Page "Clement Attlee" Paragraph 83

By 1951, the Attlee government was looking increasingly exhausted, with several of its most important ministers ailing or having died.

Attlee himself was hospitalised with duodenal ulcers.

The party split in 1951 over the austerity budget brought in by Hugh Gaitskell to pay for the cost of Britain's participation in the Korean War.

Aneurin Bevan, the architect of the National Health Service ( NHS ), resigned to protest against the new charges for " teeth and spectacles " introduced by the budget.

He was joined in this action by the later prime minister, Harold Wilson.