Best British Prime Minister (20th Century vintage)

I guess it'll be between Attlee and Churchill. However take away the leadership during the war and Churchill's achievements don't appear anywhere near as impressive. Conversely if you could ignore Chamberlain's handling of Hitler he comes across as a much more interesting, progressive figure.

I voted Atlee, and I think he'll probably win.

yeah, i went for attlee as well.

i really don't have any idea what brits think of most of these guys! apart from churchill, thatcher, major and blair obv.

Well, those four are the only ones my generation has much of an opinion on.

Maybe someone can explain this: what does nationalizing industry and utilities mean in a British context?

How can anyone put anything but Attlee.

it meant 98% employment, people not living in victorian slums and working people being able to have their hernia's looked at without going without food for a week.

I don't quite understand this Attlee thing. Everyone said it last time. I mean, I know what he did and so on, but it was just after the war and so on, which was going to reduce the amount of argument he was going to get to his policies that others had to deal with. His housing legacy isn't exactly the best, certainly not in Scotland, anyway.

In any event, he just doesn't look as cool as Harold Wilson:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Clement_Attlee.PNG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Haroldwilson.jpg

nah, he was pretty cool

http://www.authentichistory.com/1950s/speeches/images/clement_attlee.jpg

it meant 98% employment, people not living in victorian slums and working people being able to have their hernia's looked at without going without food for a week.

That's a start. Can I have a less editorialized version?

Yeah, that is better, Acrobat. A bit more like David Niven. I'm not sure about this not living in Victorian slums... Give it ten years and they were just living in ten year old slums.

well maybe its atlees term rather than atlee himself that people are voting on?

theres an argument that atlee gets a bit of a free pass and a default vote, and faults are glossed over. i still voted for him anyhow

Attlee and his cabinet established the social contract that, despite the best efforts of Thatcher and Blair, is still extant in Britain today.

well yeh, but seeing the footage on andrew marr's program last night, wow there were some horrid conditions still lingering on. the stuff the atlee government batted through seemed amazing, the americans leaving us penniless, well, till they needed us a military base again, the terrible winter, recovering from the blitz.

xp

when did american conservatives develop their insane crush on churchill? surely not prior to the war when they were hell-bent on keeping out of it.

Alfred, I'm not sure the context matters... Think it would be the same in the US...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalisation

Hey Alfred

Here's a longer version of Acrobat's point. The 1920s and 30s saw industrial and economic upheaval for Britain, as was also the case in the United States. There were few public checks and balances on the economy then, private business often increased prices of commodities beyond peoples' means to pay in order to make a quick buck. A small group of people in society were getting richer, while essential services were suffering like hospitals and schools, reliant solely on people's charitable generosity.

When the second world war began things changed. The state threw everything it had into the war effort. Industries and resources were taken under the control of a central planning board; the entire economy had to work efficiently and productively for a change. Rationing of food and other essential resources often lead to an improvement of diet for many of Britain's poorest families. There were jobs for the unemployed. After the war was over many people said, "well if you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace".

And that's what the Labour government did. Nationalizing industries and utilities was in Atlee's mind in the view of his party the only way of ensuring that the sources of the nation were put to constructive use after the war, rather than a group of individuals squandering them for the sake of profit alone. Nationalization meant that the state could control resources adequately and direct them where they were most needed. Public ownership also meant that those industries that had diminished because of the needs of a war-time economy weren't shot to pieces by being opened up to competition which would have wrecked our mining and steal industry. Publicly owned industry meant that jobs could protected while essentials could be soled cheaply for a domestic market. The aim of this was to increase exports and decrease imports in order to revive the economy.

The U.S also engaged in mass public investment and social reform in this period of course in the form of the New Deal, the aim of which was to protect Americans from the worst excesses of market capitalism, which had been experienced in the depression. Politicians of that generation were unwilling to return to free-market anarchy and were determined that things were going to better. So I think in many ways, there were certain similarities between what Atlee was doing and the New Deal.

The Roman genius impersonated in Mussolini, the greatest law-giver among living men, has shown to many nations how they can resist the pressures of Socialism and has indicated the path that a nation can follow when courageously led. With the Fascist regime, Mussolini has established a centre of orientation from which countries engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with Socialism must not hesitate to be guided.

-- Churchill, Wednesday, 23 May 1933 22:46 (74 years ago) Bookmark Link

Anyway I voted Attlee.

Could you make a case for Lloyd George? I don't know enough about him. He brought in female and working class suffrage and faced down the House of Lords, though - those were good things!

He sold peerages!

Best Tory PM other than Churchill? Macmillan?

xpost oh come on who didn't?

I think that's an interesting question, and I would vote Macmillan in as much as I know; or maybe John Major, purely because you couldn't help feel sorry for the poor bugger. And because, as Alexei Sayle said at the time, when the mind sucking zombies from beyond infinity take over, we'll all be saying 'that old Thatcher wasn't all that bad, was she?'

Best PM of our lifetime (Ted Heath onwards) was one myself and Tim H were discussing recently too, which forces you to think in different terms about Tony B Lair (I think, anyway).

I wonder if we all chipped in, could we buy a peerage for an ILXOR?

It could be like the Lisa Stansfield shag tombola.

it was a tory government i think who set up the bbc as we know it. which is, i think, a good thing.

Thank you very much for the explanation, Avalon! It helps!

Attlee.

If I had confined my vote to PMs within my lifetime it would have to be Wilson, for want of anyone better.

Best PM of our lifetime (Ted Heath onwards) was one myself and Tim H were discussing recently too, which forces you to think in different terms about Tony B Lair (I think, anyway).

Well, I'm in my mid-thirties and can only remember Thatcher, Major and Blair. I'm sure there are plenty of ILXors who don't remember Thatcher, and possibly some who don't even remember Major, so I think it's safe to say Blair would win by default.

i'm surprised that i know about many more of the US presidents than the british PMs - there are several names (in the early half of the century) i'm v unfamiliar with. and of the names i do know my feelings are pretty negative on the whole to most!

anyway the answer probably is attlee but the kind of consensus in this thread so far bothers me, it does feel like a default tick, and keith otm re circumstances making it easier to do what he did. so i go for lloyd george.

The point is that what Attlee did had to be done, regardless of circumstances.

Sometimes the majority of people can be right.

And Lloyd George enabled the majority of people to vote!

Actually though I think suffrage was a lot more inevitable in 1918 than the welfare state was in 1945, so Attlee still wins on any yardstick (other than the "beating Hitler" one I guess)

atlee was no.2 in the beating hitler cabinet!

funny that attlee's commitment to decolonisation hasn't been mentioned so far

do we think that if attlee's premiership hadn't happened, any other potential PM would have introduced the welfare state around this time?

The Atlantic Charter was founded in 1941, four years before Atlee came to power.

xp

I don't know much about it? MacMillan and Wilson presided over most of it surely (India aside, but I don't think Attlee had much choice about Indian independence).

Suffrage in 1918 was some sort of an achievement, though if it hadn't happened, there would probably have been some form of unrest. Maybe not a full scale revolution a la Russia but some sort of social chaos. It wasn't until 1928 that women received full suffrage, what was given in 1918 certainly wasn't universal.

I haven't made my mind as to who I'll vote, though Wilson tempts me for his social reforms and perhaps more importantly for not leading us into the disaster of Vietnam. Sometimes it's what they don't do which is as important as what they do do.

do we think that if attlee's premiership hadn't happened, any other potential PM would have introduced the welfare state around this time?

Chamberlain was supposed to have been quite progressive re social reform, if WW2 hadn't occurred it's likely he would have extended a number of measures, but as widely as Attlee, probably not. His party wouldn't have stood for it.

well churchill was rather set against the welfare state was he not? i guess another labour PM would have brought it in though. i think it's in some ways quite good that it's not really about the person but what their government did. 'cos if you talk about balir or thatcher even major yr so coloured by yr views of them as people, though that is very much down to distance i guess.

possible bad things about the atlee government; britain properly joining the nuclear game, in some senses being unable to gauge / provide what a lot of the people wanted ie consumerism / fun etc

joining the nuclear game had, i think, some positives - having that technology is now (and prob was then) better than not having it.

billy dods otm re importance of what PMs didn't do - this is apt to be more easily forgotten by history too.

cos if you talk about balir or thatcher even major yr so coloured by yr views of them as people

there'd be an ok-ish argument for aspects of the blair govt in this case - northern ireland, equality legislation, devolution all +ves.

The "consumerism/fun" angle is the reason why Gordon Brown might not win the next election. Never mind experience and capability to run the country properly, or spending money that is actually ours, or realising that if we want a civilised society we have to pay for it - WE WANT FUN and thus the fascists will get in through the back door.

Could you make a case for Lloyd George?

As Chancellor definitely. Certainly as an all-round politician he's probably the most, for want of a better word, dazzling British example in 20th century (apart from his old mucker, Churchill) ... also absolutely appallingly terrible in so many ways (again like Churchill)

But at least, unlike Churchill, he wasn't hot on the eugenics/gas chamber for the great unwashed deal.

Palling around with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgarten was not one of his better ideas however

Atlee has to win this, but I fear a 1992 type result. I have a soft spot for Wilson and Lloyd George too but Atlee is the man. Housing is really his only weak spot (which the tories exploited, promising 300000 new homes a year in the 1951 election).

The poll results will be invigorating to see how many ILxors vote for Thatcher on the quiet.

something i find weird is how little love atlee gets from the public at large. if you look at that greatest britain poll it's topped by churchill and whilst nye bevan gets in at 6- something atlee himself is nowhere to be seen. maybe it's a personality thing; he just can't compete with the likes of robbie williams and enoch powell in the hearts of our nation.

ATTlee - spell it right!!!!!!!!

The country "got better off" at a massive cost though! Public services still haven't fully recovered and are still noticeably worse than in France, the currently designated "sick man of Europe".

Are there any good biographies of Attlee and Thatcher extant?

I'm probably over-simplifying, but didn't the country get better off once the Thatcher government chucked most of monetarism out of the window?

It might depend how you define 'the country'. In terms of GDP there was a severe recession in 1980 and 1981, but by 1983 growth was back on track, and in 1987 and 1988 things roared along, only to be plunged back into recession from 1990-1992. In terms of unemployment it went up from about 1.5 million in 1979 to over 3 million by 1983 and continued rising to about 3.5 million by 1986. It then fell sharply to 1.6 million by the start of 1990 only to leap back up again to 3 million by 1993.

If "the country got better off" = "the economy grew" then you could say 1982-1989 were the good times, but for nearly all of that time there was unemployment on a huge scale and for quite a lot of that time it was rising. At a push 1987-1988 could be described as a time when the country got better off.

Certainly the country would have gotten better off if the Government had chucked Thatcher out of the window boom boom.

xpost - I didn't choose my words carefully; I was trying to suggest that the great Thatcher boom wasn't all that great when you look into it (especially for those unfortunate enough to live outside of the South East). I've skipped ahead in Andrew Marr's book and he also makes the point that the North Sea oil was a lucky bonus that helped prop up the Thatcher regime...

... it's Scotland's Oil!

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=66150&rendTypeId=4

...all that Thatcher had achieved was an increase in the well-being of the sort of people who voted Conservative at the expense of the sort of people who didn't

Out of context, I know, but so very OTM.

Campbell-Bannerman.

Taff Vale fool!

So, again, any histories of post-WWII England you guys can recommend? or Attlee and Thatcher bios?

I'm disappointed no-one voted for Attlee on account of him being "the biggest fucking sex symbol this country ever fucking produced."

I dunno about that:

http://www.profindsearch.com/Img/Margaret_Thatcher_80th_Birthday.jpg

This is excellent:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Had-So-Good-History/dp/0316860832/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/202-9618481-0937411?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180028164&sr=8-1

For Eden/Macmillan.

And I haven't read this, but it's probably good, carrying through to 1970, I think:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Heat-History-Britain-Swinging/dp/0316724521/ref=sr_1_1/202-9618481-0937411?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180028328&sr=1-1

i voted for lloyd george, was that a mistake? i have a weakness for the welsh, though.

also, i think that asquith is a cool last name -- though i don't know anything at all about him otherwise. i suspect that he's the british equivalent of, i dunno, taft or rutherford b. hayes or something.

Privatisation was just one strand in a set of policies designed to reduce public spending and enable tax cuts. The real aim was to allow the sort of people the Conservative party were interested in looking after to keep more of their "own money" --i.e. a redistribution of wealth from the working class to the middle-class, the public sector to the private sector and so on.

As with all political parties, ostensible reasons were devised to justify policies whose real motives, baldly stated, would have alienated the electorate. No one says "we need to keep private schools because our party is the one that represents the section of the electorate that can afford them, and they are desperately keen to retain the advantage of being able to buy a better education for their own children". Instead they talk about freedom of choice.

Prior to the advent of Thatcher, the suggestion that lower public spending and taxation would result in macroeconomic benefits was largely a kind of "freedom of choice" argument, a pseudo-rationale for a policy that in reality had different, harder-to-market motives. Theoretical evidence in support of it was flimsy and contradictory, and practical evidence nonexistent. Economists argued that allowing people to keep more of their earnings might actually be a disincentive to hard work and damage the economy -- the point at which people had earned enough to prefer more leisure to more income might just arrive sooner.

In other words, most peoples' views about the macroeconomic benefits of a smaller public sector tended to be derived from their views about the moral case for income redistribution, rather than vice versa. The left believed in redistribution of income from the haves to the have-nots and pooh-poohed the suggestion that lower taxes would have macroeconomic benefits; the right claimed to believe in the macroeconomic benefits argument because it sounded better than simply saying you wanted the relatively well-off to pay less tax while the poor got less benefits.

What Thatcher did was follow the logic of her prejudices more ruthlessly than any previous post-war Conservative government had been willing to do, with the result that the theory was actually put to the test. Although the likes of Keith Joseph no doubt genuinely believed this would transform Britain's economic situation, I think for Thatcher the economic theory side of it was just a useful rationale for aggressively doing what the Tories had always wanted to do but up till then did not believe they could get away with. That it actually worked was a colossal and I suspect highly unexpected bonus for many Tories. The left has been on the back foot ever since -- it is much harder now to make the case that a large public sector or aggressive redistribution of income will not damage the economy as a whole.

Churchill will sweep the non-Brit vote, which I happen to be. The guy simply had a huge pair, and saying something like:

"However take away the leadership during the war and Churchill's achievements don't appear anywhere near as impressive"

is kind of like saying that "take away the gas oven thing, and Hitler's actions don't appear anywhere near as evil".

He may be the towering world figure of the 20th Century.

I hear the Bullingdon Club are quite up in arms about it.

-- Groke, Thursday, 24 May 2007 12:40 (7 hours ago) Link

I do believe there is a photo which may illuminate/accompany this comment?

Churchill...may be the towering world figure of the 20th Century

That's crazy talk.

Well, then have a go at it. He's certainly deified here (in the US), it looks like not in his home country. I find that interesting, and will certainly read more about Atlee, who I don't know much about.

Churchill will sweep the non-Brit vote, which I happen to be. The guy simply had a huge pair, and saying something like:

"However take away the leadership during the war and Churchill's achievements don't appear anywhere near as impressive"

is kind of like saying that "take away the gas oven thing, and Hitler's actions don't appear anywhere near as evil".

He may be the towering world figure of the 20th Century.

Whether he was sending the army to attack striking miners, or just blaming Jews for the Holocaust, Churchill was totes awesome dude.

That's shit's bad. No argument. But you'd probably be named Dieter and wearing liederhosen if it wasn't for him.

I'm disappointed no-one voted for Attlee on account of him being "the biggest fucking sex symbol this country ever fucking produced."

http://bak.spc.org/tha/MM_to_MT.jpg

http://www.mullings.com/lederhosen.jpg

Dieter Passantino raises a glass to the memory of our glorious leader Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill is much loved in the UK, Bill - he topped (IIRC) a national poll of Greatest Britons.

If it wasn't for the Duke of Wellington, Winston would have probably been named Marcel. But Wellington would win very few polls of 19th Century Prime Ministers, for the simple reason that he was a great war leader and very bad indeed at running the country. Of course, he wasn't PM and war leader at the same time. Churchill was in his first term, but the two roles still feel separable. During the war, Churchill had Attlee to deal with the running-the-country bit, and could concentrate on the war leader part, which thankfully he was excellent at. But it's not too surprising for Britons thinking in "Prime Minister" terms to think about the country-running more than the war-fighting.

The guy simply had a huge pair,

I want pictures, please.

Although the likes of Keith Joseph no doubt genuinely believed this would transform Britain's economic situation, I think for Thatcher the economic theory side of it was just a useful rationale for aggressively doing what the Tories had always wanted to do but up till then did not believe they could get away with. That it actually worked was a colossal and I suspect highly unexpected bonus for many Tories. The left has been on the back foot ever since -- it is much harder now to make the case that a large public sector or aggressive redistribution of income will not damage the economy as a whole.

I go with this. I think it's things like wars (c.f. Attlee) that enable you to make decisions in the other direction.

That's shit's bad. No argument. But you'd probably be named Dieter and wearing liederhosen if it wasn't for him.

-- Bill Magill, Thursday, 24 May 2007 20:50 (Yesterday) Link

If it wasn't for Stalin either but I don't think I'd vote for him as greatest Russian president.

"But it's not too surprising for Britons thinking in "Prime Minister" terms to think about the country-running more than the war-fighting."

Fair point. We (the USA) were lucky at the time to have a leader who did both well, plus we had the added (huge) advantage that the war wasn't, with one exception, fought on our shores. In fact, the war had a big part in taking the US OUT of the economic doldrums it had been in for the previous decade plus.

And I don't have a picture of Churchill's balls.

Churchill agreed with "the gas oven thing" as I clearly stated above. He was also prepared to shoot strikers in 1926.

Prime Ministerial bump

Least surprising poll result ever, at least in terms of the winner. A little suprised by how well Blair did.

What I want to know is which wiseass voted for Major? I can understand conservatives voting for Churchill or Thatcher, but Major?

Unless it was for the fact he made the tories unelectable for 10 years or more.

I really hope those were 8 "ironic" votes for that shitmuncher.

Yeah, what fuckers were voting for Blair? Liberals probably.

Although the likes of Keith Joseph no doubt genuinely believed this would transform Britain's economic situation

Keith Joseph, of whom Harold Macmillan said, "He's the only boring Jew I've ever met"

WHICH CUNT VOTED FOR THATCHER THEN?

wow @ votes 4 blair

Maybe those pesky Americans have been voting for him?

I think Marcello's having a "which cunt threw that glass" Begbie moment. Not that I'm suggesting...

RIGHT CUNT! OUTSIDE NOW!!!!

Blair not surprising at 2nd. Inpite of his venal religiosity, disastrous foreign policy, deeply Liberal attitudes to Welfare and Public services, spin, being a greasy scumbag etc. he has presided over 10 years of Middle class prosperity and various things such as the health and education services are better than when he started even if they don't match up to what we would like to see from them. He has certainly achieved as much as Attlee or Thatcher and lies somewhere in the middle on the like-revulsion scale.

I still reckon non-Britons voted for him

the blair govt's progress on equality legislation is probably one of those things which would have happened anyway, but if attlee gets credit for the welfare state it's only fair that blair gets credit for eg civil partnerships, repealing section 28 &c &c.

(i didn't tick him though, and neither did i tick m-thatch, though re the latter i'm surprised more ilx pranksters didn't)

She's so fucking evil no one would even vote her as a joke.

But you'd probably be named Dieter and wearing liederhosen if it wasn't for him.

-- Bill Magill, Thursday, 24 May 2007 20:50 (6 days ago) Bookmark Link

Not true! Nazi invasion of UK was permanently shitcanned when Hitler diverted the luftwaffe from destroying the RAF (which it was succeeding at - shooting down planes faster than we could build them) to the blitz. Hitler's BIG strategic error of WW2.

Didn't vote in this b/c of not being much online, but would have voted for Atlee.

going for moscow was as big a mistake surely?

going for moscow was as big a mistake surely?

Perhaps, but the decision to attack british cities had many, far-reaching strategic consequences for the nazis - had they destroyed the RAF and invaded Britian, they'd have been able to take over North Africa unopposed, and thus would gained pretty much permanent access to the oil reserves there, the US would not have had any kind of foothold in europe, so Germany's cities and industry would not have been under constant aerial bombardment from the RAF and USAAF. Also there would have been no battle of the Atlantic, so their sea trade wouldn't have been disrupted. Nazi Germany would have had its entire military strength to set against the USSR. They nearly reached Moscow in any case, and possibly would have done so had they not diverted their forces to attack Stalingrad. I doubt they'd have beaten the USSR, but they might have, and the war would probably have went on a lot longer even if they hadn't.

did robin carmody participate in this poll and if so who did he vote for? (my guess: wilson)