From Lossiemouth to London

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1004, 21 June 1930, Page 30

From Lossiemouth to London

Life Story of Britain's Prime Minister

A Scots Lad’s Rise to Fame y

(By

Mary Agnes Hamilton.)

THE KVS has secured tlis rights a/ this interesting biography of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of England, The third instalment, appears below. The biography will be continued each Saturday. HI—JAMES AND MARGARET MACDONALD. T>EHIND him When he entered the -*-* House of Commons in 1906 as member for Leicester, was a piece of hard, constructive work on which all that has since followed in the extraordinary history of the rise qf Labour, was sescurely based. Pie was the principal architect of the new party, which then appeared at Westminister; he had built its organisation, and In the main supplied its guiding ideas. In these years, too, he had completed his personal equipment in a remarkable way. As secretary, first of the Labour Representation Committee, and from 1906, until he succeeded Hardie as leader of the Parliamentary party of the Labour Party, he was in close contact with

the industrial as well as the political side of the movement; he knew its personnel as did few, both national aud local, for throughout these years he had been incessantly busy speaking up and down the country. So he had not only established a great reputation as an orator, but had acquired that unique hold on the confidence and affection of the rank-and-file worker from one end of the British Isles to the other, which he has never lost. Administrative and practical experience had been added, through his membership of the London School Board. All this, enlightened by wide reading, had been further illuminated by extensive (ravel. As representative of Britain international Socialist gatherings, he learned to know the leading men in the various countries of Europe; he bad also paid extensive visits to the United States and to the Dominions. So it was no ordinary M.P. who appeared in Westminster for the first time in 1906; Westminster which was from that time on to be the focus of ffis active life, with a brief gap between 1918 and 1923. The keen eye of Joseph Chamberlain at once detected a coming man; it is on record that he heard his maiden speech aud sent him a message of congratulation.

But Parliamentary work, though arduous enough for anyone who took it as seriously as he did who from t.Ue first set himself to master every detail of its complicated method and procedure, did not exhaust his activities. He was chairman of the Independent Labour Party from 1907-1910, stormy years of internal controversy, a.nd dominant in its councils both at home and abroad. He was actively and incessantly engaged in propaganda both in speech and writing. His first book, “What I Saw in South Africa” (1902), was followed In 1903 by a study of “The Zollverein and British Industry.” His journeyings in India In 1910 were recorded In “The Awakening of India,” aud in 1911 appeared one of the most successful volumes in a remarkably successful series—“ The Socialist Movement” —in the Home University Library. But at the .time this outward success was nothing. A series of heavy blows fell on him in 1910 and 19li, which darkened and shadowed his personal life, and reft from him the happiness that had sweetened and lightened the hard work which had culminated in so much achievement. To the picture he lias himself drawn of his wife, Margaret Ethel Mac- j Donald, there is little that any other i biographer can add or would wish j to add. Written as her own request as! she lay dying in the autumn of 1911. it I fells us - all we need wish to know of their relationship and of herself. At the time of his forlorn fight at Southampton, he received from Margaret Ethel Gladstone a contribution to his fighting fund. A letter followed when, after it, he fell ill. Meetings followed in Hoxton and elsewhere, concerned with the work they were both doing on then different lines, though in the same spirit. The daughter of a distinguished chemist who had succeeded Faraday as chemist at the Royal Institution, and niece to Lord Kelvin, Margaret Gladstone belonged to a world apparently very different, but was in her own person a very noble representative of thethen smallish and now much larger band of men and women who, finding in Socialism the expression of their native moral aspirations, are the living proof of the fact .that it is no class creed. Within a few months of their first meeting they were engaged: in November, 1596, they married, and went to live in 3 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was soon to become a centre, both social and. intellectual, for all that was most interesting and alert in tho cause to which both husband and i wife were dedicated—an international I as well as a national centre, where i

Socialists of all rauks from all lands were sure of a welcome that made them feel among friends. There their six children, three sons and three daughters, were born; there, for 15 years, was the place to which anyone interested either in a good cau.se or in good conversation went first. Of 3 Lincoln's Inn Field and of its mistress (to whom a beautiful memorial now stands in the gardens, in which Margaret MacDonald is depicted in the midst of the little children for whom she cared to passionately), the story .lias been tofd by its bereaved master. The biography, written after its subject’s death, contains some of his best and most characteristic writing, and in tha.t sense is revealing; but it is a biography, not an autobiography. By a rare feat of craftsmanship, no less than of self-suppression, the writer hardly appears. Margaret Ethel MacDonald as herself, not as the wife of Ramsay MacDonald, is its subject—a personality candid as the day, simple, devout, unperptexed. In 1911 he had succeeded Keir

Hardie as leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons. These were years of extreme difficulty both politically and industrially. Two extraordinarily dramatic episodes, closely connected, give to Ramsay MacDonald’s political career an outline that will fascinate the historian of the future. When in August, 1914, lie refused Cabinet office, and resigned his leadership of the Labour Party, he seemed with full awareness of what he was doing, to be committing political suicided He took a stand which hardly anyone in his own party and very few outside it shared or understood. Within a few days he became the most vilified and unpopular man in England. His name was shouted from ! the housetops, in accents of savage loathing. To thousands of people who had hardly heard of him before ho became a bogy. And life campaign then started was hardly x-elaxed. Fresh fuel was continually being thrown upon it. When tile popular temperature seemed to be cooling down, it was raised again in tlie Press or from the platform. There was in this a curious, inverted tribute to some quality in the man that made it impossible to prevent people from being interested in him, even if their interest took a rancorous form. No other opponent, of the war sacrificed so much, none was so vilified. At the 1918 Geueral Election he lost his seat in Parliament. Leicester, for which lie liad sat since 1906, rejected him by a 14,000 majority for a renegade pacifist running on the Coalition tick'et. But it still looked as though the dangerous career were ended. On calumny there now succeeded silence. There was a brief break, a brief revival of war-time obloquy at the Woolwich by-election in 1921; then-silence again. So far as the average reader of the papers was aware, MacDonald was wiped off. As the Geueral Election began to draw nearer, bright persons constructed imaginary Cabinets When their ingenuity extended to dreams of a Labour Cabinet they filled it with “patriotic” privy councillors. To suggest that there was an alternative to Mr. Henderson or Mr. Clynes or Mr. Thomas, as leader of the Labour Party, was in ordinary middle-class circles to be stared at aghast. Even by “The Nation,” the highest office assigned to him was Secretary for India. Aberavon, with a Coalition majority of over 6,000 was regarded by most electioneering forecast makers as hopeless for a Labour j candidate. His election as leader was really a i foregone conclusion, once his return I was known. The new men in (he j party, speaking with the voices that made it representative as that, of 1918-1922 was not, were determined, aud they spoke for the overwhelming sense of the rank and file. it was not a question of Parliamentary ability merely. in personality, character and record, he incarnated the ideas that had won victories at the polls. So within the space of less than a week the tables were completely turned. The silence was broken. Tlie Press had to bow its head, as gracefully as it knew how, before the accomplished fact. The slate was cleaned; it was suggested that the tradition of pre-1914 days was resumed. A few voices recalled sadly that there had been no recantation, that MacDonald had never receded an inch from the position of August, 1914. But tlie general effort was “Forgive and forget.” Only here and there a timid shame-faced, .uncertain recognition glimmers through the meaning of this extraordinary episode. It has been obscured by MacDonald’s own intellectual ability, and tlie ease with j which he at once established himself | as a commanding House of Commons I figure. ] There are so many stories of the j hot hectic days of the end of July and j opening of August, 1914, that it is j hard to disentangle a coherent narra-

tive —wisest, perhaps, not to try. There are, however, one or two well authenticated fragments, bearing on his part in it that may be worth recording, iu order that, at a later date, and with fuller information, they may be fitted into a complete picture. The Cabinet sat continuously. On the Sunday, August 2. Ramsay MacDonald, so Mr. Masterman has recently reminded us. was sent for. He could have come away, it is well known, a Minister designate. He made his way to Downing Street in the late afternoon. Parliament Street was crowded. In the midst of the crowd, unrecognised and unnoticed, he rau into Lord Morley. Morley asked him what line be was taking. “I am going to have nothing to do with it." “Neither shall I.” was the reply. Morley went on to warn him there was a AVhi.te Book to be published, which “will blow us all out of the water.” MacDonald inquired whether it contained all the truth. “Nothing like it.” was the answer. “Then,” said MacDonald, “don’t mind.” The story goes on to recount how, later in the evening of the same direful day. he was present at a gathering of a certain Cabinet circle. Ely then the die had been cast. War, lie was told, was inevitable: it was believed, however, that it would be most unpopular. "Rubbish,” was his retort. “It will be the most popular war this country ever engaged in. Book out of the windows now and you will see the people beginning to go mad.” \Y}>en the House of Commons reassembled on August 3, the Labour Party had already met. and discussed the situation. MacDonald, as leader, had put his view and carried the party with him: the main points in the statements he was to make were agreed upon. Remember, however, that in 1911 Labour mustered about 40 odd members. One, PLiilip Snowden, was abroad, in Australia. (To be continued next Saturday.)