Attlee, Clement, 1st Earl Attlee of Walthamstow

Attlee, Clement (Richard), 1st Earl Attlee of Walthamstow

Clement Attlee, photograph by Yousuf Karsh.

(credit: © Karsh—Rapho/Photo Researchers)

(born Jan. 3, 1883, Putney, London, Eng.—died Oct. 8, 1967, Westminster, London) British Labour Party leader (1935–55) and prime minister (1945–51). Committed to social reform, he lived for much of the years (1907–22) in a settlement house in London's impoverished East End. Elected to Parliament in 1922, he served in several Labour governments and in the wartime coalition government of Winston Churchill, whom he succeeded as prime minister in 1945. Attlee presided over the establishment of the welfare state in Britain, the nationalization of major British industries, and the granting of independence to India, an important step in the conversion of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations. He resigned when the Conservatives narrowly won the election in 1951.