![]() In youth he enjoyed an independent income that enabled him to devote himself to social work and politics. How on earth did he manage it? Like others before him, John Bew acknowledges that it was partly a matter of luck. He led the Labour Party for twenty years and presided, as prime minister from 1945 to 1951, over the most radical and effective of all Labour governments. Time and again, he was written off as a nonentity, but in the end he turned the tables on his critics. 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. His idea of a public relations coup was to invite a press photographer to picture him at home having tea with his family. His appearance was unimpressive, his speeches uninspiring, his lack of charisma cruelly highlighted during the war by the gaudy exhibitionism of Churchill. He was almost cripplingly shy and self-effacing. ![]() Clement Attlee lacked most of the qualities that make for success in politics. ![]()
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