John bew citizen clem
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There is no shortage of contemporary analysis about the depressing state of UK politics.
But the best political writing I have read recently has been a biography of a politician who died over 50 years ago. Reading Citizen Clem by John Bew truly inspired me.
Incredible career
Clement Attlee had an incredible career. After growing up in a comfortable middle-class home and studying at Oxford, he threw himself into social work in London’s East End, at The Haileybury Club and later at Toynbee Hall. From onwards, he saw the limitations of liberal philanthropy and was converted to socialism.
He had a distinguished war record in WW1, rising to the rank of Major and being injured in action three times. After the war, he was elected to be Labour Mayor of Stepney and later became MP for Limehouse.
Salvaged
He became a key figure who helped salvage the Labour Party after Ramsey MacDonald’s infamous betrayal in He became Labour leader in and played a important role in supporting the
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Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee
“He was one of the gods prominent Victorians in public life to pass away” [p]
Attlee, born in to an affluent family, was educated at a minor public (meaning private, fee paying) school, then Cambridge University, before qualifying to practice lag and with a financial legacy to sustain him. His family shared strong commitments to public service and raised no objections when Attlee soon switched from a legal career to social work in Limehouse, an impoverished district in East London, where direct anställda contact exploded misconceptions about the naturlig eller utan tillsats of poverty and instilled a deep admiration for the hard work and social cohesion that made working class life (marginally) possible in the face of intolerable burdens and unfair odds. Attlee soon extended his interest to politics and the konto of the formation of the Labour Party and the disparate grou
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Paul Addison
Clement Attlee lacked most of the qualities that make for success in politics. He was almost cripplingly shy and self-effacing. His appearance was unimpressive, his speeches uninspiring, his lack of charisma cruelly highlighted during the war by the gaudy exhibitionism of Churchill. His idea of a public relations coup was to invite a press photographer to picture him at home having tea with his family. Journalists were baffled by the brevity of his answers to questions and it was said of him that he never used one syllable where none would do. Time and again, he was written off as a nonentity, but in the end he turned the tables on his critics. He led the Labour Party for twenty years and presided, as prime minister from to , over the most radical and effective of all Labour governments.
How on earth did he manage it? Like others before him, John Bew acknowledges that it was partly a matter of luck. In youth he enjoyed an independent income that enabled him to devote