Life and work of James Ramsay MacDonald (British PM)1866-1937

Born 12 October 1866, James Ramsay MacDonald was the first Labour Prime Minister and came from a working class family. He grew up in Lossiemouth, Scotland.

He worked as a teacher at the local board school he attended, and at 18 moved to Bristol as a clergyman’s assistant, where he joined the Social Democratic Federation.

MacDonald was employed as a Liberal candidate’s assistant in London for 3 years, and joined the Independent Labour Party in 1893. He stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate in 1895, meanwhile working as a journalist. Yet, with the encouragement of his new wife Margaret, he rose through the party ranks.

Elected for Leicester in 1906, he established a reputation as a distinguished thinker. In 1911 he became chairman of the parliamentary Labour group.

As the Labour Party grew, however, he was criticised as being too moderate. His opposition to the Great War made him more unpopular still, and he was mercilessly attacked by the press. He lost his seat in 1918, but later returned to represent a Welsh mining constituency.

Back in Parliament, he became party leader and therefore Leader of the Opposition. In 1924 he was asked by George V to form a government when Stanley Baldwin’s small Conservative majority proved ungovernable.

In the first-ever Labour government, the survival of MacDonald’s small Commons majority depended on the good will of opposition parties. This difficult situation prompted him to call an election.

During the campaign a newspaper published the notorious ‘Zinoviev letter’. Although later accepted to be a fraud, the letter ruined MacDonald’s anti-Communist credentials. His Labour administration was then heavily defeated in the election.

Mr Ramsay Macdonald
1866 – November 9, 1937

Constituencies

Leicester January 12, 1906 – December 14, 1918
Aberavon November 15, 1922 – May 30, 1929
Seaham May 30, 1929 – November 14, 1935
Combined Scottish Universities January 31, 1936 – November 9, 1937

Offices

Minister 1922 – 1924
Prime Minister January 22, 1924 – November 3, 1924
Prime Minister June 5, 1929 – June 6, 1935
Lord President of the Council 1935 – 1937In 1927 he had a mysterious throat infection and almost died on a visit to the United States. He spent a month recovering at a hospital in Philadelphia.

In his second minority government in 1929, MacDonald set an historic precedent by appointing Margaret Bondfield as the first female minister. Economic crises, including the doubling of unemployment levels, persuaded him to also include the opposition leaders in a cross-party national government. However, this step lost him the support of his own party and he resigned in 1935.

The coalition was considered by many party members to be a cynical betrayal of their hopes and MacDonald subsequently lost his seat. He then fought to return to Parliament, winning a by-election 2 years before his death on the way to South America in 1937.

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Ramsay’s Major Works

• Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study (1904)
• Socialism and Society (1905)
• Labour and the Empire (1907)
• Socialism and government (1909) in 2 vols.
• The Socialist Movement (1911)
• Labour and Peace, Labour Party 1912
• Syndicalism: a critical examination (1912)
• The social unrest; its cause & solution (1913)
• “Introduction” in Jean Jaurès, socialist and humanitarian (1917)
• National defence, a study in militarism (1918)
• Socialism after the war (1918)
• The Government of India (1920)
• Parliament and democracy (1920)
• Parliament and revolution (1920)
• Socialism: Critical and Constructive (1921)
• A socialist in Palestine (1922)
• Foreign Policy of the Labour Party, Labour Party 1923
• Margaret Ethel MacDonald (1924)
• The Awakening in India

Death of  James Ramsay MacDonald ( Reported in TIME)

Monday, Nov. 22, 1937

Three days out from Liverpool last week on the small British liner Reina del Pacifico, slowly plowing its way south toward Bermuda and a South American cruise, most of the passengers were just finishing a hearty dinner. In London at the same instant most of the political bigwigs of Britain were finishing an even heartier one, the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet. Too ill to eat his own was the Reina’s most distinguished passenger, James Ramsay MacDonald. At 8:45 he quietly died of heart failure at the age of 71.

Few men living have been more beloved by their friends or maligned by their acquaintances than Ramsay MacDonald. A sentimental Lowland Scot who loved to write sad verses for his friends,* he was a founder of the British Labor Party, the first person to bring it to a position of importance in British affairs, three times Prime Minister of Great Britain and an intimate personal friend of King George V. Yet “traitor” was a word hurled at him over & over throughout the last 20 years. Because he spoke out loudly against British entry in the World War in 1914 he was ostracized as a traitor to the nation for years. Because he felt it necessary to abandon the principles of the old Labor Party in forming his coalition cabinet or ”National Government” in 1931, Ramsay MacDonald was called a traitor by most of British organized labor.

Failing eyesight and mental depression broke his health. The Crown, anxious to honor him, offered him an earldom last May, but Scot MacDonald turned it down lest it crimp the political chances of his son Malcolm who. as Secretary of State for the Dominions, hustled back from the Brussels Conference last week to arrange his father’s funeral. Because doctors worried greatly over Scot MacDonald’s increasing melancholia, he was sent on the Reina del Pacifico cruise with his youngest daughter, Sheila, for companion. With his body still at sea. the British Government proffered him the honor of a Westminster Abbey burial. This the MacDonald family politely refused. For years Ramsay MacDonald had hoped to be buried in his beloved Lossiemouth, beside his still more beloved wife, Margaret Ethel, who died in 1911.

Ramsay MacDonald’s speech on India before UK Parliament (Extract)

26 January 1931 vol 247 cc637-762

There is a kind of reserved subject which is not fully a reserved subject, though it is rather in the nature of one. There are subjects which have to be determined by safeguards. The first of these is finance. I am dealing with the central authority. Obviously, if there are reserved services like Defence under the control of the Governor-General, the Governor-General must be secured in the finance that is required for the exercise of his authority as the custodian of those reserved subjects. So the first condition of the transfer of the responsibility for finance to the executive has regard to the guarantees and safeguards that have to be put in with regard to the finance of reserved services. Methods for doing that are accordingly in the report. There is another group of financial guarantees. The Secretary of State has undertaken obligations, loans, and such things, in India’s interest and as the representative of India, and these obligations must be covered by way of a safeguard.

Then there is the general position of confidence and credit. It is essential that in the transfer to India of any form or any amount of financial responsibility, care must be taken that the transfer is not to be accompanied by a loss of confidence or a damage to credit. Otherwise, India will suffer very severely in the course of the transfer. Here, again, the proposal is made in the work of the sub-committee concerned with Federal structure that a Reserve Bank outside political control should be established, because such a bank, we are advised by our financial advisers, will tend to maintain the credit of India and shield it from the suffering which it might have to undergo if any sort of panic or lack of confidence arose regarding its financial administration.

There are some general safeguards—the maintenance of tranquility, law and order, and so on. A great deal is being made about this. I see that some of our critics are placing far too much emphasis upon paper provisions. There are such safeguards in operation, at least in the background, in every free constitution in the world. We have them here. All that the safeguard amounts to is that in the event of an emergency power must be in somebody’s hands to protect the State and to see that law and order are not allowed to go to rack and ruin without any attempt being made to keep them stable. This is not a safeguard suggested to be imposed upon India because we cannot trust her, as I see some of the Indian papers are trying to make out. This is a safeguard transported from every free constitution, where it exists in some shape or form, into the Indian constitution, and it is not meant to be used in ordinary times. It is meant simply to be latent in the background, and we impressed upon the Indians who were here that on no account were they to allow Indian opinion to assume that that was going to be an active power exercised by the Governor-General, but that the less it was used, and the more it was almost forgotten, the better Great Britain would be pleased.

With regard to the success of the working of the constitution, there are certain special problems. It has been proposed by every community, from the Mohammedans to the tiniest minority of Indian Christians, that when the constitution has been drafted, it must contain a declaration of the rights of the individual irrespective of caste, creed, community or anything else, and, if that declaration is made, there must be some reserved power, some safeguard given to the governors of the provinces or to the Governor-General of India. Subject to these provisions, a central executive responsible to the legislature will be established and recognised.

One other great misunderstanding is, I see, being made a good deal of. It is stated that this executive, this ministry, is to be appointed by the Governor-General, and we are told by some of our critics in India that that means that he is going to do this of his own free will. Those of us who have sat on the Front Opposition Benches and who are sitting here, know perfectly well that we are appointed by His Majesty the King, and that is all that is meant by this. The Governor-General will appoint these ministers in precisely the same way as His Majesty himself appoints his Government here, and to secure that, there will be instructions in the Instrument of Instructions issued to the Governor-General as soon as this condition of affairs is in being in India. Therefore, it is possible to create at the centre a legislature and an executive.