Part 2 of 2
Great DepressionMain article: Great Depression in the United Kingdom
MacDonald's government had no effective response to the economic crisis which followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Philip Snowden was a rigid exponent of orthodox finance and would not permit any deficit spending to stimulate the economy, despite the urgings of Oswald Mosley, David Lloyd George and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Mosley put forward a memorandum in January 1930, calling for the public control of imports and banking as well as an increase in pensions to boost spending power. When this was repeatedly turned down, Mosley resigned from the government in February 1931 and formed the New Party. He later converted to Fascism.
By the end of 1930, unemployment had doubled to over two and a half million.[80] The government struggled to cope with the crisis and found itself attempting to reconcile two contradictory aims: achieving a balanced budget to maintain sterling on the gold standard, and maintaining assistance to the poor and unemployed, at a time when tax revenues were falling. During 1931, the economic situation deteriorated, and pressure from orthodox economists for sharp cuts in government spending increased. Under pressure from its Liberal allies, as well as the Conservative opposition who feared that the budget was unbalanced, Snowden appointed a committee headed by Sir George May to review the state of public finances. The May Report of July 1931, urged large public-sector wage cuts and large cuts in public spending, notably in payments to the unemployed, to avoid a budget deficit.[81]
Formation of the National GovernmentFurther information: National Government (1931)
Although there was a narrow majority in the Cabinet for drastic reductions in spending, the minority included senior ministers such as Arthur Henderson who made it clear they would resign rather than acquiesce in the cuts. With this unworkable split, on 24 August 1931, MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed, on the urging of King George V, to form a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals. With Henderson taking the lead, MacDonald, Snowden, and Thomas were quickly expelled from the Labour Party.[82] They responded by forming a new National Labour group, which provided a nominal party base for the expelled MPs, but received little support in the country or the unions. Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Riots took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester. Many in the Labour Party viewed this as a cynical move by MacDonald to rescue his career, and accused him of 'betrayal'. MacDonald, however, argued that the sacrifice was for the common good.[83][84]
1931 general electionIn the 1931 general election, the National Government won 554 seats, comprising 473 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour, now led by Arthur Henderson won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. Henderson and his deputy J. R. Clynes both lost their seats in Labour's worst-ever rout. Labour's disastrous performance at the 1931 election greatly increased the bitterness felt by MacDonald's former colleagues towards him. MacDonald was genuinely upset to see the Labour Party so badly defeated at the election. He had regarded the National Government as a temporary measure, and had hoped to return to the Labour Party.[80]
Premiership of the National Government (1931–1935)Further information: National Government (1931–1935)
The National Government's huge majority left MacDonald with the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but MacDonald had only a small following of National Labour men in Parliament. He was ageing rapidly, and was increasingly a figurehead. In control of domestic policy were Conservatives Stanley Baldwin as Lord President and Neville Chamberlain the chancellor of the exchequer, together with National Liberal Walter Runciman at the Board of Trade.[85] MacDonald, Chamberlain and Runciman devised a compromise tariff policy, which stopped short of protectionism while ending free trade and, at the 1932 Ottawa Conference, cementing commercial relations within the Commonwealth.[86]
Besides his preference for a cohesive British Empire and a protective tariff, he felt an independent British defence programme would be the wisest policy. However, budget pressures and a strong popular pacifist sentiment, forced a reduction in the military and naval budgets.[87] MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy. Assisted by the National Liberal leader and Foreign Secretary John Simon, he continued to lead British delegations to international conferences, including the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference in 1932, and the Stresa Conference in 1935.[88] He went to Rome in March 1933 to facilitate Nazi Germany's return to the concert of European powers and to continue the policy of appeasement.[89] On 16 August 1932 he granted the Communal Award upon India, partitioning it into separate electorates for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Untouchables. Most important of all, he presided at the world economic conference in London in June 1933. Nearly every nation was represented, but no agreement was possible. The American president torpedoed the conference with a bombshell message that the US would not stabilise the depreciating dollar. The failure marked the end of international economic co-operation for another decade.[90]
MacDonald was deeply affected by the anger and bitterness caused by the fall of the Labour government. He continued to regard himself as a true Labour man, but the rupturing of virtually all his old friendships left him an isolated figure. One of the only other leading Labour figures to join the government, Philip Snowden, was a firm believer in free trade and resigned from the government in 1932 following the introduction of tariffs after the Ottawa agreement.[91]
RetirementBy 1933 MacDonald's health was so poor that his doctor had to personally supervise his trip to Geneva. By 1934 MacDonald's mental and physical health declined further, and he became an increasingly ineffective leader as the international situation grew more threatening. His speeches in Commons and at international meetings became incoherent. One observer noted how "Things ... got to the stage where nobody knew what the Prime Minister was going to say in the House of Commons, and, when he did say it, nobody understood it". Newspapers did not report MacDonald denying to reporters that he was seriously ill because he only had "loss of memory".[62][25] His pacifism, which had been widely admired in the 1920s, led Winston Churchill and others to accuse him of failure to stand up to the threat of Adolf Hitler. His government began the negotiations for the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
In these years he was irritated by the attacks of Lucy, Lady Houston, the strongly nationalistic proprietor of the Saturday Review. Lady Houston believed that MacDonald was under the control of the Soviets and amused the nation by giving MacDonald such epithets as the 'Spider of Lossiemouth,' and hanging a large sign in electric lights from the rigging of her luxury yacht, the Liberty. According to some versions it read 'Down the Ramsay MacDonald,' and to others 'To Hell with Ramsay MacDonald.' Lady Houston also sent agents to disrupt his election campaigns. In 2020 new research revealed how she purchased three letters, supposedly written by Ramsay MacDonald to Soviet officials but actually the work of an American forger. In 1935 Lady Houston stated that she intended to publish them but eventually handed them over to Special Branch, and MacDonald's solicitors entered a legal battle with her.[92]
MacDonald was aware of his fading powers, and in 1935 he agreed to a timetable with Baldwin to stand down as Prime Minister after King George V's Silver Jubilee celebrations in May 1935. He resigned on 7 June in favour of Baldwin, and remained in the cabinet, taking the largely honorary post of Lord President vacated by Baldwin.[62]
After Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, MacDonald declared that he was "pleased" that the Treaty of Versailles was "vanishing", expressing his hope that the French had been taught a "severe lesson".[93]
Last years and deathAt the 1935 election MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell. Shortly after he was elected at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat, but his physical and mental health collapsed in 1936. King George V died a week before voting began in the Scottish by-election, and MacDonald deeply mourned his death,[94][95] paying tribute to him in his diary as "a gracious and kingly friend whom I have served with all my heart".[94][95] There had been a genuine mutual affection between the two; the King is said to have regarded MacDonald as his favourite prime minister.[96][97]
A sea voyage was recommended to restore MacDonald's health, but he died on board the liner MV Reina del Pacifico at sea on 9 November 1937, aged 71 with his youngest daughter Sheila. His funeral was in Westminster Abbey on 26 November. After cremation, his ashes were buried alongside his wife Margaret at Spynie in his native Morayshire.[62]
ReputationFor half a century, MacDonald was demonised by the Labour Party as a turncoat who consorted with the enemy and drove the Labour Party to its nadir. Later, however, scholarly opinion raised his status as an important founder and leader of the Labour Party, and a man who held Britain together during its darkest economic times.[98][99]
MacDonald's expulsion from Labour along with his National Labour Party's coalition with the Conservatives, combined with the decline in his physical and mental powers after 1931, left him a discredited figure at the time of his death, destined to receive years of unsympathetic treatment from generations of Labour-inclined British historians. The events of 1931, with the downfall of the Labour government and his coalition with the Conservatives, led to MacDonald becoming one of the most reviled figures in the history of the Labour Party, with many of his former supporters accusing him of betraying the party he had helped create.[100][101][102] MacNeill Weir, MacDonald's former parliamentary private secretary, published the first major biography The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald in 1938. Weir demonised MacDonald for obnoxious careerism, class betrayal and treachery.[103] Clement Attlee in his autobiography As it Happened (1954) called MacDonald's decision to abandon the Labour government in 1931 "the greatest betrayal in the political history of the country".[104] The coming of war in 1939 led to a search for the politicians who had appeased Hitler and failed to prepare Britain; MacDonald was grouped among the "Guilty Men".
By the 1960s, while union activists maintained their hostile attitude, scholars wrote with more appreciation of his challenges and successes.[105] Finally in 1977 he received a long scholarly biography that historians have judged to be "definitive."[106] Labour MP David Marquand, a trained historian who later became a professor of politics, wrote Ramsay MacDonald with the stated intention of giving MacDonald his due for his work in founding and building the Labour Party, and in trying to preserve peace in the years between the two world wars. He argued also to place MacDonald's fateful decision in 1931 in the context of the crisis of the times and the limited choices open to him. Marquand praised the prime minister's decision to place national interests before that of party in 1931. He also emphasised MacDonald's lasting intellectual contribution to socialism and his pivotal role in transforming Labour from an outside protest group to an inside party of government.[107]
Scholarly analysis about the economic decisions taken in the inter-war period such as the return to the Gold Standard in 1925, and MacDonald's desperate efforts to defend it in 1931, has changed. Robert Skidelsky, in his classic account of the 1929–31 government, Politicians and the Slump (1967), compared the orthodox policies advocated by leading politicians of both parties unfavourably with the more radical, proto-Keynesian measures proposed by David Lloyd George and Oswald Mosley. But in the preface to the 1994 edition Skidelsky argued that recent experience of currency crises and capital flight made it hard to be critical of politicians who wanted to achieve stability by cutting so-called "labour costs" and defending the value of the currency.[108] In 2004 Marquand advanced a similar argument:
In the harsher world of the 1980s and 1990s it was no longer obvious that Keynes was right in 1931 and the bankers wrong. Pre-Keynesian orthodoxy had come in from the cold. Politicians and publics had learned anew that confidence crises feed on themselves; that currencies can collapse; that the public credit can be exhausted; that a plummeting currency can be even more painful than deflationary expenditure cuts; and that governments which try to defy the foreign exchange markets are apt to get their—and their countries'—fingers burnt. Against that background MacDonald's response to the 1931 crisis increasingly seemed not just honourable and consistent, but right ... he was the unacknowledged precursor of the Blairs, the Schröders, and the Clintons of the 1990s and 2000s.[109]
Cultural depictionsFurther information: Cultural depictions of British prime ministers § Ramsay MacDonald
Personal lifeMacDonald c. 1900sRamsay MacDonald married Margaret Ethel Gladstone (no relation to Prime Minister William Gladstone) in 1896. The marriage was a very happy one, and they had six children, including Malcolm MacDonald (1901–81), who had a distinguished career as a politician, colonial governor and diplomat, and Ishbel MacDonald (1903–82), who was very close to her father. Another son, Alister Gladstone MacDonald (1898–1993) was a conscientious objector in the First World War, serving in the Friends' Ambulance Unit; he became a prominent architect who worked on promoting the planning policies of his father's government, and specialised in cinema design.[110] MacDonald was devastated by Margaret's death from blood poisoning in 1911, and had few significant personal relationships after that time, apart from with Ishbel, who acted as his consort while he was Prime Minister and cared for him for the rest of his life. Following his wife's death, MacDonald commenced a relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville.[111]
In the 1920s and 1930s he was frequently entertained by the society hostess Lady Londonderry, which was much disapproved of in the Labour Party since her husband was a Conservative cabinet minister.[112]
Ramsay MacDonald's religious life was varied, starting as a devout Christian and incrementally moving across his life into organised humanism, particularly the British Ethical movement. MacDonald's father held firm Calvinist beliefs, but as an adult Ramsay would join the Church of Scotland. Subsequently, he became interested in the Unitarian movement during his time in London, and led Unitarian worship sessions. His interest in Unitarianism led him to discover the Ethical Church, an early humanist association affiliated with the Union of Ethical Societies (today known as Humanists UK), which he joined as a member.[113][114] He regularly attended services at the South Place Ethical Society (now Conway Hall),[115] and became intensely involved in Union of Ethical Societies, and friends with its founder, Stanton Coit. Ramsay would write regularly in Stanton Coit's Ethical World, a humanist publication.[116] On more than one occasion, he had been elected chair of the Union at its annual meeting, evidencing the significance of his commitment to organised humanism.[117]
MacDonald's unpopularity in the country following his stance against Britain's involvement in the First World War spilled over into his private life. In 1916, he was expelled from Moray Golf Club in Lossiemouth for being deemed to bring the club into disrepute because of his pacifist views.[118] The manner of his expulsion was regretted by some members but an attempt to re-instate him by a vote in 1924 failed. However, a Special General Meeting held in 1929 finally voted for his reinstatement. By this time, MacDonald was Prime Minister for the second time. He felt the initial expulsion very deeply and refused to take up the final offer of membership, which he had framed and mounted.[119]
HonoursIn 1930, MacDonald was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) under Statute 12.[120] He was awarded honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees by the universities of Wales, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford and McGill and George Washington University.[121]
In popular cultureThe novel Fame is the Spur (1940) by Howard Spring is thought to be based on the life of MacDonald.[122]
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• Marquand, David. Ramsay MacDonald (Jonathan Cape, 1977); The most comprehensive scholarly biography; it launched his rehabilitation.
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• Phillips, Gordon: The Rise of the Labour Party 1893–1931, (Routledge 1992).
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• Rosen, Greg (ed.) Old Labour to New. The Dreams That Inspired, the Battles That Divided (London: Politicos Publishing 2005; ISBN 978-1-84275-045-2).
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• Shepherd, John and Keith Laybourn. Britain's First Labour Government (2006).
• Shepherd, John. The Second Labour Government: A reappraisal (2012).
• Skidelsky, Robert. Politicians and the Slump: The Labour Government of 1929–1931 (1967).
• Taylor, A.J.P. English History: 1914–1945 (1965)
• Thorpe, Andrew. "Arthur Henderson and the British political crisis of 1931." Historical Journal 31#1 (1988): 117–139, On the expulsion of MacDonald from the Labour Party.
• Thorpe, Andrew Britain in the 1930s. The Deceptive Decade (Blackwell 1992; ISBN 0-631-17411-7)
• Ward, Stephen R. James Ramsay MacDonald: Low Born among the High Brows (1990).
• Weir, L. MacNeill. The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald: A Political Biography (1938). Highly influential and extremely negative account by a former aide. online
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Historiography• Callaghan, John, et al. eds., Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches to Labour Politics and History (2003) online; also online free
• Loades, David, ed. Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 2:836-37.
• Shepherd, John. "The Lad from Lossiemouth," History Today (Nov 2007) 57#11 pp 31–33, historiography
Primary sources• Barker, Bernard (ed.) Ramsay MacDonald's Political Writings (Allen Lane, 1972).
• Cox, Jane A Singular Marriage: A Labour Love Story in Letters and Diaries (of Ramsay and Margaret MacDonald), London: Harrap 1988; ISBN 978-0-245-54676-1
• MacDonald, Ramsay The Socialist Movement (1911) online; free copy
• MacDonald, Ramsay Socialism and Society (1914) online
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Labour and Peace, Labour Party 1912
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Parliament and Revolution, Labour Party 1919
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Parliament and revolution (1920) online
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Foreign Policy of the Labour Party, Labour Party 1923
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Margaret Ethel MacDonald (1924) online
• MacDonald, Ramsay. Socialism: critical and constructive (1924) online
External linksRamsay MacDonaldat Wikipedia's sister projects
• Definitions from Wiktionary
• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• News from Wikinews
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Texts from Wikisource
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• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Ramsay MacDonald
• A left-wing criticism of Macdonald's career Socialist Review
• More about Ramsay MacDonald Prime Minister's Office
• Ramsay MacDonald Papers, 1893–1937
• Portraits of Ramsay MacDonald at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• "Archival material relating to Ramsay MacDonald". UK National Archives.
• Newspaper clippings about Ramsay MacDonald in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW