Ramsay MacDonald

Biography

James Ramsay MacDonald was born in Lossiemouth, Moray, in 1866, the illegitimate son of a farm labourer and a housemaid. After village schooling and work as a pupil teacher he moved to Bristol and then London, where he worked as a clerk, studied science at the Birkbeck Institution until ill health ended his studies, and became private secretary to the Radical politician Thomas Lough before turning to journalism. Active in socialist circles from the Social Democratic Federation to the Fabians, he joined the Independent Labour Party in 1894.

In 1900 he became secretary of the Labour Representation Committee and, with Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, was one of the founders of the Labour Party. Elected for Leicester in 1906, he led the Labour MPs from 1911 until his opposition to the First World War isolated him in 1914. Returning to the Commons in 1922, he became Labour leader and in January 1924 formed the first Labour government, a minority administration that fell later that year amid the Zinoviev letter controversy.

He formed a second Labour government in 1929, negotiated the London Naval Treaty of 1930, and struggled with the Great Depression. In August 1931 he formed a National Government dominated by Conservatives to make spending cuts, for which Labour expelled him; the National Government won a landslide at the October 1931 election. His health declined, and in 1935 he handed the premiership to Stanley Baldwin, staying on as Lord President of the Council until 1937. He died at sea that November.