Attlee Remembered (Oct 7^th and 8^th 2017) was the first event in our Attlee Nation project. It was a wonderful weekend of debate and knowledge sharing about the life of Clem Attlee, with extroardinary resonance for today.

The weekend marked the 50^th anniversary of the death of Britain’s greatest Prime Minister.

Here is the programme

Here are our brilliant contributors.

The playlist of all 5 live events is here.

Our message for the weekend was simple: in 1945 Attlee had said Yes We Can and by 1951 was able to say said Yes We Did.  Discussions about the challenges he faced in post-war Britain and the subsequent domestic achievements of his government were debated in light of today- social need, political urgency and the need for political courage. The nature of good Labour Party leadership from Keir Hardie through to Jeremy Corbyn; Labour Party manifestos 1945 and 2017 were compared as was the power of media barons then and now; and most interestingly, we explored the profound influence upon Attlee’s political development of his time as a social worker. We can truly say that Britain’s greatest 20^th century Prime Minister was a social worker first.  And finally, in our closing event ‘In Clem’s Own Words’, we all shared in a very moving evening as we were treated to selected readings of Attlee’s own writings – letters, speeches, poems – read by a wonderful line-up of performers. To have a number of Clem Attlee’s family join us for the night made the event very special indeed.

The weekend would not have been possible without our partner venue Sands Films Studios. A huge thank you the wonderful Olivier Stockman and Christine Edzard.