Clement Attlee (1883 – 1967)
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951.
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We are told in the White Paper that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves. We do not think you can do it by national defence. We think you can only do it by moving forward to a new world – a world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system. I shall be told that that is quite impossible.
There were few who thought him a starter,
Many who thought themselves smarter.
But he ended PM,
CH and OM,
an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.
A Tory minister can sleep in ten different women's beds in a week. A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour's wife over the garden fence.
We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty. We are deliberately putting a world order before our loyalty to our own country.
When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.
The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and the people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. ... This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments.
You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making . . . I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.
... the Peace Treaties must be scrapped ... I stand for no more war and no more secret diplomacy.
He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show.
Not Churchill. Sixty-five, old for a Churchill.
Mr. Chamberlain's Budget was the natural expression of the character of the present Government. There was hardly any increase allowed for the services which went to build up the life of the people, education and health. Everything was devoted to piling up the instruments of death. The Chancellor expressed great regret that he should have to spend so much on armaments, but said that it was absolutely necessary and was due only to the actions of other nations. One would think to listen to him that the Government had no responsibility for the state of world affairs.
Attlee: I'm one of those people who are incapable of religious feeling.
Harris: Do you mean you have no feeling about Christianity, or that you have no feeling about God, Christ, and life after death?
Attlee: Believe in the ethics of Christianity. Can't believe in the mumbo jumbo.
Harris: Would you say you are in agnostic?
Attlee: I don't know.
Harris: Is there an after-life, do you think?
Attlee: Possibly.
The Common Market. The so-called Common Market of six nations. Know them all well. Very recently this country spent a great deal of blood and treasure rescuing four of 'em from attacks by the other two.
Can't publish. Don't rhyme, don't scan.
An empty taxi drew up outside 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out of it.
I am pleased to see from the laughter on the Ministerial benches that there is no implication on their part to take Sir Oswald Mosley too seriously. It can easily be seen to-day that this idea of a dictator is gradually falling down.
A modest man with much to be modest about.
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