CABINET GOVERNMENT
THE ATTLEE FOUNDATION LECTURE
GIVEN BY LORD BUTLER OF BROCKWELL GCB, CVO
AT THE MANSION HOUSE, LONDON, ON THURSDAY 18 FEBRUARY 1999
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When I first agreed to give this lecture, some three years ago, but asked for a stay of execution until I had finished my time as Cabinet Secretary, I had no idea that I would deliver the lecture as Master of Attlee’s Oxford College and mine.
For four years as an undergraduate in the late 50s, I dined under the austere, dignified and entirely appropriate portrait of Attlee in Univ’s dining hall I shared the collegiate pride in Univ’s association not only with Attlee, who was Prime Minister during my early conscious years but also with G.D.H. Cole, with Beveridge, still at that time to be seen around the College, and with Harold Wilson, who became leader of the opposition during my time at Oxford.
It is a curious fact that Univ has been primarily associated with prominent politicians of the left because it has never seemed to me a radical, or even a specially political college. But it is a humane college, and there is something about all four I have mentioned which survives today in the ethos of the College.
2.
Attlee was happy at Oxford and at Univ. We know that he was not a man given to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. It is therefore the more eloquent that he should have written of his time at Oxford “It is seldom that one says to oneself, ‘what a glorious time I am having’. But I can recall that often this thought came to me as I walked past the old grey buildings. In later years I often sought to recapture the magic of those days and of that City”.
Attlee’s regard for Univ is reflected in his decision to entrust Univ with his personal papers. Arthur Goodhart, who was Master of Univ when I was an undergraduate, recalled that, when he was on a walk one day with Attlee, he suggested that Attlee should deposit his papers with Univ.
Attlee telephoned some months later to say that he and Lady Attlee were planning to move to a smaller house where there would be no room for his papers, and that hiswife would drive them over to Oxford in her car.
Perhaps because he was conscious of Lady Attlee’s reputation as a driver, Arthur Goodhart (who, to my recollection, was no better) volunteered to collect them himself and drove over to pick up some forty five boxes of them which he brought safely back to Oxford.
When he asked Attlee whether he had any instructions, Attlee said that he