of us that he may long be spared to enjoy health and happiness and the rest and the leisure which he has amply earned. This is not the occasion on which to attempt any appraisal of his work as a statesman and public man; it is, indeed, unfinished. Future historians will, no doubt, disagree, as we in this House disagree, about the merits or demerits of his policy and his actions, but I am certain they will be at one in acclaiming him as a great parliamentarian who possessed in a singular degree the faculty of judging the temper of this House and responding to its mood. They will, I think, also recall him as one who inspired affection as a man even in those who were opposed to him as a politician.”

“William Morris, [is] a prime favourite with a Socialist like myself, but also, in my view - especially in the Defence of Guinevere - a great poet.”

“He was a man the greatness of whose intellectual and practical abilities was matched by his nobility of character and high idealism. ... I believe he did immense service to this country.”

“But there are many other people to whom it will be easy to talk. Chief among these is Beaverbrook. He is a magnet to all young men, and I warn you that if you talk to him no good will come of it. Beware of flattery.”

“King George VI was always remarkably well informed, and I made a point of reading the latest telegrams before my weekly audience with him. A conscientious, constitutional monarch is a strong element of stability and continuity in our Constitution.”

“George Lansbury was filled with the burning zeal of the prophet. He hated cruelty, injustice and wrongs, and felt deeply for all who suffered. In the course of his long life he was ever the champion of the weak, and with that immense vitality of his, sustained right to the end of his life, he strove for that in which he believed.”

“Bevan was a very remarkable individual. He was a brilliant orator and debater. He proved himself during the Labour Government to be a most capable administrator and during the last few years he had matured as a statesman. His death is a great loss to the Labour and socialist movement. Although we did not always agree I had great admiration and affection for him.”

“You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making ... I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.”

“I returned last week...from visiting the Italian front. I was up with the Eighth Army, that Army which will always seem to me to epitomize the unity of our Commonwealth and Empire. I saw there in Italy Canadians, South Africans, and New Zealanders. I recalled talking with General Alexander the great deeds of the Australians. As I saw our lads from all our countries so fine and gallant, I was thrilled with pride.”

“"My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi's Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they had to leave?" "In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji."”

“"My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi's Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they had to leave?" "In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji."”

“A divinely inspired saint I know that I am expressing the views of the British people in offering to his fellow countrymen our deep sympathy in the loss of their greatest citizen. Mahatma Gandhi, as he was known in India, was one of the outstanding figures in the world today, but he seemed to belong to a different period of history. Living a life of extreme asceticism, he was revered as a divinely inspired saint by millions of his fellow countrymen. His influence extended beyond the range of his co-religionists. For a quarter of a century, this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem. He had become the expression of the aspirations of the Indian people for independence, but he was not just a nationalist. His most distinctive doctrine was that of non-violence. He believed in a method of passive resistance to those forces which he considered wrong. The sincerity and devotion with which he pursued his objectives are beyond all doubt. The hand of the murderer has struck him down and a voice which pleaded for peace and brotherhood has been silenced, but I am certain that his spirit will continue to animate his fellow countrymen and will plead for peace and concord.”

“Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”

“The pro-Western policies of Clement Attlee’s Labour government (1945–51) were supported by the vast majority of the Labour Party and trade union movement. Communist and Soviet sympathisers within both were isolated, and the Communist Party was kept at a distance. This helped prevent the development of a strong radical Left, and was linked to the alliance between labour and capital that was to be important in the post-war mixed economy in Britain; although the emphasis on state control and regulation was damaging to entrepreneurial ethos. The Attlee government also decided by January 1947 to develop a British nuclear bomb. This policy was regarded as necessary for Britain’s independent security and independence. Throughout, the British government sought to play more than a secondary role to the USA. As a result, at considerable cost, Britain became the third nuclear power: the bomb was ready by 1952.”

“Labour's programme of free public services financed out of taxation depended crucially upon a prolongation of the wartime spirit of social solidarity. ... What got us through the war, the Prime Minister [Attlee] insisted, was "unselfishness and an appeal to the higher instincts of mankind". These higher instincts could not, unfortunately, survive the pressures of consumerism and individualism created by the affluent society of the 1950s. ... Nevertheless, successive Conservative and Labour governments continued to...leave the central citadel of the Attlee regime untouched. ... The decaying monuments to that regime can now be seen around us in a collapsing NHS, a rotting Underground system and, in the words of one government spokesman, "bog-standard comprehensives". The state of our public services is a consequence not of failing to build on the Attlee legacy, but of a refusal to repudiate it. ... The Attlee Government led Britain firmly and resolutely, and from the best of motives, in the wrong direction. It continues to exert its influence even from beyond the grave, and the twin illusions which it engendered—that we can enjoy "free" public services while remaining isolated from the Continent—are still costing us dear.”

“His socialism was certainly more Toynbee Hall than Marx. Yet he presided over what is now agreed was the most revolutionary of all Labour's governments and he did it without benefit of the usual tricks of the political trade. ... The key to the enigma of his personality lies, I believe, in the fact that he was a decent man who wanted to build a decent society.”

“He presided over a Government which welcomed and organized the abolition of the empire, promoted the transition from capitalism to mixed economy and established the principle of the state's responsibility for individual welfare. ... [H]e always managed to appear a reasonable revolutionary, a man who advocated policies which were relevant as well as radical. He was not a man to fear. He was a conscientious regimental officer who maintained morale and preserved good order and discipline; a politician to trust and a leader to respect. ... Attlee was a great Prime Minister, one of the few twentieth century politicians whose reputation has increased with the years.”

“A. J. P. Taylor, long a fierce critic of Attlee, especially of the cold war policy pursued by Bevin under him, recently said to me "Attlee grows on you. He was the greatest of Labour's leaders and Prime Ministers". If this is the considered view of our greatest living historian, our most incorrigible of academic rebels, which of us can reasonably disagree?”

“[H]is attitude to his colleagues was strangely like Ramsay MacDonald in that there was a remoteness about him so that it was quite impossible to approach near enough to get inside his mind and to know what he was really thinking, at any rate what he would be thinking in a few days.”

“At the end of July the Big Three met for a final time at Potsdam, on the edge of Berlin, but this was a very different summit from Yalta. Roosevelt was dead and Churchill was voted out of office during the conference, being replaced by the new Labour leader, Clement Attlee, whose contribution was limited. Byrnes, now Truman’s secretary of state, fixed up a deal—despite British objections— by which the Soviets got their way on the western border of Poland (following the Oder and Western Neisse). But, in return, the Western powers refused to set a total figure for what the Soviets would receive in reparations from Germany. Instead each ally would take what it wanted in equipment, food and raw materials from its zone of occupation and the Soviets would also receive some transfers from the western zones. This deal on reparations did more than the decisions at Yalta to divide Soviet-controlled eastern Germany from the west.”