He was one of the founders of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, serving as its first General Secretary (1921–40), and was a leading organizer of the General Strike (1926). He later entered Parliament, serving as Minister of Labour in Churchill’s war Cabinet. As Foreign Secretary (1945–51), he helped form the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (1948) and NATO (1949). Unable to find a solution to the problem of Palestine, he surrendered the British mandate to the United Nations in 1947.