Month: June 2021

The photograph above shows two leading Labour Party politicians of the 1920s and 30s. For my mother, daughter of a miner in the North East of England, and someone with strong and passionate political convictions, one of these was a hero, the other a villain. You might have expected Ramsay MacDonald to be the hero, as first ever Labour Prime Minister, even if this was in a minority government in 1923-1924. But MacDonald seriously divided the Labour Party by joining a coalition National Government in 1931, after the collapse of his struggling and chaotic second minority Labour Government of 1929-31. Margaret Bondfield was Minister of Labour in that government, and the first woman ever to be a Cabinet Minister in Britain, just as in 1923-1924 she had been the first woman ever to hold a governmental position, as a Parliamentary Under Secretary. (The first woman to take a seat as a Member of Parliament was the upper class Nancy Astor, sitting as a Conservative).

Margaret Bondfield was initially known for her grass roots initiatives (around the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century) in organising and helping to unionise shopworkers – overwhelmingly women – and bringing their union, the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, into the ambit of the nascent Trades Union Congress. She memorably declared that she ‘had no vocation for wife-hood or motherhood, but an urge to serve the Union’. Initially a young shopworker herself, she did sterling work in recording the appalling working hours and conditions of this part of the working class, and campaigning for reforms to these conditions and associated low wages. She was already, in 1899, the first woman delegate to the Trades Union Annual Congress. It was this experience and background that made her a natural candidate for political office in the Ministry of Labour, in both of the first two Labour Governments.

By that time, in 1930, my mother was learning the hard way about the similar oppressively long hours and low pay associated with being a domestic servant in a rural aristocratic household. This would seem to make her an unlikely candidate for political activism, but she came from a mining family in Wallsend, that had lived through and suffered from the long aftermath of the 1926 General Strike. This experience left thousands of such mining families bruised and embittered by their ultimate defeat at the hands of the uncaring coal owners and the Tory Government supporting them. In 1926 Margaret Bondfield became the MP for Wallsend, winning this seat again in 1929, so a natural focus for my mother’s admiration.

Strikingly, Mum’s political feelings were captured more exactly by the travails of the suffragette movement. The divisions in this movement are well known; the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) under Emmeline and Christobel Pankhurst used violent protest methods but were ready to settle for a limited franchise based on age and a property qualification. The Adult Suffrage Movement were bent on gaining suffrage on equal terms with men, without any limitation. Margaret Bondfield was very active in this organisation, arguing that a limited franchise was of no benefit or interest to working class women. The limited reform passed in 1918 enfranchised all adult males, but restricted voting rights to women over 30, and property owners or wives of property owners. This brought in 8.5 million new women voters, which may have helped Labour to win minority government in 1923-4. But the Tory Governments from 1924-1929 resisted more radical change until 1928. It is thought that Winston Churchill, bolstered by his 1926 victories over the workers, used his influence behind the political scenes to prevent this reform, fearing that working class women would overwhelmingly support Labour. As indeed, in 1929, they clearly did, with the addition to the electorate of another 4 million new women voters, and women now a majority (52%) of that electorate.

This brings us to J. Ramsay MacDonald, initially lionised as the first Labour leader to form a government, if a minority one. The Conservatives under Baldwin had quickly resumed what they considered their rightful place, but were damaged by internal divisions and a rapidly worsening economic and social crisis, to be known as the Great Depression. In1929, McDonald led the Labour Party into another minority Government. But, as seems so often to be the case with the Labour Party over the twentieth century, this would prove to be a pyrrhic victory. The new government struggled to manage the economic and social crises of the early 1930s, unable to resolve how to meet the costs of rising unemployment and related benefits. Few Labour ministers came through this baptism of fire with much credit. Ministers with genuine working class credentials, like J H (Jimmy) Thomas, and Margaret Bondfield too, proved to be out of their depth, particularly unable to make an impression on unemployment and related social benefits, the one area where their supporters might have expected better; indeed, Margaret Bondfield’s reputation was forever clouded by her willingness to support cuts in benefits and stricter rules on entitlement.

Worst of all, Ramsey Macdonald turned out to be a busted flush, presiding over a chaotic administration and deeply divided party. He was all too ready to respond to siren overtures that projected him as, in effect, the figurehead of a national ‘coalition’ dominated by Conservative members. Only four of his Labour Cabinet went with him into the National Government and the rest withdrew to lick their wounds. Inevitably, Labour lost ground badly in the 1935 election. Only would eventual world war restore some influence through those Labour leaders regarded as capable of playing a full role in a genuine wartime coalition under Winston Churchill. Beatrice Webb had presciently seen through MacDonald’s blithe exterior in 1926:

He is no longer intent on social reform – any indignation he ever had at the present distribution of wealth he has lost; his real and intimate life is associating with non-aristocratic society, surrounded with the beauty and dignity which wealth can buy and social experience can direct. Ramsay MacDonald is not distinguished either in intellect or character, and he has some very mean traits in his nature.

Beatrice Webb:  Diaries, 1924-1932

Definitely an idol with feet of clay, and perhaps this is also true of Margaret Bondfield. Passionate Labour Party working class supporters like my parents were outraged by what was regarded as a betrayal by Ramsay MacDonald, and so described at the time by a young Ernest Bevin.

In my memoir Shifting Classes, I recall an incident in 1963 when I was working as Resident Clerk in the Commonwealth Relations Office. My opposite number in the Foreign Office was Kenneth Scott, and we often met to have drinks in each other’s flats, rather grandly overlooking St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace. My mother happened to be visiting me, and Ken Scott insisted that he would entertain us both. Ken always had a fund of stories about past politicians and their private secrets. He regaled us with a tale of Ramsay MacDonald, whilst PM, going missing in a serious international crisis because he was shooting on some aristocratic estate in Scotland and could not be reached. Mum was outraged all over again and entertained this young Foreign Office grandee (he would end a distinguished ambassadorial career with a knighthood) by her strongly expressed disdain for this once loved leader who had cynically betrayed the working class that had originally voted him into office.

She was in no better humour when I told her that at work, I had recently met Ramsay Macdonald’s son Malcolm, who as Governor General of Kenya had played an advisory role in relation to the recent negotiations for Kenyan independence. (After following his father into the National Government, son Malcolm had followed a political career in successive pre-war administrations, and then in Churchill’s wartime coalition, before pursuing a more diplomatic career in colonial affairs.) It was, I think, the feelings of class denial and betrayal that so alienated people like my Mum and Dad from these erstwhile leaders and heroes.

Doubtless we all have our favourite heroes, some of whom turn out, like the examples above, to have ‘feet of clay’. Many Labour supporters now would probably place Tony Blair in this category. But there are significant Conservative heroes with feet of clay too, and in my next blog I will turn my attention to Winston Churchill.

Leave a Comment