To coincide with the third BBC Radio 4 series of Prime Ministers’ Props, our senior research fellow, Dr Martin Spychal, discusses the intriguing (and still partially inconclusive) research journey behind identifying the cars used on the campaign trail by Clement and Violet Attlee…

Over the past few years I’ve worked as a researcher on the BBC Radio 4 series Prime Ministers’ Props, presented by Sir David Cannadine and produced by Melissa Fitzgerald. By the end of the third series we’ll have discussed how fifteen different prime ministers, for various reasons, became associated with a prop (usually a physical object, hobby or nickname) in the public conscience.

The show has tried to provide listeners with an accessible and engaging introduction to many of the UK’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century prime ministers. We’ve covered the obvious stories of Thatcher’s handbag, Wellington’s boot and Churchill’s cigar, as well as lesser known premiers (and their props) such as Anthony Eden and his Homburg hat and Lord Rosebery and his racehorses.

One of our favourite episodes this series is about the cars used by Clement Attlee, Labour prime minister between 1945 and 1951, and his wife, Violet Attlee, to tour the country during the 1945, 1950, 1951 and 1955 elections. During each campaign Violet drove Clement (I’ll refer to both by their first names in this blog) throughout England and Scotland in their family car.

Touring in the family car, with Violet at the wheel, was an active electioneering strategy. The Attlees hoped to present themselves to the public as an ‘unostentatious’ middle-class family, in contrast to the chauffeur-driven Winston Churchill, who until 1955 was leader of the Conservative party.

The episode has also been one of the most interesting to research, as identifying the cars driven by the Attlees at each election has proved surprisingly complex. Frustratingly as far as the 1945 election is concerned, the matter remains unresolved. It has also been a heartening experience, as it has put us in touch with politicians, historians, curators, archivists and car experts, all of whom have generously offered their expertise and displayed a common enthusiasm for solving an unexpected historical mystery.

Confirming the cars used by the Attlees at the 1950, 1951 and 1955 elections was relatively straightforward, thanks to press, photo and video archive of the elections. In February 1950 Clement and Violet were pictured leaving Downing Street for that month’s election tour in a 1937/8 Hillman 14. The Coventry Evening Telegraph reported that the Attlees arrived at a rally at Coventry Central Hall ‘driving their Hillman 14’. And a British Pathé newsreel captured Violet driving a Hillman 14 on a last-minute visit to their Walthamstow constituency on election day.

During the October 1951 general election the Attlees toured the country in a new, slightly smaller, ‘beige’ Humber Hawk, probably that year’s MKIV model. Press reports and photographs confirmed this, as well the registration of the car: KYX 690. As a sign of how central the Attlee family car was to their campaign, in one picture, Clement can be seen speaking to his Walthamstow constituents from in front of the car, with Violet knitting at the wheel.

The Humber Hawk was used again at the 1955 election, when Violet drove Clement throughout their nine-day election tour at characteristic speed. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reported that ‘KYX 690’ was driven by Violet ‘with considerable dash’ and that ‘police escorts sometimes had difficulty keeping up with her’.

This was the last election that Clement fought prior to his elevation to the peerage as Earl Attlee in December 1955. Earlier that month he had retired as leader of the Labour party, when newsreel footage captured him departing the Palace of Westminster in a new family car – a Hillman Minx (probably a MKVII model).

Over the following four years Violet, or Lady Attlee as she was now formally known, was involved in multiple crashes in the Minx, including a fatal accident in September 1959, when a passenger in another car died. Violet was cleared of any responsibility in a widely reported court case, after which she continued to drive Clement in their new Fiat 600, and then an Austin Cambridge until her death in 1964.

Identifying the car used by the Attlees during the 1945 election has been a more frustrating story. This was particularly because we wanted to include precise details of the ‘small car’, or ‘smart little car’, that Violet is reported to have driven into Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1945, when Clement accepted an invitation from George VI to form the post-war Labour government.

As well as a paucity of visual or written contemporary sources revealing details of the Attlee family car in 1945, the task has been compounded by an array of conflicting historical or contemporary accounts. There are plenty of pictures of Churchill in his custom Humber limousine during the 1945 election, but none that we have so far discovered of the Attlees in their car.

The only car that the Attlees are pictured next to during the election is a two-door Morris 8 series 1. This picture was taken on 26 July 1945 before Violet drove Clement to Buckingham Palace to ‘kiss hands’ with the King. The picture is hardly conclusive though, as their actual car might have been parked on the opposite side of the street. We know that Clement’s brother owned a Morris 8, and that the Attlees’ first family car in the 1920s was a ‘bullnose’ Morris Oxford. But the association of Sir William Morris with Oswald Mosley and British Fascism during the early 1930s, and Morris’s fiercely anti-union business practices, makes a Morris an unlikely car brand for the leader of the Labour party.

Some writers have used images of Attlee in official government-allocated cars before and after the 1945 election to suggest that the family car in 1945 was a Humber Pullman or an Austin Six. One account suggests the Attlees owned an Austin Seven, which may have been based on a 2015 BBC recreation of the election. Anthony Eden recalled ten years after the 1945 election that the Attlees had driven a Standard Eight. And another account suggests the Attlees drove a ‘Hillman Standard Eight’, a car that never existed.

In his interviews with Violet and Clement’s second daughter, Felicity Attlee, the author and historian Francis Beckett was told that the family car around that time was a Hillman Minx. However, a lack of any other evidence to confirm this and factoring in the potential that Felicity was blurring her memories with the family’s later Hillman Minx, raises doubt as to whether this was the case.

Amidst all of this contradictory information, the closest we’ve got to confirming the 1945 car was Violet’s own recollection in an interview for Time in 1950, which suggested that she drove the same ‘vintage Hillman’ during the 1945 election as she did in 1950. This would indicate that the 1945 Attlee family car was a Hillman 14. However the interview also suggests the car used by the Attlees ‘back in the 1930s’ was ‘a trim 1936 Hillman sedan’, and the Hillman 14 was not manufactured until September 1937. Maybe the Time journalist misreported the year of manufacture, or Violet mis-remembered it. Either way the smoking gun (or car) remains elusive.

Ultimately, when scripting the show we had to settle for saying that Violet drove Clement to Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1945 in their ‘family car’. If you have any information to confirm otherwise, please get in touch.

Dr Martin Spychal

‘Clement Attlee’s Family Car’ will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 November 2023 at 09:45. It is also available to stream on iPlayer

We’d like to thank the following for their help identifying the Attlee family cars (in alphabetical order): 3^rd Earl Attlee; Francis Beckett; Andy Bye (Rootes Archive Centre Trust); Thomas Chidwick (Queen Mary University London); Florence Dall (Queen Mary Archives and Special Collections); Prof. Peter Hennessy (QMUL); Dr Luca Hoare (Haynes Motor Museum); Dr Lyndsey Jenkins (QMUL); Nick Kinnie (Haynes Motor Museum); Steve Lewis (Post Vintage Humber Car Club); Steve Mytton (Haynes Motor Museum); Dr Philip Salmon (History of Parliament); Nick Thornhill; Debbie Smith and all the staff at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives.

Further reading:

J. Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2017)

F. Beckett, Clem Attlee (2000)

T. D. Burridge, Clement Attlee, a political biography (1985)

J. Hannam, ‘Attlee [née Millar], Violet Helen, Countess Attlee (1895–1965)’, DNB (2018)

K. Harris, Attlee (1982)

N.T. Symonds, Attlee: A Life in Politics (2010)

R. Whiting, ‘Attlee, Clement Richard, first Earl Attlee (1883–1967)’, DNB (2004)