THE PRIME MINISTER
By FRANCIS WILLIAMS
IF I were asked to compare Clement Attlee's qualifications for the Premiership with those of Prime Ministers of the past, I would choose one with whom he has superficially little in common—Balfour. I would not press the comparison too far, but I remember that Sir Austen Chamberlain, who served under five Prime Ministers, once said that Balfour was the most satisfactory of them all because he was, what a Prime Minister in times of peace needs to be, a good chairman. Attlee is essentially a good chairman, patient, impartial, adept at
summing up a discussion and pulling together the strands of a diffuse debate. It is that quality more than any other which has confirmed him in his leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and thus brought him to the Premiership.
He came into Parliamentary life somewhat late, at the age of forty, when he was elected foi the Limehouse Division, which he still represents, in November, 1922. Before then, apart from the interruption of the first world war, when he served with the South Lancashire Regiment and the Tank Corps in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and France, and reached the rank of major, his life had been one devoted almost entirely to social service. The son of a Putney solicitor, he went to Haileybury, and from there to University College, Oxford, where he took a second class Honours in Modern History. After- wards he read for the Bar, but did not practice.
At Oxford his social conscience, which has never left him, was aroused by vacational work in a University settlement. When he had graduated, therefore, he chose, rather than the normal pro-. fessional career that would have been expected of him, to live in the East End, and to work at Toynbee Hall. He was then a Con- servative, but life among the dockers and personal experience of their conditions, combined with a great deal of reading of economics and membership of the Fabian Society, where, like so many others, he came under the influence of the Webbs, converted him to Socialism. He became Secretary of Toynbee Hall in 1910, and three years later a tutor and lecturer in social science at the London School of Economics. Then came the war, and then Stepney made him Mayor (in 1919), and again the following year. In 1922 he mar- ried. For two years he was Ramsay MacDonald's Parliamentary Private Secretary, and when the first MacDonald Administration was formed became Under Secretary of State for War. In the second Labour Government he was first Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and then Postmaster-General, and in the interim had served on the Indian Statutory Commission which went out to India under Lord Simon. He was a hard-working, shrewd, but not very prominent, member of it.
These autobiographical details are not, it must be confessed, very exciting. But they are significant if one wishes to reach an under- standing of the character and qualities of the first Prime Minister of a majority Labour Government. At the age of forty-eight Mr. Attlee had behind him, it will be seen, the kind of competent, modest, useful public life that distinguishes many men of the professional classes who turn to public activities and to a Parliamentary career out of a sense of social duty and a desire to serve their country. He was liked by his colleagues of the Labour Party, but he had no very close friends among them. He was honoured for his integrity and respected for his qualities as a workmanlike administrator. He was known to be remarkably devoid of personal ambition. But he was thought of essentially as a sound, safe man, worthy of his place in any Labour administration, but unlikely ever to make any challenge for the leadership.
Yet, having been chosen leader in succession to Lansbury in i935, he was confirmed in office again and again. Why is that? He has none of the obvious qualities of leadership possessed by some others prominent in the Party. At various times the qualifications of Herbert Morrison, Ernest Bevin and Arthur Greenwood have been canvassed by sizable and influential groups. Attlee does not possess the reputation for organising ability, the hold over a mass audience or the backing of a powerful and successful organisation like the London Labour Party which Morrison enjoys ; in a Party dominated very largely in the past
(although not nearly so much now) by the trades unions, he has none of the great trades union reputation and support that Bevin has ; he is not so well known in the provinces, nor has he the same gift for personal friendships within the Party as Arthur Greenwood. Yet he retained the leadership without effort, and perhaps without even wanting it passionately, in face of every challenge.
It is the habit of the Parliamentary Labour Party to hold at the beginning of each week while Parliament is sitting a meeting of M.P.s at which the policy to be followed in regard to forth- coming business is discussed, debated and voted upon. During the years in which the Party was in opposition many of those debates were of a viol .;at and even bitter tone. Members suffered from a feeling of frustration and futility. •There were persoret1 and policy antagonisms between many of them. It is to no small extent due to Attlee that most of those antagonisms and differences have been dissipated, and that the Party is now united to an extent probably greater than at any time in his history. Watching him at these Party meetings, I became conscious to a much greater extent than I had ever done in long private talks both of the quality of his judgement and of his capacity for invariably getting at the essentials of a situation. I can think of no occasion durin2 the years I have known him when one could ever feel that the effect on his personal position had been a factor of any importance in a decision he had reached. It was the recognition of these qualities that won him the loyalty of the Parliamentary Parties at times when he was much criticised by those who were not so regularly in touch with him for lack of what they regarded as the attributes of successful popular leadership.
That he does lack many of those attributes cannot be denied. He has little of the usual politician's gift of making quick friendships. He seems to suffer from inhibitions which make it difficult tc create warm personal links with those he meets or with an audience. His reserve often makes him appear sharp and brusque ; he is very apt to seem on the defensive in conversation, so that ideas do not flow easily from him, and one sometimes feels in his company that even one's own ideas have suffered from a still- birth as soon as expressed. He is a very difficult person to know. When he was at the San Francisco Conference a number of American correspondents were anxious to meet him informally and get to know him. I arranged a small dinner party for this purpose. Mr. Eden had been my guest at a similar dinner party, Mr. Peter Fraser, the Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand, at another. Both were a great success. Eden was frank, informal, persuasive, Fraser highly controversial, sometimes pugnacious, but immensely warm and friendly. Attlee, although I know he was only too ready to be friendly, and had a great admiration for many of the men there whose work he knew, never quite succeeded in making everyone feel at ease. He answered questions fully and to the point, but one felt always conscious of an almoit defensive reserve. At the end of the dinner one of the Americans came to me and said, "Well. I feel I know a lot more about British policy and the British Labour Party, but I don't feel I know your Attlee at all."
That I think is often true in other gatherings. It is as though he were congenitally incapable of revealing his full personality, and unwilling to create—as so many politicians do—a public personality that will pass muster. This sometimes produces the impression— which I am sure is not justified—that he is not interested in other people ; suggests a tinge of intellectual superiority which is quik contrary to his true character. He is, in fact, remarkably open to new ideas, and has a great readiness to make use of younger men of talent and special knowledge.
In his public speaking he suffers a little from the same inability to achieve a quick, warm response to others that tends to make him rather an aloof figure in small gatherings. The content of hi, speeches is usually excellent, but they have an intellectual rather than a human appeal. They are lucid, competent and persuasive, but only rarely does he rouse an audience to enthusiasm. In genera; his speeches read better than they sound ; in reading them one i- often surprised by his gift for phrase making and his talent for an epigram. But when the speech is delivered it is often the case that
phrases which from another man would raise the roof or dissolve an audience in laughter pass scarcely noticed.
To the office of Prime Minister he brings great if unassuming gifts of integrity, moral and intellectual honesty and calm judgement. He is not easily upset or forced into ill-considered decisions, and he has a great, if not very ostentatious, capacity for welding men and women of very different %qualifications and experience into one team. It is upon team work that he places most stress, and this may provide a key to some of his less obvious Cabinet appointments. To his office also he brings a very wide knowledge of affairs, an understanding of the Empire which was deepened during his period as Dominions Secretary, but existed before, and an understanding of international problems first displayed when he was among the earliest to appreciate the significance of Japan's Far Eastern ambi- tions, and again later during the early days of the Spanish war, and demonstrated many times during the San Francisco Conference. As Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the War Cabinet during Mr. Churchill's absences abroad, he has also, what, for one who becomes Prime Minister for the first time, is perhaps an unrivalled grasp of the detail of Cabinet administration.
He will not be, and I do not think he would wish to be, a Prime Minister in the Churchill tradition. But that he brings to the post of Chief Minister of the State great gifts of unostentatious leadership, administrative capacity, and unbending and selfless integrity no one who knows him will doubt. High office will test him greatly, but he has grown in stature with every new responsi- bility he has undertaken ; it is not to be doubted that he will grow further in stature to meet still heavier responsibilities.
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