MacDonald, James Ramsay

MacDonald, James Ramsay (1866–1937). Prime minister. Between 1900 and 1929 Ramsay MacDonald contributed more than any other individual to building the Labour Party into a credible, national party of government. Throughout his career he retained a consistent vision of a democratic socialist movement which would unite middle-class radicalism with working-class votes and achieve its goals by parliamentary means. As prime minister and foreign secretary in the first Labour government of 1924 he went a long way to demonstrating Labour's fitness to govern. Yet under pressure, defects of temperament undermined his effectiveness. Basically a shy and insecure man, despite his achievements, MacDonald depended greatly upon the support of his wife Margaret Gladstone; her early death in 1911 dealt him a blow from which he never recovered. His loneliness made him vulnerable to friendships in aristocratic circles later in life. But to his critics his fondness for the marchioness of Londonderry looked like social climbing and a desire for acceptance by the establishment. This was all the more natural when the failures of his second government led to his participation in the National Government in 1931. This decision immediately destroyed his standing on the left; and he has been regarded as a traitor ever since.

Born into poverty in Lossiemouth on the north-east coast of Scotland, MacDonald was the illegitimate child of a servant girl and a farm labourer. His early career in the 1880s took him back and forth across the borders of Liberal and Labour politics. He joined the Rainbow Circle, worked as secretary to a Liberal MP, and could well have emerged as a Liberal politician had he managed to get elected to Parliament earlier. But by the 1890s he had become a leading figure in the new Independent Labour Party. He fought several elections without success, handicapped by the lack of a trade union base and his own poverty. He supported himself by journalism and, from 1896, his wife's personal income. By 1900 he was sufficiently well known and respected to be invited to serve as secretary to the new Labour Representation Committee which became the Labour Party in 1906. In this capacity he was directly responsible for what proved to be the crucial breakthrough for the party. In 1903 he negotiated an electoral pact with Herbert Gladstone, the Liberal chief whip, which meant that the Liberals would refrain from running candidates in 29 of the 50 constituencies contested by Labour at the 1906 general election. In 24 of the 29 seats Labour candidates proved successful, including MacDonald himself, elected for Leicester.

As an MP his oratorical powers and capacity for mastering legislative detail made him the outstanding parliamentarian on the Labour bench. In 1911 he became chairman of the parliamentary party. In this period he suffered attack from socialists such as Ben Tillett and Victor Grayson for excessive loyalty towards the Liberal government. He also encountered much resistance from local ILP activists who wished to field candidates in Liberal constituencies in by-elections. However, up to 1914, it appears that he intended to maintain the pact.

The First World War interrupted both this strategy and MacDonald's steady rise. By opposing British entry into the war he put himself in a minority and gave up the party chairmanship. Instead he founded the Union of Democratic Control, a pressure group which advocated a negotiated peace and a League of Nations. As a result he was vilified by the right-wing press, which even published a copy of his birth certificate. In the chauvinistic mood of the 1918 election MacDonald suffered a heavy defeat at Leicester.

He achieved his come-back in 1922 when he became the member for Aberavon. Now that opinion had turned against the pre-war arms race and wartime casualties, he gained much credit for the principled stand he had taken in 1914, and many left-wing MPs supported him in the contest for the party leadership in which he narrowly defeated J. R. Clynes. For some years MacDonald stood out as a popular hero to socialists, but he took care to smother radical policies, such as the capital levy, which he thought likely to lose votes.

MacDonald deserves great credit for the skill with which he played a difficult hand in the aftermath of the 1923 election. With only 191 MPs he was invited to form a government. He deliberately avoided any deal with the Liberals, so as to prevent a return to the client relationship Labour had enjoyed before 1914. He strengthened his administration with former Liberal and Conservative ministers, avoided controversial economic policies, and, as foreign secretary, played a constructive role in reducing German reparations. Although the government was defeated in Parliament after nine months, MacDonald had largely succeeded in his object of establishing Labour as a competent governing party.

During the next five years the inability of the Baldwin government to tackle unemployment helped Labour to a further advance. In 1929 they won 288 seats, not far short of a majority. But this time MacDonald's conventional economic policy proved inadequate; the commitment to the gold standard, an over-valued pound, and the restoration of British export markets proved fatal. As unemployment mounted the prime minister seemed indecisive and self-pitying—the ‘Boneless Wonder’ in Churchill's derisive phrase. By August 1931 the balance of payments deficit obliged the cabinet to attempt to restore confidence by balancing its budget. But it split over proposed cuts in unemployment benefit. MacDonald astonished his colleagues by accepting the king's invitation to lead a National Government with the Liberals and Tories. Though originally seen as a temporary expedient, the National Government rapidly assumed a permanent form by holding a general election in October 1931. MacDonald thus retained the premiership until 1935 and continued in office until 1937. An isolated and ineffectual figure, he presided over a disastrous phase in foreign policy in which the League of Nations collapsed in the face of aggression by the fascist dictators; he clung to office largely because he had nothing else to live for.

Martin Pugh

Bibliography

Elton, G. , The Life of James Ramsay MacDonald (1939);
Marquand, D. , Ramsay MacDonald (1977);
Morgan, A. , J. Ramsay MacDonald (Manchester, 1987)

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