When the results of the 5 July election were announced on 26 July (with a wide gap because there were so many military ballots from the Far East) Labour had won a landslide victory, with a working majority of 146. At this point, Labour grandees reportedly considered replacing Attlee, but the plot failed and Attlee went to the Palace to see George VI.

The circumstances of the Attlee government were not good. Britain was still at war against Japan. The country was deeply indebted. Parts of British cities lay in ruins due to wartime bombing. The consumer economy had been devastated. Moreover, in Europe, the Soviet Union was increasingly emerging as a geopolitical threat that would need confronting and containing. Further afield, Britain had promised independence to India, while British rule in mandatory Palestine grew shaky. On top of all this, Attlee was deeply committed to delivering on the Labour Party’s election manifesto and of building the ‘Cradle to Grave’ welfare state that had been promised by the 1942 Beveridge report, and for which Attlee had advocated his entire life.

In August 1945, Japan surrendered after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The long-feared ground invasion, in which British forces were due to play a part, never needed to take place. On 15 August, Attlee spoke to the nation on the radio, saying that ‘the last of our enemies is laid low’.

With victory in the Far East, the government could turn its attention to delivering on its promises. Attlee’s government passed legislation creating the National Health Service, all overseen by Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan. For the first time, a publicly funded healthcare system was available providing treatment for all, free at the point of use. Millions of people received healthcare for the first time, with the NHS dental services treating 8.5 million in its first year.

Legislation was also passed over National Insurance. Those who paid into National Insurance were entitled to flat-rate pensions, sickness benefit, unemployment benefit, and funeral benefits. Other legislation included the Industrial Injuries and National Assistance Acts. Regulations were introduced improving health and safety in the workplace. Large parts of the British economy were also nationalised, including railways, road transport, energy, and industry.

Postwar economic policy had to deal with both the immense cost of servicing Britian’s debts and paying for the new welfare state. Wartime taxes remained high. Rationing continued. An Anglo-American loan was negotiated in 1945, which required the pound to be convertible to the dollar, which, when implemented, led to a currency crisis. From 1947, Chancellor Stafford Cripps instituted economic policies that would become known as ‘austerity’ and which would largely continue for the rest of Attlee’s premiership. Trade unions were persuaded to accept painful wage restraint. In 1949, there was another balance of payments crisis, forcing a devaluation of the pound. Britain did benefit from the Marshall Aid plan, improving the economy from 1948, and by 1950 the balance of payments was showing a surplus.

Attlee’s premiership also marked the beginning of the final phase of the British Empire. He had become firmly convinced that India should become independent after his experience of sitting on the Simon Commission during the 1920s (though the published report stopped short of such a recommendation). Moreover, in 1942, the ‘Cripps Mission’ had promised that India would receive self-government when the war ended. In 1945, upon the end of the war, Attlee set in train Indian independence, which took place in 1947, but only with bloody partition. Burma and Sri Lanka also became independent. Likewise, the British mandate concluded in Mandatory Palestine in 1948, leaving the situation unresolved, and war broke out after the British withdrawal between the newly declared Israel and the surrounding Arab powers.

Attlee largely left foreign policy in the hands of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He helped to establish NATO, with Britain joining at the outset. It was also Attlee and Bevin who decided that there must be a British nuclear programme. In Europe, Britain stood with the US, as the Cold War began to develop. Attlee also sent British forces to fight Malaysian communist insurgents in 1948 and, much more significantly, to support the United Nations’ mission to defend South Korea from communist North Korea’s aggression in 1950.

Labour won the early 1950 election with a million more votes than in 1945, but with a majority of just 5 seats. By then, the fissures in the government were beginning to show, with divisions over Britain’s heavy commitment to the Korean War. In 1950, Attlee’s ally Stafford Cripps resigned due to ill health and the following year Ernest Bevin died. In 1951, Aneurin Bevan resigned over the introduction of NHS prescription charges due to rearmament. In the autumn of 1951, Attlee went back to the country for another election. This time, Labour was defeated, despite gaining over 200,000 more votes than Churchill’s Conservatives.

The Attlee governments reforms created the ‘Post-War Consensus’ of British politics, which was built around Keynesian economics, a mixed economy, and a large welfare state. This system prevailed until the 1970s. The permanent legacies of the Attlee government include the NHS and the provision of a ‘Cradle to Grave’ welfare state. Much of Labour’s 1945 manifesto was achieved during Attlee’s premiership. It is with good reason that many historians have rated Clement Attlee as one of the greatest of Britain’s Prime Ministers.