Clement Attlee was born in Putney in 1883. Educated at Haileybury
and University College, Oxford he became
a barrister in 1906. Attlee developed an interest in social problems
while doing voluntary work at a boy's club in Stepney. Converted to
socialism by reading the works of John Ruskin
and William Morris, in 1913 Attlee became
a tutor at the London School of Economics.
In 1914 Attlee joined the British Army
and served in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia
, where he was badly wounded at El Hanna. After recovering back in
England, Attlee was sent to France in 1918 and served on the Western
Front for the last few months of the war. By the end of the First
World War Attlee reached the rank of major.
After the war Attlee returned to teaching at the London
School of Economics. Attlee, a member of the Labour
Party, became involved in local politics and in 1919 was elected
Mayor of Stepney.
In the 1922 General Election he was elected
Labour MP for Limehouse in London.
Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the
party in the House of Commons, recruited
Attlee as his parliamentary secretary (1922-24). In the 1924
Labour Government Attlee was appointed as Under Secretary of State
for War.
After the Labour Party victory in the 1929
General Election, MacDonald appointed Attlee as postmaster-general.
However, like most ministers, Attlee refused to serve in the National
Government formed by MacDonald in 1931. Attlee was one of the few
Labour MPs to win his seat in the 1931 General
Election and became deputy leader of the party under George
Lansbury.
When Lansbury retired in 1935 Attlee became the new leader of the
Labour Party. During the Spanish
Civil War he supported the British volunteers fighting against
General Francisco Franco and visited the
International Brigades on the front-line
in December 1937.
In 1940 Attlee joined the coalition government headed by Winston
Churchill. He was virtually deputy Prime Minister although this
post did not formally become his until 1942. It was afterwards claimed
that during the Second World War Attlee worked
as a restraining influence on some of Churchill's more wilder schemes.
In the 1945 General Election Attlee lead
the Labour Party to its largest victory
at the polls. During his six years in office he carried through a
vigorous programme of reform. The Bank of England,
the coal mines, civil aviation, cable and wireless services, gas,
electricity, railways, road transport and steel were nationalized.
The National Health Service was introduced and independence was granted
to India (1947) and Burma.
After being narrowly defeated in the 1951 General
Election, Attlee led the Labour Party
until resigning in 1955. He was granted a peerage and was active in
the House of Lords until his death in 1967.
(1)
In his autobiography, As It Happened, Clement Attlee
described his time at Oxford University.
Oxford was at that time predominately Conservative though there was
a strong Liberal group, notably at Ballioli, which counted among its
undergraduates such men as R. H. Tawney and William Temple, the future
Archbishop, whose influence on socialist thought was in later years
to be so great. Socialism was hardly spoken of, although Sidney Ball
at St. John's and A.J. Carlyle, at University College, kept the light
burning.
I was at this time a Conservative, but I did not take any active part
in politics. I never belonged to any political club. Some of my friends
were interested in the University Settlements - Oxford House and Toynbee
Hall.
(2)
In October 1905, Clement Attlee went to visit a boys' club at Stepney
that was being supported by his old school, Haileybury
College.
I became interested in the work and began making the journey from
Putney to the club one evening a week. Soon my visits became more
frequent. In 1907 the club manager resigned and Cecil Nussey asked
me if I would take over the job. I agreed, went to live at Haileybury
House and thus began a fourteen years' residence in East London.
I soon began to learn many things which had hitherto been unrevealed.
I found there was a different social code. Thrift, so dear to the
middle classes, was not esteemed so highly as generosity. The Christian
virtue of charity was practised, not merely preached. I recall a boy
in the club living in two rooms with his widowed mother. He earned
seven shillings and sixpence a week. A neighbouring family, where
there was no income coming in, were thrown on to the street by the
landlord. The boy and his mother took them all into their little home.
I remember taking the club's football team by local train to play
an away match. Young Ben had come straight from work with his week's
money - a half-sovereign - and somehow he had lost the gold coin.
There was no hesitation amongst the boys. Jack said, "Look, a
tanner each all round will make half of it." They readily agreed,
yet probably that tanner was all that most of them would have retained
for themselves from their wages.
I found abundant instances of kindness and much quiet heroism in these
mean streets. These people were not poor through their lack of fine
qualities. The slums were not filled with the dregs of society. Not
only did I have countless lessons in practical economics but there
was kindled in me a warmth and affection for these people that has
remained with me all my life.
From this it was only a step to examining the whole basis of our social
and economic system, I soon began to realise the curse of casual labour.
I got to know what slum landlordism and sweating meant. I understood
why the Poor Law was so hated. I learned also why there were rebels.
(3)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
My elder brother, Tom, was an architect and a great reader of Ruskin
and Morris. I too admired these great men and began to understand
their social gospel. My brother was helping at the Maurice Hostel
in the nearby Hoxton district of London. Our reading became more extensive.
After looking into many social reform ideas - such as co-partnership
- we both came to the conclusion that the economic and ethical basis
of society was wrong. We became socialists.
I recall how in October, 1907, we went to Clements Inn to try and
join the Fabian Society. Edward Pease, the Secretary, regarded us
as if we were two beetles who had crept under the door, and when we
said we wanted to join the Society he asked coldly, "Why?"
We said, humbly, that we were socialists and persuaded him we were
genuine.
I remember very well the first Fabian Society meeting we attended
at Essex Hall. The platform seemed to be full of bearded men: Aylmer
Maude, William Sanders, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw. I said to my
brother, "Have we got to grow a beard to join this show. H. G.
Wells was on the platform, speaking with a little piping voice; he
was very unimpressive.
(4)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
In 1912, largely through the influence of Sidney Webb, I was appointed
a lecturer and tutor in the London School of Economics in the Department
of Social Science and Public Administration. I was not appointed on
the score of academic qualifications but because I was considered
to have a practical knowledge of social conditions. The salary was
small but sufficient for my wants, while the hours of my work left
me plenty of time for social work and also for socialist propaganda,
for it was a fundamental rule of the School that no one could be restricted
in venting his political opinions.
(5)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
The outbreak of the war brought great heart-searchings in the ranks
of the Labour and Socialist Movement, especially in the membership
of the Independent Labour Party, which had always been strongly pacifist.
The difference of view in the Party was well illustrated in our family.
My brother Tom was a convinced conscientious objector and went to
prison. I thought it my duty to fight.
I was told when I first tried to join the Army that I was too old
at thirty-one. A relative of one of my pupils, who was commanding
a battalion of Kitchener's Army, had applied for me, and one Sunday
morning, on returning from doing a guard at Lincoln's Inn, I found
a letter telling me to report as a Lieutenant to the 6th South Lancashire
Regiment at Tidworth. There I found plenty to do, as I soon found
myself in temporary command of a company of seven officers and 250
men.
(6)
Ramsay MacDonald
appointed Clement Attlee as Postmaster General in 1929. He wrote about
MacDonald's government in his autobiography, As It Happened
(1954)
Many members of the Government, of whom I was one, were seriously
disturbed at the lack of constructive policy displayed by the leaders
of the Government. We were also conscious of a growing estrangement
between MacDonald and the rest of the Party. He was increasingly mixing
only with people who did not share the Labour outlook. This opposition,
however, did not crystallise, because the one man who could have taken
MacDonald's place, Arthur Henderson, was too loyal to lend himself
to any action against his leader. Instead of deciding on a policy
and standing or falling by it, MacDonald and Snowden persuaded the
Cabinet to agree to the appointment of an Economy Committee, under
the chairmanship of Sir George May of the Prudential Insurance Company,
with a majority of opponents of Labour on it. The result might have
been anticipated. The proposals were directed to cutting the social
services and particularly unemployment benefit. Their remedy for an
economic crisis, one of the chief features of which was excess of
commodities over effective demand, was to cut down the purchasing
power of the masses. The majority of the Government refused to accept
the cuts and it was on this issue that the Government broke up. Instead
of resigning, MacDonald accepted a commission from the King to form
a so-called 'National' Government.
(7)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
The Party had to face the growing international tension caused by
the emergence of aggression - first in the Far East and then in Abyssinia.
There was also the growing strength of Hitler in Germany. The Party,
under the leadership of Henderson, had adopted the policy of strong
support for the League of Nations, but there was in our ranks a strong
pacifist section led by George Lansbury. When the Government embarked
on rearmament, this division in our ranks became more apparent. The
Party was prepared to rearm provided that it was in support of a genuine
League policy.
The crisis
came over the question of the application of sanctions against Mussolini
for invading Abyssinia. After a very full discussion at the Annual
Party Conference at Brighton in October, 1935, the pacifists were
overwhelmingly defeated. A few days later Lansbury resigned the leadership.
This was a grief to all of us, for we had a great admiration and affection
for him, but he was right in thinking that his position had become
impossible. I was elected Leader in his place.
(8)
Fred Copeman, was a member of the International
Brigades fighting in the Spanish
Civil War. He wrote about meeting Clement Attlee in his
autobiography, Reason in Revolt (1948)
We withdrew to Mondijar, a small village to the east of
Madrid. Comfortable quarters in a beautiful countryside soon improved
morale. New recruits brought our figure back to the six hundred mark.
Field training and manoeuv-
ring took up all our time. During this period Major Attlee, the leader
of the British Labour Party, with Ellen Wilkinson
and Noel Baker, came out to Spain. Ellen was a great favourite with
the lads. Her fiery enthusiasm and kind interest in the smallest things
made her the central figure of this group.
At about
nine o'clock at night, as darkness was falling, the square at Mondijal
was lined by the members of the British 16th and 50th, and the American
Washington and Lincoln battalions—some twelve to fifteen hundred
men. Those
in the rear were holding lighted torches. Clem Attlee and Ellen spoke
from a cart, in simple, kind language, of the
things that the British Labour Party were trying to do. The response
was terriffic. Carried away by the enthusiasm
of the speeches, I asked Clem whether he would allow the battalion
to be called after him, and he immediately agreed, declaring himself
more than honoured. He was to meet considerable opposition on his
return to England from the Tory Government over this incident.
(9)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
When Anthony Eden and Lord Cranborne resigned from the Chamberlain
Government early in 1938, as a protest against the Prime Minister's
decision to open conversations with Mussolini whilst Italy was carrying
on intervention in Spain and anti-British propaganda, I told the House
that the policy of the Government was "an abject surrender to
the dictators" and that "the Government, instead of trying
to deal with the causes of war, had always been trying in a feeble
way to play off one dictator against another. That is a policy which
sooner or later leads to war."
(10)
Clement Attlee, speech in May 1940.
Successful violence bred more violence. Ruthless cruelty became rampant.
We are now faced with the danger of the world relapsing into barbarism.
Nazism is the outstanding menace to civilisation, not only because
of the character and actions of the men who are in absolute control
of a great nation, but because of their ideas which are openly in
conflict with all the conceptions upon which civilised life is based.
They do not accept as valuable the virtues which are in this country
accepted as desirable by all, even by those who honour them with very
little in their actions.
Our Western
civilisation has been built up in the main on the acceptance of the
moral standards of Christianity. Even those who find themselves unable
to accept Christian dogma accept in the main its ethical standards.
In our everyday intercourse we assume that most men are honest, truthful
and kindly, and in general we are not disappointed. We do not expect
that we shall be violently attacked or maltreated by our neighbours.
This mutual confidence is the foundation of a civilised peaceful life.
At no
time in history have these standards been fully maintained in the
relations between States. There have always been those who have been
prepared to put apparent national interests before moral principles,
but they have done it shamefacedly. Bad faith, lying and injustice
have often marked international relations, but it has been left to
the German
Government to make them its regular practice and to glory in them.
Similarly,
there was formerly a definite world conscience which revolted against
cruelty and atrocities. The wholesale
murder of innocent men, women and children was regarded as the mark
of a barbarous people. Where such things happened under professedly
civilised government there was an outcry in all countries, including
the one whose government was responsible for the outrage. One can
recall instances in our own history, such as the Amritsar massacre.
Today in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland the German Government
is indulging in wholesale massacre and torture of unoffending people.
It not only admits it, it glories in it. At home and abroad, brutal
cruelty is the mark of the Nazi regime.
It is
essential to remember that civilisation takes long to build and is
easily destroyed. Brutality is infectious. But there is something
more than these outward expressions of the return to barbarism in
the Nazi regime. There is a denial of the value of the individual.
Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies
it. The individual is sacrificed to the idol of the German Leader,
German State or the German race. The ordinary citizen is allowed to
hear and think only as the rulers decree.
(11)
Henry
(Chips) Channon,
diary entry (11th
November, 1940)
I lunched, as did Boss Butler, at the Belgian Embassy,
and found myself next
to Attlee, whose French is really appalling; but I was pleasantly
surprised by the courtesy of the little man. He is a gentleman, or
nearly so; no revolutionary he. We discussed poor Mr Chamberlain,
whom he once so hated. Today he was kind about him, recalled his sympathetic
speech on the Members' Pensions Bill, and lauded his great qualities
But he shied off when I hinted that Neville had saved Christendom'
though he did not contradict me. I think that I made a conquest of
him; I hope so. He is narrow, nervous, unimposing and well-meaning
and seems more Liberal than actually Socialist: but he could never
control the energies of his wilder followers.
(12)
Winston Churchill, election broadcast
(May, 1945)
I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to British
ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to which all are to be
obedient in every act of their lives. This State, once in power, will
prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what they are to work
at, where they may go and what they may say, what views they are to
hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State ration, and
what education their children are to receive. A socialist state could
not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be established
without a political police. They (the Labour government) would have
to fall back on some form of Gestapo.
(13)
Clement Attlee, election broadcast (May, 1945)
The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the
individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials.
I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible
with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers were free
to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember when employers
were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at
a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were free to
neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases.
For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by
the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact freedom
for the rich and slavery for the poor. Make no mistake, it has only
been through the power of the State, given to it by Parliament, that
the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless
profit-makers and property owners.
Forty years
ago the Labour Party might, with some justice, have been called a
class Party, representing almost exclusively the wage earners. It
is still based on organised labour, but has steadily become more and
more inclusive. In the ranks of the Parliamentary Party and among
our candidates you will find numbers of men and women drawn from every
class and occupation in the community. Wage and salary earners form
the majority, but there are many from other walks of life, from the
professions and from the business world, giving a wide range of experience.
More than 120 of our candidates come from the Fighting Services, so
that youth is well represented.
The Conservative
Party remains as always a class Party. In twenty-three years in the
House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the
ranks of the wage earners. It represents today, as in the past, the
forces of property and privilege. The Labour Party is, in fact, the
one Party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition
all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national
life.
Our appeal
to you, therefore, is not narrow or sectional. We are proud of the
fact that our country in the hours of its greatest danger stood firm
and united, setting an example to the world of how a great democratic
people rose to the height of the occasion and saved democracy and
liberty. We are proud of the self-sacrifice and devotion displayed
by men and women in every walk of life in this great adventure. We
call you to another great adventure which will demand the same high
qualities as those shown in the war: the adventure of civilisation.
We have
seen a great and powerful nation return to barbarism. We have seen
European civilisation almost destroyed
and an attempt made to set aside the moral principles upon which it
has been built. It is for us to help to re-knit the fabric of civilised
life woven through the centuries, and with the other nations to seek
to create a world in which free peoples living their own distinctive
lives in a society of nations co-operate together, free from the fear
of war.
We have
to plan the broad lines of our national life so that all may have
the duty and the opportunity of rendering service to the nation, everyone
in his or her sphere, and that all may help to create and share in
an increasing material prosperity free from the fear of want. We have
to preserve and enhance the beauty of our country to make it a place
where men and women may live finely and happily, free to worship God
in their own way, free to speak their minds, free citizens of a great
country.
(14)
Konrad Adenauer,
Memoirs 1945-53 (12th July, 1952)
In a debate in the House
of Commons on the Schuman Plan on 26 June 1950 Prime Minister Attlee
said that Great Britain could not adopt the principle of subordinating
vital parts of the British economy to a European authority. He regarded
such a measure as absolutely undemocratic and incompatible with the
principles of British democracy. In the same debate Eden, speaking
for the Conservative Party which was then in opposition, declared
that the success of the Schuman Plan was in the British interest.
Yet the Conservative Party did not advocate British participation
in the Schuman Plan.
(15)
Emanuel
Shinwell was surprised when he heard
Clement Attlee had appointed Ellen Wilkinson
as Minister of Education.
I mentioned to Attlee that a number of plotters had been given jobs.
He laughed, perfectly well aware of what had been going on. It is
not bad tactics to make one's enemies one's servants.
(16)
George
Brown, In My Way (1970)
Dalton used to come back
from No. 10 seething with rage about what he called 'the incompetent
little Prime Minister who just sat there doing nothing to influence
a decision "while I had to sit listening to rambling monologues
from your friend Ernie Bevin".
I didn't share Dalton's
view on Bevin, but I did begin to wonder about Mr Attlee. Everybody
seemed to be talking about Attlee's indifference, and I spent a lot
of time in the tea room of the House of Commons (I've learned better
since!) listening to, and taking part in, the discussions that went
on. At that time Patrick Gordon Walker was Herbert Morrison's P.P.S.,
and he and I had long discussions about what we regarded as the Attlee
problem. Finally we decided that we should have to do something about
it, so we determined to organize a 'putsch' to get rid of Mr Attlee
and replace him by Bevin. Bevin was the only possible strong man to
take his place as Prime Minister. One lot in the Parliamentary Labour
Party wouldn't have Cripps, others wouldn't have Morrison, and nobody
would have Dalton. So Bevin was the only man, and we set out to organize
a revolt by collecting signatures in the tea room to a resolution
demanding the resignation of Mr Attlee and his replacement by Bevin.
I was deputed to be the man to go to Bevin to tell him that we'd got
all this arranged, so would he please put on his best suit and be
ready to go to the Palace at any moment.
(17)
Harold
Wilson,
Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986)
The war in Korea, which had broken out in June 1949, suddenly acquired
a menacing aspect when General MacArthur determined to resolve the
conflict by bombing mainland China itself, together with a blockade
of the entire coast and the employment of President Chiang Kai-shek's
forces in Taiwan in an almost unlimited offensive. At the beginning
of 1951, the Labour Government initiated an extremely serious two-day
debate in the House on the grave international situation, amid anxiety
that the Korean war was about to escalate into a world confrontation.
On the afternoon of the second day, the Press Association ticker-tape
in the Palace of Westminster carried the story that President Truman
had said in Washington that General MacArthur possessed delegated
authority to use nuclear weapons without reference to the White House.
There was uproar in the
Commons when the news spread. Attlee was due to wind up the debate
at 9.30 pm, but earlier in the evening he called a Cabinet in his
room at the House. He referred perfectly calmly to the report and
said that he had concluded that he must fly to Washington, not then
a routine operation, and see the President. In other circumstances
he would have asked the Foreign Secretary to go, but the state of
Ernie Bevin's health ruled that out and a sea voyage would take too
long. He would try to contact the President on the transatlantic telephone,
a very uncertain means of communication in those days, especially
if the President was away from the White House. He would hope to
receive confirmation of his planned visit before he wound up the debate.
The Cabinet concurred.
Attlee succeeded in defusing
the crisis in Washington, but at a heavy price as far as Britain's
strained economy was concerned. In the communique issued at the end
of the talks with President Truman, the key clause committed both
countries "to increase their military capabilities as rapidly
as possible". Under American pressure Britain's already crippling
arms burden was to go up from £3,400 million to £4,700
million. This squandering of our resources is what brought me out
fighting at Bevan's side. The armourers were to thrive, but not the
deliverers of arms. I had been a witness of the process. Two wars
should have taught the economic innumerates, so many of whom then
populated the
Foreign Office and Defence departments, what the results would undoubtedly
be.
(18)
Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
Differences of opinion arose in the
Government. The immediate cause was a proposal in the Budget to make
charges for certain of the Health Services in order to prevent abuse.
There were other differences of a more personal nature. I endeavoured
to effect agreement, but the disagreement spread to some other matters,
notably to the effect on the economy of the country of the level of
armaments on which we had embarked. I had, as a matter of fact, pointed
out in public speeches that the achievement of our programme was conditioned
by various factors such as the availability of raw materials and machine
tools, and the level of prices. There was, therefore, in my view,
no real difference of principle. However, the upshot was that Aneurin
Bevan, Harold Wilson and John Freeman insisted on resigning from the
Government.
(19)
Aneurin Bevan, letter to Clement Attlee
explaining why he was resigning (April, 1951)
It is wrong (to impose national health
charges) because it is the beginning of the destruction of those social
services in which Labour has taken a special pride and which were
giving to Britain the moral leadership of the world.
(20)
Harold
Wilson,
Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986)
He was in full control of himself, his Cabinet and the House. His
answers in Parliament were concise and clear, with a tight little
sense of humour. In the first debate of the 1945 Parliament, referring
to Churchill as his 'Right Honourable Friend', he paid an unstinted
tribute to his predecessor's war leadership. But he could be sharp
with his former colleague. On another occasion, when Attlee was dealing
with a particular problem, Churchill intervened to say that the issue
had been brought up several times in the wartime Cabinet. 'I must
remind the Rt Hon. Gentleman', Attlee replied, 'that a monologue is
not a decision.'
His speeches in Parliament
were usually very short. Members of the Cabinet summoned to brief
him, or calling on some other issue, would find him upstairs in the
flat, picking out his text with two fingers on a non-standard keyboard,
probably dating from his days as a social worker in Stepney. He would
bring Cabinet discussion to a brisk close, before producing a clear
summing-up in very few words. Cabinet business was carried through
with brevity and discussions kept firmly to the point.
His decisions, personal
judgements, terse comments and even his silences created the atmosphere
in which all of us, from the most senior minister to the Parliamentary
Secretary of Works, had to perform their duties. He was regular in
his attendance in the House, regarding his presence there not so much
as a gesture to Parliament, but as a means of monitoring the performances
of his juniors. I remember one occasion, long after I had become President
of the Board of Trade, when I remained seated and failed to answer
some particularly banal, would-be funny, supplementary question. 'You're
supposed to answer them, you know,' he snapped at me, 'don't sit there.
Throw what they say back in their teeth'.
(21)
Margaret
Thatcher, The Path
of Power (1995)
Well before the 1950 election
we were all conscious of a Conservative revival. This was less the
result of fundamental rethinking within the Conservative Party than
of a strong reaction both among Conservatives and in the country at
large against the socialism of the Attlee Government. Aneurin Bevan's
description in July 1948 of Conservatives as 'lower than vermin' gave
young Tories like me a great opportunity to demonstrate their allegiance
in the long English tradition of ironic self-deprecation. We went
around wearing 'vermin' badges - a little blue rat. A whole hierarchy
was established, so that those who recruited ten new party members
wore badges identifying them as 'vile vermin'; if you recruited twenty
you were 'very vile vermin'. There was a Chief Rat, who lived somewhere
in Twickenham.
Of Clement Attlee, however,
I was an admirer. 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. His was a genuinely radical and reforming government.
The 1945 Labour manifesto was in fact a very left-wing document. That
is clearer now than it was then. Straight after the war much of the
talk of planning and state control echoed wartime rhetoric, and so
its full implications were not grasped. In fact, it was a root and
branch assault on business, capitalism and the market. It took as
its essential intellectual assumption that 'it is doubtful whether
we have ever, except in war, used the whole of our productive capacity.
This must be corrected.' The state was regarded as uniquely competent
to judge where resources should and should not be employed in the
national interest. It was not solely or even primarily on social grounds
that nationalization, controls and planning were advanced, but on
economic grounds. Harmful monopolies were seen as occurring only in
the private sector. So nationalization of iron and steel was justified
on the argument that 'only if public ownership replaces private monopoly
can the industry become efficient'. Most radical of all, perhaps,
was the Labour Party's attitude to land, where it was made clear that
compulsory purchase by local authorities was only the beginning of
a wider programme.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
