Clement Attlee by Jago Michael;

Author:Jago, Michael; [Michael Jago]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1692111
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

It was a difficult balance. Attlee’s insistence on ensuring adequate food in other countries led directly to shortages at home. In May he sent Morrison to Washington to request the Americans, whose food was not rationed, to ship grain to avoid famine in Germany and India. Washington agreed, provided Britain would forego 200,000 tons of her wheat allocation in September. A less than attractive deal threatened to cause a furore when Morrison announced the result of his negotiations in the House.54 He succeeded in provoking Tory anger, American concern – as they claimed that this was a proposal not a commitment – and the resignation of Sir Ben Smith, the Minister for Food, furious that Morrison, and not he, had been made responsible for solving the shortage. As an added demerit, the shortfall of 200,000 tons of wheat guaranteed that bread rationing would be introduced.

Appointing John Strachey to succeed Smith and accepting that bread rationing, while unpopular, was another necessary hardship for the time being, Attlee refused to be pressured, even when the Opposition seized on this as another example of lack of planning. Morrison, by contrast, perhaps perceiving another opportunity for him to replace Attlee, certainly aware of the adverse effect on popular opinion that bread rationing would cause, on 19 July demanded a Cabinet meeting the following day. Attlee, in Durham with four other Cabinet members, brushed this aside, refusing to allow the bread crisis, despite its dramatic symbolism, to divert him from his course. Bread rationing was introduced on 22 July and remained in force for two years.

The alarm generated by the crisis, however, convinced him that several of his ministers were finding it hard to stay the course. Morrison, he felt, had broken ranks in fuelling the mood of alarm; there were signs that Bevin and Cripps were suffering from overwork. The Cabinet suddenly had the air of a group of tired old men and he was impatient to promote younger men. Much encouraged by Gaitskell’s handling of the coal nationalisation and, after a year, having had time to assess the new talent at his disposal, he decided that the time was right for a Cabinet reshuffle. At the same time he would implement two changes that had long been in his mind: to reduce the size of the Cabinet and to subordinate the three service ministers to a Minister of Defence.

Two speeches from 1946 illustrate Attlee’s resolve in the first seventeen months of the Labour government. Speaking in Newcastle in May he told his listeners:

I remember some of our opponents saying to me before the election, ‘Don’t you hope you don’t win? Any government that has to deal with the post-war situation will have a very hard time,’ and I invariably replied, ‘I know that, but I believe these difficulties can be met and surmounted by the application of the principles in which we of the Labour Party believe.’ 55

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