No government can live on crisis peak forever. It must either fall or find itself in the plain beyond. The British government has reached the plain beyond. A few months ago, this present government, the most strongly backed in British history, was so hedged about by economic pressures that utter failure and a general election seemed inevitable, unless staved off by coalition or complete dictatorship.1

So wrote Honor Balfour for her American audience as she surveyed the political landscape early in 1948. The government could boast of substantial achievements but it had dipped 9 per cent in the opinion polls. Even Attlee’s popularity had fallen by 6 per cent.2 Although Marshall Aid promised to relieve the sharper edges of austerity, two and a half years after the end of the war, Britain appeared no closer to reaching ‘the plain beyond’.

In retrospect, the Attlee era was at its halfway point. The first thirty months had seen breathtaking changes, then nine months of reverses until, at the end of the year, the government could reasonably hope for steady improvement. The next thirty months were to be a mirror image of the preceding period. After the triumphant introduction of the National Health Service in July, a series of hammer blows struck Attlee’s administration until its fall in October 1951.

‘We are far from being out of our troubles’, Attlee broadcast, ‘but we have made a fine start and I am certain that we shall in the same spirit carry on through 1948 and achieve ultimate success.’3 The ‘same spirit’ that Attlee demanded was one of self-sacrifice, a quality personified by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stafford Cripps. Until ill health forced his resignation in October 1950 Cripps seemed to personify asceticism and the very morality of the government. Six years younger than Attlee, he was ambitious. Gaitskell, attending a Cripps dinner to discuss policy with Bevan, Wilson, Jay and others, recorded that he felt ‘that Stafford was surveying his future Cabinet’.4

Cripps’s daily routine was legendary. Rising at 4.00 a.m., he worked for three hours, then took a light breakfast and a cold bath before working punishing hours at the Treasury.5 As the New Year began, there was rising confidence that the ‘austerity and self-flagellation that he exhorted’6 might provide the definitive solution to Britain’s problems. Somehow, despite crippling economic difficulties, the government had pushed ahead with its policy of nationalisation. With Cripps at the controls and a period of grace provided by Marshall Aid, one last bout of self-sacrifice might be enough for Attlee’s government to finish the job.

During the first half of 1948 the launching of the National Health Service – and, therefore, Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health – assumed centre stage. Bevan, a brilliant and mercurial Welshman who could ‘charm the birds off the bough’, was fourteen years younger than Attlee, the son of a coalminer, an autodidact and passionate champion of the poor. He took a proprietary view of the NHS and a dim view of the middle-class medical profession resolved to impede it. Elected Member of Parliament for Ebbw Vale at the age of thirty-one, he soon established himself as a brilliant debater7 and equally soon became an object of bitter controversy within the party. Attlee respected his brilliance, his socialist credentials and popular appeal and, ever hopeful that his talents would overcome his flamboyance, for some time viewed him as his probable successor.8

Bevan presented to the Cabinet radical and comprehensive plans for the NHS in October and December 1945.9 By January 1948 he had made huge progress, but reached impasse with the medical profession over the role of general practitioners within the proposed system. Fearful that doctors would be remunerated as mere employees of the NHS, unable to sell their practices, the British Medical Association fought hard to block Bevan’s proposals. Morrison, aware of the kudos that would accrue to Bevan with the introduction of the Health Service, suggested to Attlee that ‘in view of the difficulties that have arisen in the discussions between the Minister of Health and the BMA’, the matter might be brought before Cabinet.10 Bevan had, in fact, sent the Cabinet a memorandum, laying out his plans for overcoming the BMA’s objections.11 The paper was both analytical and polemic. Bevan assumed total responsibility for the project and, without being resentful or vengeful, demonstrated determination to succeed. In his dealings with the BMA he was able to compromise without compromising principles.

These were precisely the qualities that many members of Attlee’s Cabinet lacked and it is easy to understand how, for Attlee, the NHS project became a critical yardstick of Bevan’s right to lead the party. When Bevan presented his paper to Cabinet, he argued his case strongly12 and, a week later, displayed an ability to conduct a planned and effective offensive over the whole battlefield.13 Only Ernie Bevin among Attlee’s ministers displayed the same vision. That vision was translated into a short and simple motion for the Commons, approved by Cabinet four days later.14

This was the way Attlee liked to do business. In an interview with The Lancet15 Bevan gave forthright answers to questions; to Attlee, Bevan sent concise suggestions of how he might answer questions in the House.16 In a matter of two weeks Bevan had overcome Morrison’s challenge, gained public support, and armed his leader against Tory opposition. No wonder Attlee was impressed.

Before Bevan addressed the House on the lingering concerns of doctors about their status, he and Attlee met in Downing Street to discuss tactics. His draft statement was cleverly calculated, answering each of the BMA’s objections in turn, allowing doctors to choose between a basic salary of £300 and a capitation fee. The statement ended with a ringing declaration: ‘I look forward now to a future of active and friendly co-operation with the profession in putting into operation next July a great social measure, which can be made a turning point in the social history of this country and an example to the world.’17

In May the party held its conference in Scarborough. Attlee’s position as leader was now secure, a fact noted in the press.18 Both in the party and across the country his personal standing was immense. He added to this in June when he defused the London Dock Strike with a speech that was ‘human and full of common sense’.19 Far from projecting himself as a figure of authority, Attlee spoke of his experience in Dockland, as someone who understood the cause of the dockers but was able to measure how much their lot had improved.

A warning note was sounded in conference by Morrison. Since 1946 he had opposed the nationalisation of steel20 and now he called on the party to ‘consolidate’, to put a brake on what appeared to the public a relentless drive for public ownership. Over the next months he developed that theme, driving a wedge between left and right and, more ominously, between himself and Bevan.

On the eve of the introduction of the NHS Attlee broadcast a speech, sending an advance draft to Bevan. Typically, he proposed to give credit to all who had contributed over the years to the creation of the service. Bevan, equally typically, reacted angrily, insisting that credit should go to the Labour Party alone. Why, he demanded, should the Tories receive a mention? Attlee compromised, equitably retaining a reference to Churchill.21 This was more than courtesy; the groundwork, including the Beveridge Report of 1943, had been handled before Labour came to power. It was as characteristic of Attlee to recognise that as it was for Bevan, whom Churchill described as ‘just as great a curse to this country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war’, to object.

On the same day Bevan spoke in Manchester, claiming that Britain now held the ‘moral leadership of the world’ and undertaking to press ahead with the full programme of nationalisation. So far, so controversial, but when he referred to the Tory Party as ‘lower than vermin’, his hyperbole achieved three things: it gave the press a stick with which to beat the party; it issued a direct challenge to Attlee, whose tone had been deliberately conciliatory. It also scandalised the floating voter. Attlee wrote him a surprisingly moderate letter, pointing out the unfortunate timing and urging more restraint ‘in your own interest’.

Meanwhile, a split in the party was developing, the dominant issue being the nationalisation of iron and steel. In the debate on the address Attlee confirmed that there would be no relaxation in the government’s determination to press ahead.22 On the day of the debate, Attlee received a letter from Ivor Thomas, MP for Wrekin, informing him that he was resigning from the Labour Party, principally over iron and steel. He added a broader criticism:

Attlee replied, asking Thomas to speak to Cripps, believing that the Chancellor could explain the need to make gestures to the left. Thomas, who subsequently wrote a coruscating attack on British socialism, was not to be moved. ‘Millions’, he subsequently wrote, ‘who voted Labour in 1945 have already said, “Thus far but no further.”’24 This had been Morrison’s precise concern at Scarborough.

The nationalisation of iron and steel was thus elevated to even greater importance as a symbol of a fundamental rift in the Cabinet. Attlee spent much of the rest of the year papering over the cracks, making positive, exhortatory speeches pointing out that the dire things predicted in 1947 had not come to pass25 and making sure to rein in Bevan. When the latter was invited to address the United Auto Workers Union in Milwaukee, Attlee instructed him to decline. Bevan accepted the decision with a poor grace.26

In mid-December it became known that Clement and Violet were looking for a small country house in Buckinghamshire. Their love of Chequers was common knowledge and they had, in fact, been looking sporadically for some months. Now, with the party split in the open, the press speculated that they were preparing to lose the election and buy a home near Chequers27 and that perhaps Bevan had advised them to buy quickly as prices were at rock bottom.28

In late 1948 a decision was made to court the woman voter, and in his New Year’s broadcast for 1949 Attlee spoke to ‘The Labour Woman’. While he was cautiously optimistic for the future and celebrating achievements in 1948, the underlying note was ‘it is not possible to promise an early end of austerity conditions.’29 This theme returned to Labour’s electoral strategy in February, when equal pay for women was proposed in a policy document prepared at a party conference in Shanklin.

Few events illustrate more clearly than this conference that the party had run out of steam by early 1949. Shrouded in secrecy, the weekend conference brought together the entire Labour leadership to thrash out a draft statement of policy in preparation for the election that had to take place before July 1950. A document prepared by Morrison for the party Executive in 1948 was dusted off and re-presented. The battle cry was basically the same as in 1945 – Labour looks forward and not backward to the ‘dark, dreary period between the wars’. Socialisation had been broadly accepted, so a ‘shopping list’ of further industries was considered: ICI, sugar, water supply, shipbuilding, the meat trade, cement, industrial assurance and minerals. To inject some festive spirit into the document the plan to create communal holiday camps was introduced and these, in an atmosphere of austerity, proved to be remarkably successful. The fundamental message was broadly ‘Give us five more years to tidy up what we’ve done’.30

As a call to action, the document, entitled Labour Believes in Britain, failed to reignite the country’s imagination. Attitudes towards the implementation of Labour’s programme had altered over four years. In a radio interview in July 2013 Shirley Williams recalled the sense of excitement of 1945. There was an extraordinary sense of possibility, she recalled. The Attlee government was ‘full of stars and Attlee was a great cosmologist’. Above all, she said wistfully, she had been ‘born into a world where dreams were possible’.31

That the atmosphere had changed by 1949 was made clear when Attlee spoke in Newark on 1 May. The party was on the defensive, reiterating that ‘The question which will have to be answered at this election is whether the policy [we] inaugurated is to be carried on or whether the clock is to be put back.’ The Labour Party, Attlee declared, was not the slave of abstract formulae but a party with a definite philosophy. It had principles to apply to the practical problems that it encountered. Boasting of the Health Service, he mentioned that ‘this great social advance has aroused interest in America and that President Truman is seeking to inaugurate a comparable system in the United States.’ Sixty-five years later the issue is still being fought over in Congress.

Later that month came another defection over iron and steel when Lord Milverton wrote to Addison regretting that he could not support the government.32 Three weeks later, resisting efforts from Attlee to dissuade him, he resigned from the party. His resignation speech in the Lords, predicting that ‘a great deal more than iron and steel [was] destined for this particular furnace’, built up to an attack on Bevan as ‘the new moral leader of the Labour Party’ and of the Cabinet, whose moral stature, he charged, was not worthy of the principles it proclaimed.33 For the first time, a prominent Labour peer charged the government with moral turpitude.

The government meanwhile was embroiled in an illegal stoppage by dockers, striking in sympathy with seamen on six Canadian ships in British ports. The stoppage soon spread from Avonmouth and Bristol to Liverpool and London. Attlee was furious that the government was on the defensive and forced to take counter-action.34 The situation became acute when perishables aboard the ships began to deteriorate and a decision was taken to send in troops to unload the ships.35 Lord Ammon, chairman of the National Dock Labour Board, demanded decisive action from Attlee and, as the strike in London dragged on, made public statements highly critical of the government. Once more the party seemed in disarray. The strike was settled but the antagonism of George Isaacs, Minister of Labour, and Ammon had been damaging.36

The dispute, which involved the T&GWU, had lasted a month before the footprint of Bevin was visible. As a former T&GWU leader, he wrote to Chuter Ede with suggestions of how the situation might be dealt with. ‘I am not attempting to influence your committee’, he wrote, ‘but in his personal talk with me this morning the Prime Minister asked me to convey to you clearly what was in my mind.’37

This letter gives an interesting insight into Attlee’s modus operandi. Bevin was his closest associate in the Cabinet, but it seems that Attlee had avoided asking him for his opinion until late in the day – indeed, when the government was on the verge of declaring a state of emergency. Bevin is careful not to tread on the Home Secretary’s toes, but the implication is clear: that he had allowed the Home Secretary and the Minister of Labour to handle the matter until it became obvious, late in the day, that it had spiralled out of control. Only at this point, it seems, did he speak to Bevin. While the compartmentalisation of government policy is understandable, it is amazing that Bevin, with more trade union experience than any other Cabinet member, was not consulted earlier.

Through the summer of 1949 two issues dominated Cabinet meetings: devaluation of sterling and the date of the forthcoming election. They were intimately connected. Gaitskell argued strongly for immediate devaluation and for an election in November 1949, before the winter. If that were not desirable or practicable, he felt that it should be delayed until May or June 1950.38 Morgan Phillips, the party Secretary, also urged Attlee to decide early on timing. On the one hand, he wrote, the continuing American recession and the economic problems affecting Britain suggested an early election. On the other hand, poll figures were improving and Labour did better in the spring or summer. Members had been told that time was needed for the Iron and Steel Bill and that, therefore, the election would not be held before 1950.39

Devaluation had been discussed intermittently since 1945 and with increasing urgency in the second quarter of 1949. A rapid decline in dollar reserves and speculation against the pound in anticipation of devaluation threatened Britain’s economic stability as seriously as the crisis of 1947. Opinions of experts at the Treasury differed sharply and, with Cripps initially resisting devaluation, there was no clear lead in Cabinet to provide a solution to the crisis. Attlee was ill equipped to offer leadership on economic matters, while Morrison and Bevin were undecided. For the moment, at least, it was Cripps’ voice that was heeded. In July, however, Cripps left for a five-week stay in a Swiss sanatorium and Gaitskell, Jay and Wilson, all economics specialists, reached the conclusion that devaluation was unavoidable and won Bevan over to their view.40 With Cabinet approval, Wilson took a message to Cripps in Zurich, giving him little option. Cripps did, however, stipulate that any announcement must wait until he and Bevin returned from an IMF meeting in Washington in September. During August the Cabinet decided to proceed; at the end of the month a decision was taken to devalue sterling from $4.03 to $2.80, a significant once-for-all step.41 In great secrecy Cripps returned to London on 18 September, attended a Cabinet meeting, met business and union leaders, and broadcast the decision on the evening of 19 September.

Reaction was immediate and negative, although the press was not as damning as Attlee had feared.42 His Parliamentary Private Secretary, however, warned him that there was ‘a gathering belief in newspapers and elsewhere that the rise in the cost of living over the next few months [would] be very substantial, and much greater than the Chancellor implied’. As a result, he said, there was the feeling that ‘the Chancellor was insufficiently candid about the internal effects of devaluation’.43 Three weeks later Cripps circulated a report prepared by the Central Office of Information on the public reaction – one of ‘bewilderment, often of disappointment and sometimes of despondency’. The government was criticised, not for devaluing but for failure to tell the facts to the public and to be frank about the effects on the cost of living. There was also the concern that businesses would profit while the ‘wage-earner bore the whole brunt of a rising cost of living’.44

Curiously, the public tended to blame Washington for Britain’s economic ills, but the government’s credibility was damaged. An international economic crisis was avoided at the price of a national crisis of confidence. Attlee explained devaluation in a speech at Llandudno, but his message – that devaluation was no magic wand and that there would be price increases – failed to dispel the public’s growing unease.45

Attlee instinctively wanted as much time as possible to pass between devaluation and the election, which had to be held before July 1950. For that reason he initially favoured an election in June 1950. Cripps, however, felt strongly that it would be unethical to produce a Budget before an election, without a renewed popular mandate.46 February then became the more likely month, despite Morrison’s objection that bad weather would reduce the Labour turnout. Weighing the two options, Attlee yielded to Cripps’ ethical concern and February was chosen.

For the next three months both parties prepared for battle. During those months Britain’s economic situation improved dramatically; the balance of payments and dollar reserves improved and the government was able to point to devaluation as a success, as ‘plucking a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat’.47 At the end of October Attlee broadcast an important speech, underlining the continuing need to reduce expenditure by £250 million and reduce production costs if the country was to benefit from the effects of devaluation.48 The country had a welfare state, he said, and that obliged everyone to pull together. He spoke to the same theme in the House, indicating that the £250 million would come from school meals, transport, agriculture, from the Ministry of Food and – what might have been a controversial issue – from the National Health Service, which would charge a shilling for prescriptions.49 Bevan had agreed to this four days before.50

The proposal to introduce charges for NHS services four months before an election is puzzling. Hilary Marquand drew attention to the difficulty of differentiating between those exempted and those not exempted when applying prescription charges.51 Bevan’s initial response was that the Ministry of Health could not become involved in sorting claims. It would make the charge and Ministries wishing to exempt certain classes would have to make their own arrangements.52 The question of administering the charge was referred to Cripps,53 who duly submitted a proposed machinery, pointing out that the £10 million that the Government originally hoped to save by this measure would, in fact, be nearer £6 million. Despite the relatively small saving, the decision to impose charges was endorsed.54

At this point Bevan made a U-turn. In a paper for the Cabinet he registered his ‘great misgiving’ at the decisions taken. It would, he argued, be ‘tactically unfortunate’ to introduce prescription charges with an election imminent. Moreover, the government ‘should be lucky if the actual saving proved to be in the order of £5 million or so’.55

It beggars belief that between October and late January, during which time all parties knew that an election was scheduled for February, an explosive issue saving a relatively small amount of money was made public. Attlee and Bevan agreed to shelve it until after the election, but damage had already been done by the announcement in the House.

The election would be, Attlee predicted, ‘undoubtedly the most keenly contested of all elections in the life of our party’.56 He himself remained, Lord Calverley judged, ‘Labour’s match winner’. Bevan and Wilson might be more flashy but Attlee was the man who won solid votes.57 There had been some signs of relief from austerity when the foundation stone for the LCC Concert Hall, later named ‘Royal Festival Hall’, was laid in October – a shrewd pre-election move – and the release of unemployment figures in January gave a boost to Labour’s full-employment claims. In 1920–21 the number of unemployed had varied between 857,000 and 2,549,400. The average between 1921 and 1938 had been 1,720,000. Under Labour the figures between 1946 and 1949 had ranged from 303,600 to 468,300, an average of 361,000.58

These were figures that the government could be proud of. Nonetheless, the Conservative Party attacked the government as ‘a bureaucracy brooding over a dispirited broken people’. Their manifesto treated the government as a promising but headstrong child that had stumbled into power and proceeded from incompetence to, frankly, being rather deceitful. It is a document larded with suggestions of dishonesty, such as:

Interspersed with suggestions of dishonesty are the firm words of a tolerant parent whose patience is at an end. ‘Britain’s difficulties will not be resolved by some trick of organisation, nor will prosperity come as a gift from government … With a high spirit, through great endeavours, relying on our native skill, every man and woman must bend their energies to a new wave of national impulse.’

Nationalisation, naturally, drew intense fire. ‘We shall bring Nationalisation to a full stop here and now’, the manifesto promised. ‘We shall repeal the Iron and Steel Act before it can come into force. Steel will remain under free enterprise … The nationalisation of omnibuses and tramways will be halted. Wherever possible those already nationalised will be offered to their former owners, whether private or municipal.’60

The Labour manifesto, by contrast, was doctrinaire, somewhat shrill, devoting much space to attacking the Conservatives for being conservative, culminating in two sentences that read more like a polemic Soviet tract than a manifesto for a British election:

Attlee’s government comprised old men, as distant from John Kennedy’s ‘new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war’62 as could be imagined. Attlee had just celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday. Bevin (sixty-eight) and Cripps (sixty-two) were seriously unwell and both would be dead in two years. Morrison and Dalton were sixty-two; Bevan seemed positively youthful at fifty-two. Perversely, Churchill, ‘The Happy Warrior’, remained full of pep in his seventy-sixth year.

Attlee’s own account of the election opens rather in the manner of a Tintin comic book. ‘Accordingly, after opening the local campaign’, he wrote, ‘I set off from Downing Street with my wife at the wheel of our car, accompanied by our old companion of past contests, Philpott of the Daily Herald, and one detective.’63

As ever, he conducted an undemonstrative campaign.64 The modest family Humber carried him and Violet over 1,300 miles, to meetings and rallies across the country, seven or eight a day, finishing close to midnight.65 On election day in Walthamstow, his new constituency since Limehouse had been absorbed into Stepney, he polled 21,095 votes, a majority of 12,107 over the Conservative candidate, while the Liberal and Independent Labour candidates lost their deposits. For the Prime Minister it had been a satisfactory and successful campaign.

For the Labour Party as a whole the result suggested disappointment but not disillusion. Instead of the 11.7 per cent swing in Labour’s favour that had driven the 1945 landslide, there was a 3.6 per cent swing against the government. With a massive turnout of 83.9 per cent the Labour Party won 13,226,176 votes, 46.1 per cent of the votes cast. Although the Conservatives received significantly fewer votes – 11,507,061 or 40 per cent of the popular vote – as a result of redistribution of seats, Labour finished with an overall majority of five, a slender margin that ruled out attempting any dramatic or controversial measures. It was a dispiriting result for all parties. Morrison joked that, ‘The British people are wonderful. They didn’t mean to chuck us out, only to give us a sharp kick in the pants. But I think they’ve overdone it a bit.’66

When the government conducted its post mortem several explanations were offered. Attlee felt that the most important factor had been the redistribution of seats as a result of the Representation of the People Act.67 He had recognised the negative effect the Act would have on the Labour vote but felt that ‘it was the responsible thing to do at the time’.68 Morrison believed that the so-called ‘shopping list’ of industries to be nationalised, ‘nationalisation for the sake of nationalisation’, had been damaging – essentially the position that he himself had taken.69 He also blamed Bevan, without naming him, for divisiveness.70 The ‘vermin’ speech had undoubtedly aroused the undying hatred of the Tory voter, although its wider effect was questionable.

A balanced and probably accurate assessment of the result came from Gaitskell who admitted that he could not observe ‘any great difference in the attitude of the audience from 1945’. The Labour Party, he felt, had demonstrated that they were capable of governing, but this positive factor was, in his view, offset by the ‘collection of grievances’ that inevitably accumulated against them. Rather to his surprise, Gaitskell was impressed by the Prime Minister’s handling of the election, commenting that he ‘displayed his remarkable political instinct and gifts at their very best.’ He had countered Churchill with skill and made an outstanding broadcast. For a man ‘normally thought of as a poor broadcaster and a man with no gift for leadership’, Gaitskell found this ‘rather extraordinary’.71

The first question to be settled was whether Labour could continue to govern without forming a coalition, and on 25 February, the Cabinet resolved to continue alone. This was constitutionally correct, but several newspapers were pessimistic as to the government’s lasting more than a few weeks.72 The King’s Speech Committee recommended that the Address should contain a passage stating that, ‘In view of the parliamentary situation resulting from the general election, my government do not propose to introduce legislation involving matters of acute party controversy unless such measures prove, in their view, to be immediately necessary to the maintenance of full employment and the national well-being.’ There was no mention of the Iron and Steel Bill in the speech.73

The Labour Party had won the election but its wings were severely clipped. There was a sense of siege and recognition that the government would not be able to finish the job. The toll of ministers at the polls was, fortunately, not serious. Creech Jones failed to gain re-election, not a severe setback as Attlee had planned to replace him anyway. Sir Frank Soskice, the Solicitor-General, also lost his seat but remained in office until a safe seat in Sheffield fell vacant. Much more damaging to the government were the illnesses of Cripps and, later, of Bevin. The former he was able to help by appointing Gaitskell to support him as Minister of State for Economic Affairs.

When Attlee asked Gaitskell to make the move to the Treasury from Fuel and Power, he mentioned that it would involve a cut in salary, as a Minister of State received £3,000 rather than the £5,000 that Gaitskell had received as a minister. Gaitskell recorded that he was ‘a bit taken aback’ but accepted the move, despite his concern that it appeared to be a demotion. Attlee assured him that he would make it clear that it was not, and on the following day Gaitskell learned that his salary would continue at £5,000. He suspected that Attlee had deliberately misinformed him, applying a loyalty test, but he was never able to find out whether this was so or if, as Treasury officials told him, it was a genuine mistake.74

Within a week Attlee had formed his new Cabinet and wrote to Tom,

The distasteful business of reconstructing the Cabinet is now through. It always means relegating some friends to the back benches. Our folk are in very good heart. I find that the view is general that my broadcast had a very considerable effect as did the tour. We lost some good men particularly Soskice and Chris Mayhew. 75

The make-up of the Cabinet had changed greatly since 1945. When Labour first came to power the acknowledged bosses were the men who had held high office in the wartime coalition: Attlee, Bevin, Morrison and Cripps. The 1945 election brought different and younger men into the House of Commons, some of whom, notably Gaitskell, Wilson, Jay, Gordon Walker, Crossman and Brown, were already marked for high office. Somewhere between these groups was Bevan, ten years younger than Attlee yet of a different generation from Gaitskell. The youngest member of the Cabinet in 1945, Bevan was now a legitimate and natural target for the younger men as a member of ‘The Old Guard’.

In Gaitskell’s view, Bevan and Bevin had been disappointing and had weakened their positions during the 1950 election. He records Cripps as commenting that ‘Bevin and Bevan between them had lost the election’.76 When the new Cabinet was appointed Gaitskell was horrified that Bevan was again given the Ministry of Health, an appointment that he described as ‘the worst of all unquestionably’.77 A brilliant debater, a passionate orator prone to overstep the etiquette of debate (as in the ‘vermin’ speech), Bevan managed to impress and alienate his colleagues in equal measure. His commitment and visceral adherence to socialism were enormous strengths. Yet he was capable of immense errors of judgement and, ultimately, was not a team player, a cardinal shortcoming in the Prime Minister’s eyes.

Bevan returned to the Ministry of Health. According to Gaitskell, this was at the urging of Bevin; according to Dalton it was Morrison who suggested it. Both sources quote the same reason: that Bevan should be made to clear up the mess he had allegedly created.78 If this is the true explanation, it illustrates Attlee at his most myopic. Bevan’s authority was circumscribed by the establishment of a committee chaired by the Prime Minister to control expenditure on the Health Service, which had the effect of treating Bevan as a wayward child. In adopting the disciplinary mien of a headmaster he widened the gap between Bevan and himself, and between Bevan and the Morrison-Gaitskell faction, creating the climate that was to prove toxic a year later.

That climate was foreshadowed in April when Cripps wrote to Attlee fixing the annual NHS budget at £350 million. In the first year costs would be as high as £392 million and, therefore, the government needed to decide on possible charges to impose in case the NHS costs exceeded £350 million.79 Three weeks later he wrote again, saying that he would step down by July at the latest. He needed a year for ‘a complete rest and renewal of mental energy and vigour’. He apologised for the inconvenience caused.80

Attention shifted from domestic politics in June with the outbreak of the Korean War.81 Cripps remained at the Treasury until July, when he wrote to Attlee that, instead of resigning at the beginning of August, as originally planned, he would take three months’ leave and then see whether he was sufficiently recovered to return.82 In the event, he stayed until October.

To replace him Attlee chose Gaitskell. He was the most qualified, had been groomed by Dalton, and most recently had effectively handled Cripps’ job during his absence. Appointing Gaitskell, however, meant not appointing Bevan, and therein lay the significance of the appointment.

Overtaking Bevan in one bound to become the fourth man in the hierarchy, Gaitskell gained prominence and visibility that Bevan had previously enjoyed as the youthful heir apparent. Not unnaturally, that sudden elevation caused resentment and envy in various quarters, as Gaitskell himself recorded. ‘Of course it is impossible not to create jealousies, but I am not too worried. I suspect that Nye is not so much jealous as humiliated at my being put over him.’ Wilson, on the other hand, he described as ‘inordinately jealous, though in view of his age there is really no reason for it.’ Jealousy, he commented, is not always rational.83

Michael Foot, in something of a whitewash, attributes Bevan’s objection to nobler motives. Political leaders in a democracy, Bevan believed, particularly Labour leaders, ‘should represent something and somebody; they must speak for the major sections of the movement’.84 The new Chancellor did not do that. Instead, he swelled the number of middle-class socialists – of whom the Prime Minister was one – who were displacing the working class as leaders of the party.

In the autumn of 1950, with Dalton and Cripps gone, Bevin seriously ill, and the Labour Party no longer, in his view, representative of its core membership, Bevan blamed Attlee for allowing the party to deviate from its philosophical base and become a bloodless entity concerned only with re-election. Bevan had proclaimed on the eve of the 1950 election, ‘I am not interested in the election of another Labour government. I am interested in the election of a government that will make Britain a socialist country.’85 Now, on the heels of the party conference in Margate, Bevan expressed to Attlee his ‘consternation and astonishment at the appointment of Gaitskell’.86 Attlee responded immediately with a dismissive note, ending with the comment, ‘I do not think that your views are shared by many people’.87

In January a further source of contention between Bevan and Gaitskell appeared. American Republicans demanded that China be branded an aggressor by the United Nations, pressuring other countries to support the initiative. The Cabinet initially agreed that Britain should not support it, but Gaitskell warned Attlee that he would resign unless Britain supported the American position. The Cabinet decision was reversed and Britain supported a modified American proposal.

Bevan, moved two weeks before to the Ministry of Labour, was forced to recognise that he had less bargaining power than Gaitskell. This bitter truth now fashioned his tactics. A surprising interlude followed when he brilliantly argued the government’s position in the Defence debate on 15 February.88

Three weeks later Attlee, having waited for Bevin to step down from the Foreign Office, and becoming increasingly anxious as Bevin’s illness and absences were providing ammunition for the Tories in the House, told his closest political ally that it was time to move on. ‘I knew he wouldn’t go until I pushed him’, Attlee said later. ‘He knew it too.’89 Attlee wanted to keep him in the Cabinet and appointed him Lord Privy Seal. This action, taken on Bevin’s seventieth birthday, ‘broke his spirit’, damaging the friendship between the longstanding allies.90

Bevin’s resignation on 9 March was a milestone. One by one, Dalton, Cripps and Bevin had left the stage. Now the talent pool to provide Bevin’s replacement was curiously shallow. Neither Younger nor Hector McNeil, ministers of state under Bevin, were ready for the job, nor was there a Foreign Office equivalent of Gaitskell, who had earned his spurs as Bevin’s understudy. Attlee had delayed facing the future for too long.

When he appointed Morrison to succeed Bevin he laid bare the government’s dilemma. A group of ageing, possibly superannuated, men were still dividing the same offices among the same, numerically diminished, favoured few as six years before.91 Morrison’s accession set the wheels in motion for Bevan’s resignation. Whether or not Bevan hoped for the job, that resignation was as certain as the outcome of a Greek tragedy. Principles would be bandied about. Power was, ultimately, the sole issue.

Between late March and late April the most divisive drama of Attlee’s government was played out. Ostensibly a conflict between Gaitskell and Bevan, it arose from the appointments to replace Cripps and Bevin. Possibly Nye Bevan believed that he should have become either Chancellor or Foreign Minister; certainly he was incensed that neither was offered to a progressive left-winger. The rupture was a row over the direction – and the future leadership – of the Labour Party. Bevan, encouraged by his wife Jennie Lee and by Wilson, believed that he must act swiftly to establish his leadership of the left of the party. All he needed was an issue.

On 20 March Gaitskell and Attlee met and agreed that the cost of the NHS should be capped at £393 million annually, that there would be a reduction of £10 million in hospital costs, and that £20 million would be raised by charges for spectacles, dentures and prescriptions. Attlee wrote the same day, emphasising that presentation of the issue was important. He foresaw that this might become the issue over which Bevan would fight.

Soon after Attlee went into St Mary’s Hospital for treatment of a duodenal ulcer, Bevan, at a meeting in Bermondsey, replied to a heckler with the statement of principle, ‘I will never be a member of a government which makes charges on the National Health Service for the patient.’ This out-of-context declaration became philosophical bedrock; even though, a few weeks before, it was Bevan who had piloted the government’s defence programme, now a clear threat to the NHS. Six days later, Gaitskell announced in Cabinet his proposal to reduce NHS expenditure for the following year by £23 million, including £10 million from charges for dentures and spectacles. Bevan objected furiously, charging that in a budget of over £4,000 million it should be possible to find £13 million for defence without abandoning the principle of a free NHS. If the Cabinet agreed to the charges he would resign.92

Bevan and Wilson headed immediately to see Attlee in St Mary’s Hospital, confident that a compromise could be agreed. According to Wilson, Attlee promised to speak to Gaitskell and urge him to ‘be more reasonable’.93 With the possibility of an election ever-present, Attlee urged them not to split the party.

When Gaitskell arrived at the hospital later that evening, he indicated to Attlee that no compromise was possible as he was committed to announcing the Budget on the following day. If necessary, he would resign to avoid an open rupture. Attlee, pipe clenched between his teeth, muttered ‘Have to go. Have to go.’ Gaitskell assured him that he would have his resignation in the morning. Attlee shook his head furiously and repeated more distinctly, ‘No. He [Bevan] will have to go.’94

On the following afternoon Gaitskell presented his Budget.95 Bevan held his cards close, receiving notes from Callaghan,96 Addison, Greenwood, Stokes, Freeman and others, urging him not to precipitate a crisis. By the time that the Parliamentary Party next met, Truman had fired MacArthur, partially defusing criticism from the left that the government was the lackey of imperialist America. Bevan stated that he would not resign, tempering his statement with a clear hint to Gaitskell that he too might moderate his position. In Cabinet Morrison pressed the point and demanded his support for the government.97

Two days later Bevin died, a huge blow for Attlee. Writing to Violet Bonham Carter, he captured Bevin’s massive prominence, describing him as ‘the shadow of a great rock in a weary land’.98 By the following week Attlee recovered enough to write to Bevan. Ever the master of compromise, he believed that the split could be repaired and wrote on 18 April,

My dear Nye,

I gather all went off well at the party meeting and I am grateful to you for the line you took.

The death of Ernie has rather overshadowed these differences, and I hope that everyone will forget them.

I think that it is particularly essential that we should present a united front to the enemy. The next few weeks will be very tricky with the USA going haywire over MacArthur.99 Hope to be back at work by the end of next week.

All the best, Yours ever, Clem100

By 19 April it was clear that the gulf between Bevan and Gaitskell would not be bridged when Gaitskell rejected the compromise solution of telling the public that the charges were temporary.101 A deputation of Morrison, Ede, Gaitskell and Chief Whip Whiteley visited Attlee in hospital, after which Attlee sent a brusque ultimatum to Bevan. The decision had been taken that Cabinet ministers must toe the line, as Attlee made clear:

Over the weekend of 20–22 April, Bevan corralled Wilson and Freeman to his cause. On Saturday afternoon he wrote to Attlee a damning indictment of the Budget, ‘wrongly conceived’, ‘based upon a scale of military expenditure … which is physically unattainable’, ‘wrong because it is the beginning of the destruction of those social services in which Labour has taken a special pride and which were giving Britain the moral leadership of the world.’ He continued, ‘it would be dishonourable of me to allow my name to be associated in the carrying out of policies which are repugnant to my conscience and contrary to my expressed opinion.’

Noting that Bevan had ‘extended the area of disagreement with … colleagues a long way beyond the specific matter to which as I understood you had taken objection’, Attlee accepted Bevan’s resignation and, over the next two days, those of Wilson and Freeman. In the six months since Cripps’s resignation the voice of the left had been muted.103

Attlee later speculated that, had he not been in hospital, he might have prevented Bevan’s resignation. Had Morrison and Gaitskell not adopted entrenched positions, Attlee argued, a compromise could have been reached.104 This is unlikely – or, if it could have been achieved, it would have been at the cost of Gaitskell’s resignation. However the matter was dressed up, it was an issue whose resolution would affect the evolution of the Labour Party. Both Bevan and Gaitskell were acutely aware of that; it was too important to allow a compromise, however attractively supposed concessions were packaged.

The second issue concerns Attlee himself. Ernest Bevin’s accusation that he ‘never had a constructive idea’ is not as insulting as it seems prima facie. His strength lay in channelling the ideas of others, fashioning them into acceptable and workable initiatives. Without the practical trade union negotiating experience of Bevin and the rigid but creative influence of Cripps, Attlee, now flanked by Morrison and Gaitskell, looked less like the pioneer of 1945 than the middle-class leader of a middle-of-the-road team. Eden saw the government’s weakness as a result of sheer exhaustion. Most had served during the war years and that had taken a toll on their health, he noted. More importantly, perhaps, their message too was tired. After extensive nationalisation, the public ‘was sure that it had had enough and suspected that it had had a surfeit’.105

The slowing down of the leadership was further emphasised by less than adept handling of foreign affairs. Morrison had shied away from taking over from Bevin, as the Foreign Office would be unlikely to improve his position as Attlee’s putative successor. He was correct: in his short tenure two crises greatly diminished not only Morrison’s but also Attlee’s standing, undoubtedly contributing to public doubts as to Labour’s ability to govern. Each crisis was rooted in Britain’s declining power and required a modern, nuanced approach, but in each case Morrison’s diplomatic imagination was found wanting.

In Iran his response to the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was gunboat diplomacy in which Morrison was ‘foolish to rattle a sabre one knows one cannot use’.106 Acheson saw Morrison’s response as ‘Russian roulette’ and warned Franks that a serious cleavage was opening up between London and Washington.107 Attlee stepped in while Morrison was in Washington, overruled his Foreign Secretary over the use of troops, adamant that the affair be referred to the United Nations.

By that time it was known that an election would be held, as Attlee had announced on the radio (a technological first) the date of 25 October. His reasons were noble but not shrewdly calculated: the King was to take a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand and it would be irresponsible not to have in place a government with more authority before he departed. When it emerged that, for reasons of health, the King would be unable to undertake the tour, Attlee resisted the temptation to postpone the election until 1952 when the economy should have improved.108

The King’s advisers, presumably believing that the Tories would win the election, were concerned that His Majesty should cover himself against any allegation that he had intervened on their behalf by influencing Attlee’s timing. Accordingly ‘Tommy’ Lascelles, the King’s Private Secretary, wrote to Attlee to ensure that ‘there may be no misinterpretation of recent events by historians in the future’. He wanted it to be recorded ‘in our secret archives’ that, when he urged an election before departing on his tour the King had no idea that he might have to cancel the trip. Even then, Lascelles wrote, on the eve of his serious operation, he had not abandoned his plans.109 It is ironic that Attlee, a socialist Prime Minister with a deep belief in the value of the monarchy, had acted out of respect for George VI and called an election at a highly unpropitious time.

Less than three weeks before the election, the Egyptian Prime Minister revoked the 1936 treaty with Britain and the agreement over Sudan. This démarche, the first thrust in a campaign to drive Britain from Egypt, greatly alarmed London and Washington but met with less than firm resistance from Morrison. Labour’s foreign policy was no longer an election asset. The word ‘foreign’ does not appear in the 1951 manifesto; ‘abroad’ appears but twice in the final paragraph.

The election of 1951 was vitally important, as the Conservative manifesto made clear in its opening sentences:

We are confronted with a critical election which may well be the turning point in the fortunes and even the life of Britain. We cannot go on with this evenly balanced party strife and hold our own in the world, or even earn our living. The prime need is for a stable government with several years before it, during which time national interests must be faithfully held far above party feuds or tactics.

Yet neither party produced a manifesto that stirred the blood. The Labour Party, reasonably, ran on its record of full employment; the Tories claimed that the government had destroyed the national unity of 1945 in an ‘attempt to impose a doctrinaire socialism upon an island which has grown great and famous by free enterprise’.110 Repetitive formulaic claims were bandied to and fro. The Labour Party had slipped to an approval rating of under 40 per cent;111 with few Liberal candidates standing, the outcome, as Attlee wrote to Tom, was ‘anyone’s guess, depending largely on which way the Liberal cat jumps’.112

The Liberal cat jumped decisively to the right. Although the Labour Party increased its vote, finishing with nearly 49 per cent of the popular vote to the Tories’ 48 per cent, there was an overall Conservative majority of seventeen. Attlee was out of office for the first time in eleven years, but he emerged from the election with undiminished prestige in the public eye. As he approached his sixty-ninth birthday he was awarded the Order of Merit and he set about marshalling his forces for a period of opposition.

It turned out to be a longer period than he could have imagined.

ENDNOTES

1 TIME, 9 April 1948.

2 Figures cited by Balfour in her article for TIME.

3 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 66, CRA, New Year’s broadcast, 3 January 1948.

4 Williams (ed.) The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 23 April 1948.

5 Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–1951, p. 363.

6 Ibid.

7 ‘Rab’ Butler described him as ‘the greatest parliamentary orator since Charles James Fox’.

8 See Francis Beckett, ‘Clem Attlee’s Secret Lady Friend’, New Statesman, 28 February 2000 and Patricia Beck’s comments that ‘He terribly wanted Bevan to succeed him as leader. He was very disappointed about that.’ Gaitskell recorded that Attlee had lamented to him that, apart from Bevan, there was ‘no one else’ to succeed him. That resolved Gaitskell to keep Bevan down. (The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell 1945–1956, 10 August 1951). See also The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman, Entry for 8 March 1955, pp. 396–397 and p. 406.

9 TNA: CAB 129/5, CP (45) 205, 5 October 1945 and CAB/129/5, CP (45) 339.

10 TNA: PREM 8/844, Morrison to CRA, 15 January 1948.

11 TNA: PREM 8/844, CP (48) 23.

12 TNA: PREM 8/844, CM (48) 6th Conclusions, 22 January 1948.

13 TNA: PREM 8/844, CM (48) 8th Conclusions, 29 January 1948.

14 TNA: PREM 8/844, CM (48) 9th Conclusions, 2 February 1948.

15 The Lancet, 27 January 1948.

16 In preparation for the debate on 9 February. In the event, Attlee did not speak.

17 TNA: PREM 8/884, 6 April 1948. Hansard, 7 April 1948, cols. 165–166.

18 For example, News of the World and Daily Express, both of 23 May 1948. Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 70.

19 A description by David Graham, a party worker who heard him speak. The thrust of the speech was collective responsibility. Dockworkers who refused to unload cargoes were ignoring collective obligations and depriving people of their rations. Broadcast, 28 June 1948. Bodleian: MS. Attlee, dep. 71.

20 TNA: CAB 128/5, Cabinet Conclusions, 4 April 1946.

21 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 71 and dep. 72, 4 July 1948.

22 Hansard, HC Deb, 26 October 1948, cols. 31–32.

23 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 74.

24 Thomas, The Socialist Tragedy, p. 41.

25 For example, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and on 15 December at an American press luncheon. Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 76.

26 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 76.

27 Daily Telegraph, 15 December 1948.

28 Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1948.

29 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 77.

30 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 79.

31 Interview with Baroness Williams of Crosby, BBC Radio Four, 11 July 2013. She was fifteen years old when Labour won the 1945 election.

32 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 83.

33 Hansard, HC Deb, 23 June 1949, cols. 156–158.

34 TNA: PREM 8/1081, CM (49) 38th Conclusion, 26 May 1949.

35 TNA: PREM 8/1081, GEN 291/2nd Meeting, 10 June 1949.

36 Immediately the strike was settled, Attlee dismissed Ammon, who had committed the cardinal sin of not being a team player. Attlee reminded him that, in addition to chairing the National Dock Labour Board, he was also a member of the government and that, therefore, to his great regret, he must ask for his resignation from the office of Captain of the Gentlemen at Arms (government Chief Whip in the Lords). ‘I need not tell you how painful it is for me to have to take this action in the case of an old friend and loyal colleague. Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 86, 21 July 1949.

37 TNA: PREM 8/1081, Bevin to Ede, 11 July 1949.

38 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 87, Gaitskell to CRA, 19 August 1949.

39 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 86, Phillips to CRA, 19 July 1949.

40 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, Entry for 3 August 1949.

41 TNA: CAB 128/16, Cabinet Conclusions, 29 August 1949.

42 TNA: PREM 8/973, CRA to Cripps, 21 September 1949.

43 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 88, Pumfrey to CRA, 22 September 1949.

44 TNA: PREM 8/973, E. P. C. (49) 114, 15 October 1949.

45 Bodleian, MS Attlee, dep. 88, 22 September 1949.

46 TNA: PREM 8/1027, Cripps to CRA, 16 July 1949.

47 Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–1951, p. 386. There is an analysis of devaluation in the context of economic recovery at pp. 386–8.

48 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 90, 24 October 1949.

49 Hansard, HC Deb, 24 October 1949, cols. 1016–23.

50 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 91, 20 October 1949.

51 TNA: PREM 8/1239, LP (49) 76, 25 October 1949.

52 TNA: PREM 8/1239, LP (49) 77, 1 November 1949.

53 TNA: PREM 8/1239, LP (49) 19th Meeting, 4 November 1949.

54 TNA: PREM 8/1239, LP (50) 1st Meeting, 20 January 1950.

55 TNA: PREM 8/1239, CP (50) 14, 26 January 1950.

56 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 92, 15 November 1949.

57 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 89, 11 October 1949.

58 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 94, January 1950.

59 This is the Road, Conservative and Unionist Party’s 1950 manifesto, paras 6–9.

60 This is the Road, Conservative and Unionist Party’s 1950 manifesto, paras 35–37.

61 Let Us Win Through Together, A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation, party manifesto 1950, p. 9.

62 John F. Kennedy, ‘Inaugural Address’, 20 January 1961.

63 As It Happened, p. 274.

64 ‘An Appeal to the Heart: Mr Attlee’s Tour’, Manchester Guardian, 15 February 1950.

65 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 94. The itinerary proposed on 13 January 1950 illustrates a typical day.

66 News of the World, 7 March 1965, cited by Donoughue and Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, pp. 453–454.

67 As It Happened, p. 272.

68 Harris, Attlee, p. 446.

69 Donoughue and Jones, Herbert Morrison, p. 456.

70 Daily Telegraph, 28 February 1950.

71 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 21 March 1950, p. 166.

72 ‘How Can Government be Carried On?’, Manchester Guardian, 25 February 1950.

73 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 98, 28 February 1950.

74 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 21 March 1950, p. 173.

75 Letter to Tom Attlee, 2 March 1950. Mayhew was elected to the safe seat of Woolwich East after Bevin died on 14 April 1951.

76 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 21 March 1950, p. 167.

77 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 21 March 1950, p. 174.

78 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 21 March 1950, p. 174 and note.

79 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 100, Cripps to CRA, 2 April 1950.

80 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 100, Cripps to CRA, 26 April 1950.

81 See Chapter 15 for an account of the war and its effects on Anglo-American relations and the defence budget.

82 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 103, Cripps to CRA, 11 July 1950.

83 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 3 November 1950, p. 216.

84 Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, vol. 2, 1945–1960, pp. 296–297.

85 Hunter, op. cit. p. 22.

86 Foot, op. cit. p. 297.

87 Attlee to Bevan, 21 October 1950, cited by Foot, op. cit. pp. 297–298.

88 Hansard, HC Deb, 15 February 1951, cols 729–740.

89 Conversation with Kenneth Harris, Attlee, pp. 471–472.

90 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, p. 833.

91 When Bevin resigned Dalton told Attlee that he (Dalton) should not be considered for the post as that time had been and gone. Of Morrison’s at the FO. Dalton wrote, ‘Morrison’s appointment was most unfortunate. He had great talent in some other directions, but he had no aptitude for managing foreign affairs. Nor did I ever think that he really understood them … Someone who worked with both Bevin and Morrison said: “Ernie can’t pronounce the names either. But he does know where the places are.”’ (Dalton, High Tide and After, pp. 360–361)

92 TNA: PREM 8/1480, CM (51) 25th Conclusions, 9 April 1951.

93 Foot, op. cit. p. 321.

94 The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–1956, Entry for 30 April 1951, p. 246 reports Attlee as saying ‘they [Bevan and Wilson] will have to go’ while Foot op. cit. p. 321 reports Attlee’s words as ‘He’ll have to go.’

95 Hansard, HC Deb, 10 April 1951, cols. 826–868.

96 Jim Callaghan was particularly assiduous in urging circumspection. He wrote a second note on 10 April urging solidarity, together with Robens, Michael Stewart, Arthur Blenkinsop and Fred Lee.

97 TNA: PREM 8/1480, CM (51) 27th Conclusions, 12 April 1951.

98 Bodleian: MS. Bonham Carter, dep. 156, folio 89, 24 April 1951.

99 Truman had dismissed MacArthur on 10 April and provoked a firestorm among Republicans in Congress.

100 Foot, op. cit. p. 327; Harris, Attlee, p. 476.

101 TNA: PREM 8/1480, CM (51) 29th Conclusions, 19 April 1951.

102 Harris, Attlee, p. 477. 20 April 1951.

103 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 119, 22–23 April 1951.

104 Based on a conversation between Attlee and Kenneth Harris, Attlee, p. 479.

105 Eden, Full Circle, p. 8.

106 The Observer, 7 October 1951.

107 Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 506–509.

108 It did, in fact, improve and the public-relations gains were garnered by the Conservatives.

109 Bodleian: MS Attlee, dep. 125, Lascelles to CRA, 21 September 1951.

110 Conservative Party general election manifesto, para. 5.

111 Attlee, by contrast, had retained an approval of 57 per cent in polls.

112 Letter to Tom Attlee, 21 October 1951.