1964/11 Rt Hon Earl Attlee KG OM CH

David McFall R.A. (1919 - 1988)

Sculptor

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1964/11 Rt. Hon. Earl Attlee KG OM CH

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951

Portrait head

Height 10½"

Bronze

Exhibited Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1965 Catalogue No. 1551

Modelled in 5 sittings at the Duchy of Cornwall Studios Kennington from 24/6/1964 to 20/7/1964

Casts are in:

(1) National Portrait Gallery (ref NPG 4601 Primary Collection)

(2) Imperial War Museum (cat LD.6110)

(3) Attlee House

Reference: National Portrait Gallery Catalogue page 20 ref 4601. Inscription: "Clement Attlee 1883-1967, leader of the Labour Party (1935-55); served in the War Cabinet under Churchill (1940-5) & was Deputy Prime Minister (1942-5); defeated Churchill at the polls in the landslide Labour victory of 1945, bringing to power the first Labour government able to implement the policies of the welfare state. By David McFall (1919-88) Bronze signed 1965"

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He served as Deputy Prime Minister under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill at the 1945 general election. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term and the first to have a majority in Parliament.

The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created -- aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. After initial Conservative opposition, this settlement, generally known as the post-war consensus, was by and large accepted by all parties until Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in the 1970s.

His government also presided over the decolonisation of a large part of the British Empire, a process by which India and the countries that are now Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh obtained independence.

In 2004, he was voted as the greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of professors organised by MORI.