Ramsay MacDonald: A Biography

This is the biography of Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. It attempts to disentangle the real MacDonald from the MacDonald of legend, painting a sympathetic portrait of him. The illegitimate son of a Scottish servant girl, MacDonald became a Socialist at the age of 19 and spent nearly half a century preaching his own brand of parliamentary socialism. He did a great deal to shape the thinking of the early Labour Party and to transform it from a weak and deferential trade union pressure group into the main left-wing party in the state. However, after the crisis of 1931, when MacDonald broke with the Labour Party in an agony of conflicting loyalties, and formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals, adulation turned to abuse.