Clement Richard Attlee KG OM CH (1883 - 1967)

Born 3 Jan 1883 in Westcott, 18 Portinscale Rd., Putney, Surrey, England

Ancestors

Died 8 Oct 1967 at age 84 in Westminster Hospital, London, England

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Biography

Few thought he was even a starter;

There were many who thought themselves smarter,

But he ended a PM

CH and OM

An earl and a Knight of the Garter.

Clement Attlee KG OM CH is Notable.

Clement Richard Attlee was the UK's second Labour Prime Minister, and Leader of the Labour Party for 20 years.

He was born in 1883 in Putney, Surrey, England, which is now part of London. He was the seventh of eight children of Henry Attlee (1841–1908), a solicitor, and Ellen Bravery Watson (1847–1920).

An academic career at the London School of Economics was interrupted by World War 1, in which he served in the South Lancashire Regiment in the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey and in the Mesopotamian Campaign, being badly wounded at the Battle of Hanna. After recuperating, he was sent to France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front for the final months of the war, ending with the rank of Major.

Violet Millar and Clement Attlee were married at Christ Church, Hampstead, on January 10, 1922. They had four children.

Entering Parliament in 1922, Attlee became Ramsay MacDonald's bag-carrier, and a minister in the 1924 minority Labour Government. He was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1931 and Leader in 1935.

Though famously described by Churchill as "a modest man, with much to be modest about", he acted as Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government during World War 2.

Becoming Prime Minister by a surprise landslide victory in July 1945, he defied a parlous economy to lead a reforming Government until October 1951.

He died on October 8, 1967, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Sources

See also:

• R. C. Whiting, ‘Attlee, Clement Richard, first Earl Attlee (1883–1967)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 accessed 17 Oct 2017
• Find A Grave #1275
• Wikipedia: Clement Attlee
• Wikidata: Item Q129006, en:Wikipedia