“To Have Worked with Him”
Winston Churchill said, “Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.”1 There are few who have experienced the gravity of politics quite so acutely as he did, and during his own time in 10 Downing Street Churchill served alongside five men who went on to follow him as Prime Minister. Three of them, Attlee, Eden, and Macmillan, worked much more closely with him than did Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath. Yet the relationship all five of them had with Churchill played a part in their individual ascents to the pinnacle of British politics.
Clement Attlee Ally and Rival
Perhaps the most interesting relationship between Churchill and those who followed him is the one he had with Clement Attlee. Without Attlee’s backing, it is far from certain that Churchill would have become Prime Minister in 1940. Attlee went on to serve with distinction in the War Cabinet, including as Deputy Prime Minister from 1942 onwards. His loyalty saw him back Churchill on major issues of strategy in discussions with the chiefs of staff, as well as facing down criticism from Labour colleagues. Despite this wartime unity, Attlee went on to become one of Churchill’s greatest political rivals, beating him in both the 1945 and 1950 general elections before the Conservatives were returned to power in 1951.
As may be expected of such a rival, many cutting assessments of Attlee have been attributed to Churchill. Two are well known: “An empty cab drew up and Mr. Attlee got out” and supposedly describing the Labour leader as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” Neither of these, however, can correctly be attributed to Churchill. When his private secretary “Jock” Colville repeated the first of these two jests in his master’s presence, Churchill replied: “Mr Attlee is an honourable and gallant gentleman and a faithful colleague who served his country well at the time of her greatest need. I should be obliged if you would make it clear whenever an occasion arises that I would Churchill did quip to President Truman that Attlee was a modest man “with much to be modest about,” but that seems to speak more to his quick wit than to his view of Attlee.
