THE NEW LEADER

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 23, 27 July 1945, Page 7

THE NEW LEADER

For the Churchill Government 209

For the Opposition . .'.^ 416

Gains and losses were: Conserva- • tives gains 7, losses 183; National, s gains nil, losses two; Liberal National, gains 1, losses 16. f ' Total for the Government, gains 8, losses 201; Labour, gains 241, losses 4; Liberals, gains 3, losses 11; _ 1.L.P., gains nil, losses nil; Common Wealth, gains nil, losses 1; Communist, gams 1 losses nil; Independent, gains 2, losses iii .

Total for tb* Opposition, gains 220, losses 27. At 7 p.m. the aggregate votes cast in constituencies where returns - had been made were as follows, as compiled by national accounting machines: Conservatives, 8,838,525; National, 147,997; Liberal National, 768,341.

Total: for Government,- 9,754,863. Labour, 11,797,653; Liberal, 2,262726; IL.P., 46,679; Communist, 91,332; Common Wealth 11,064; Independent, 506,114. '

Total for the Opposition, 14,815,138,

Mr. Churchill's Independent opponent, Mr. A. Hancock, a farmer,, had a surprisingly large poll at Woodford. He had 10,488 votes, against the Prime Minister's. 27.688.

Mr. Eden had a majority of more than 1700 at Warwick and Mr. Hudson, Minister of Agriculture, was also successful.

Mr. Attlee and Mr. Greenwood both had comfortable majorities, while Sir Stafford Cripps was returned in East Bristol with a majority of nearly 18,000.

Mr. Assheton, chairman of the Conservative Party, and Mr. Harold Mitchell, vice-chairman, were both defeated.

Major Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, was beaten, as was Captain Julian Amery, son of the Secretary for India.—B.O.W. <

MR. C. R. ATTLEE'S CAREER

By birth and education the new Prime Minister belongs to the same class as Mr. Churchill himself. Born in 1883, of well-to-do parents, he was educated at Haileybury, one of the great public schools, second only to the little group headed by Eton and Harrow, which claims the primacy. From Haileybury he went to University College, Oxford, and was there a friend of the present Bishop of Wellington, the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland, 'At this time, at the age of 23, Clement Attlee, according to his biographer, John Dugdale, was "st)ll a staunch Tory, under the spell of Joseph Chamberlain and Rudyard Kipling." He might well have become a "die-hard" and a devotee of "the old school tie," but a view of life in the East End of London at Haileybury House, associated with the University settlement of Toynbee Hall, turned him to the left and he became a convert to Socialism. He helped the Webbs, Sidney and Beatrice, in their campaign for Poor Law reform, became secretary of Toynbee Hall, lecturer ac Ruskin College, and later tutor and lecturer in social science at the London School of Economics. As a member of the Fabian Society he came into contact with Shaw, Wells, the late Ramsay MacDonald, and other prominent exponents of Socialism. During the last war he fought with his infantry battalion on Gallippli, and subsequently transferred to' the newly-iormed Tank Corps. At the age of 37, when the war was over, he left the Army with the rank of major, and for long afterwards, until recently, was always known*as Major Attlee.

With such an experience in peace and war and with such enthusiasm for social reform an entry into politics was clearly foreshadowed as the next step. He returned to his old "field of operations," the East End of London, and chose for his battleground the slum of slums, Limehouse, a by-word in literature and on the platform, as when before the last war the late Lloyd George attacked the House of Lords. Limehouse took Attlee 'to its heart, elected him in 1922, and at every subsequent election. It has always been loyal to the Labour leader. Clement Attlee is therefore one. of the Labour intelligentsia in the sense that he is a recruit lo Socialism from the ruling classes, not the masses, of England. But he has been trained in a hard, austere school. He is an M.A. of Oxford and a barrister, but he has seen conditions of war and peace at their worst. He is severely practical. He is no soap-box orator or Hyde Park demagogue. A collection of his speeches in the House of Commons from 1933 to 1940 on Britain's foreign policy in this most critical period of British history, under the title "War Comes to Britain," was' published in 1940 and attracted much favourable attention. The speeches have not the burning eloquence of Mr. Churchill, who himself was speaking through the same period on similar lines as a critic of British policy abroad, but they have high intellectual and literary qualities as contributions to the literature of Parliamentary democracy. They are Parliamentary and not platform speeches and therefore reveal no florid oratory, bui rather cogent, convincing argument expressed in the simplest and clearest language. There is little or no rhetoric and no purple patches. But there is the most caustic criticism, a bitter wit that made his. opponents wince* Here is a. reference on the Hoare-Layal pact or deal over- Abyssinia to Sir Samuel Hoave, one of Lord Baldwin's Old Harrovians: "It is said that Waterloo was won on "the playing fields of Eton. It might also be said that Abyssinia was lost on the playing fields of Harrow." And of Mr. Eden in the same speech on aanctions after Mr. Eden had become Foreign Secretary: "The right hon. gentleman has attained a very high position. He stood very high in the opinion of the men and women of this country, but he has forfeited that position. He had to make a difficult choice between two loyalties. He seems to have said, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his old school tie?"' :

Mr. Attlee married in 1922 Miss Violet Helen Miller, of Hampstead, and has one son and three daughters. In Parliament he was Leader of the Opposition 1935-40, Loi'd Privy Seal in the Churchill ITational Cabinet, 1940----42. Secretary of State for the Dominions 1942-43, and Deputy Prime Minister to the end of the National Government in May last.