THE RETURNING soldier was deeply affected by the inability of the Lloyd George government to provide veterans with jobs and housing, despite the reformist agenda that had been the hallmark of Liberal governments since the election of 1906, which had placed H. H. Asquith into residence at Number 10. Back in the East End, he developed into a compelling instigator, and in 1919 stood for a seat on the London County Council. He lost, but not by much. He became a serious player in East End Labour circles, which dominated the politics of that polyglot area of London. It was only a matter of time before he would assume public office. His first post was an appointive one: despite his electoral defeat, the Labour majority on the Stepney Borough Council voted him in as the borough’s mayor. He served only a year, but was an effective, low-key administrator, a management style that would characterize his entire political career. He also built up a strong personal following, and in 1920 he was selected as the parliamentary candidate in the Limehouse constituency, a division of Stepney. Two years later he won his election as Labour-dominated Scotland and London added seats in the north of England and became the second-largest party in Parliament. Attlee would continue to serve in Parliament for the next three decades.

While mayor, Attlee had come to know, and work alongside, several aspiring young Labour politicians, notably Herbert Morrison, who was five years his junior. Morrison was an outsized talent with an equally outsized ego. He was also a political schemer. Having reneged on a promise to Attlee that he would obtain for him a minor political post, he earned Attlee’s undying political distrust. It would not be the last time that Morrison would attempt to double-cross his colleague; Attlee, for his part, would later undercut Morrison when both were in government.

Upon entering Parliament, Attlee was chosen by Ramsay MacDonald, Labour’s leader and the official leader of the opposition, to be his parliamentary private secretary, one of the lowest rungs on the political ladder, but an important post all the same, for it gave him insights into the workings of the parliamentary party and its leadership, as well as into the arcana of parliamentary procedure. When, after the 1923 election, MacDonald formed the first-ever Labour government in 1924, Attlee was appointed under secretary of state for war, a junior ministerial or subcabinet position. Like so many other politicians with whom Attlee came into contact, then and thereafter, MacDonald did not regard Attlee as particularly talented, but saw him, in Bew’s words, as “steady and reliable.”

While at the War Office, Attlee managed to balance the seemingly conflicting demands of his ministerial portfolio and Labour’s antimilitary instincts. His ability to reconcile different and often mutually hostile interests stood him in excellent stead over time once he emerged as Labour’s leader. It was perhaps his greatest talent.

Attlee’s term of office did not last very long. The Labour government collapsed after only ten months when, shortly after Britain formally recognized the Soviet Union, the so-called Zinoviev letter calling for a British revolution was leaked to the press. The letter was what would now be called “fake news,” but it led to an overwhelming Conservative majority. Back in opposition, Attlee was an active critic of the government. But Manny Shinwell, who had served alongside Attlee in the MacDonald government, summed him up as “just an ordinary person, nothing spectacular, hardly going far.” Shinwell reflected the views of virtually all of Attlee’s fellow parliamentarians. But he was dead wrong about Attlee’s prospects; Shinwell himself would later serve in his unspectacular colleague’s government as minister of fuel and, indeed, would nearly be dismissed from that post by that “ordinary person.”

While in opposition, Attlee was appointed to the Simon Commission, named for its leader, Sir John Simon, which attempted to set a course for India’s political future. Bew observes that MacDonald named Attlee to the commission to keep him off the opposition front benches. It was therefore not very surprising that when MacDonald formed a new government after the 1929 elections, Attlee remained a backbencher. Still, MacDonald brought him into the government as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in May 1930, to replace the aristocratic, incorrigible and nascent fascist Oswald Mosley.

Attlee soured on MacDonald when, in August 1931, the Labour leader brought down his own government and, together with some of Labour’s most notable leaders, opted to join the Conservatives to form a “National Government.” Bew notes that the November 1931 election, which MacDonald called to consolidate the National Government’s position, “almost killed the Labour Party.” Labour’s better-known leaders had defected to MacDonald, while most of its remaining senior stalwarts, including nearly all the cabinet ministers who had not gone over to him, lost their parliamentary seats in the Labour wipeout. So too had many of the party’s younger stars, notably Herbert Morrison and the Labour leader Ernest Bevin. Attlee had retained his seat, however, though by a mere 531 votes; he was among the few relatively senior Labour leaders left standing.

When the aging George Lansbury took over the party leadership in 1932, Attlee became his deputy almost by default. Though Bew does not explicitly say so, the outcome of the 1931 election was perhaps the most important turning point in Attlee’s career. It enabled a capable but uninspiring politician of the second rank to jump the queue for his party’s leadership. By the time his potential rivals were returned to Parliament, Attlee was in an unassailable position as Lansbury’s successor. He had established himself alongside Lansbury as the key individual responsible for maintaining Labour’s parliamentary coherence, and had prevented its subordination to the party’s overweening and more radical National Executive Committee. When Lansbury resigned in 1935, Attlee was duly elected Labour’s leader.

ATTLEE’S RECORD during the latter half of the 1930s is hardly stellar. Despite his anti-Communist stance at home, he did not hesitate to identify with the British volunteers who served in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, although many had been recruited by the British Communist Party. A company in that brigade was named in his honor. Bew writes approvingly of Attlee’s visits to Spain in support of the Republicans, while stressing Hitler’s support for Franco’s fascists. He says virtually nothing about the activities of the British Communists as recruiters, however. Nor for that matter, does he explicitly point to Stalin’s aid to the Nationalists, which included supplying, among other weapons systems, one thousand aircraft, nine hundred tanks, 1,500 artillery pieces, fifteen thousand machine guns and thirty thousand mortars.

Though he was not an appeaser—he bitterly attacked the Hoare-Laval Pact that partitioned Abyssinia and, in practice, handed it over to Italy—Attlee did nothing to encourage a military buildup to deter both Mussolini and Hitler. Instead, he supported the quixotic notion that it was best to rely upon the League of Nations to curb the appetites of the fascist dictators. “Not for the first time,” Bew writes, “Attlee let others lead the fight for a tougher line on defence.” In 1936 Attlee characterized Hugh Dalton’s proposal that Labour support the Baldwin government’s rearmament proposals, modest as they were, as “stupid.” And as late as 1939, Attlee was still opposed to conscription. His attitude did not reflect the initiative one might have expected from a party leader committed to democracy. It was instead typical of those who sat on their hands “while England slept.” Then again, Attlee rarely took the initiative, letting his colleagues lead on a host of issues, which of course subjected them to blame if things went wrong.

In one of his many swipes at Churchill, Bew claims that “in the first half of 1938, as Churchill softened his criticisms of the [Chamberlain] government, an emboldened Attlee ratcheted up the rhetoric.” It is true that, as Jenkins notes, Churchill was inclined to give Chamberlain “the benefit of the doubt,” but that did not mean he lowered his antiappeasement profile. On the contrary, Jenkins observes, “during the late spring and early summer of 1938, Churchill did some sustained antiappeasement campaigning.” Moreover, it was Churchill, not Attlee, who gave the most riveting and critical speech in Parliament after Chamberlain returned from Munich proclaiming “peace in our time.” Finally, when Churchill circulated a letter to protest the treatment of the Czechs, Attlee refused to sign. While Churchill had long been outspoken in his criticism of Hitler for the treatment of Germany’s Jews, Attlee, who had long represented a heavily Jewish constituency in London’s East End, was notably silent. Bew can only recount that Attlee was moved by Churchill’s “tears when he talked of the sufferings of the Jews in Germany.” For his part, Bew has no comment to offer about Attlee’s reluctance to criticize Nazi persecution of German, Austrian and Czech Jewry.

Bew asserts, “It was Attlee, working through the Labour Party, who was to be the kingmaker, that is, who stage managed Churchill into Number 10.” Jenkins, biographer of both Churchill and Attlee, would have none of it. After demonstrating that it was Viscount Halifax’s reticence that opened the door for Churchill, Jenkins argues, “The view that the Labour Party made Churchill Prime Minister is therefore a myth,” though he acknowledges that Labour was a “crucial piece on the chessboard.” Attlee would have been equally comfortable with Halifax as prime minister. Bew observes that Attlee, like Morrison, Dalton and Cripps, “seemed to be more inclined towards Lord Halifax.” Attlee steadfastly supported Churchill, however, when the Conservative maverick was asked to form a government, and agreed to serve as his deputy, despite opposition from Labour’s left. Bew reports that Attlee’s patriotism never burned brighter: “Of all the moments of Attlee’s public life . . . taking Labour into government under Churchill at Britain’s darkest hour was his proudest act.”