Gordon Lucy: The fatal flaws that undermined Ramsay MacDonald's first Labour government

MacDonald’s minority government survived for only nine months because it was utterly dependent on the unreliable support of Asquith’s Liberal Party. There were also tensions between MacDonald, Philip Snowden (the chancellor of the Exchequer) and Arthur Henderson (the home secretary), the government’s key members, and the administration was subject to constant sniping from the left. (‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’)

Opinions differ as to how much was achieved by the administration but the consensus is that John Wheatley’s Housing Act, which provided for a building programme over a period of 15 years, designed to secure the erection of 2,500,000 houses to be let at rents within the means of the working class population, was by far and away its most significant legislative achievement. Wheatley, who was born in Co Waterford, was a Glaswegian MP and proved to be a very able minister of health.

MacDonald chose to combine the office of prime minister with that of foreign secretary. Wishing to normalise relations with Russia, he announced his intention to negotiate a trade treaty (or treaties) with the Soviet Union in February 1924.

Predictably the Conservative Party was unenthused but – more ominously for the government – the Liberals were vehement in their opposition.

In the event, what brought the government down was its handling of the Campbell case. John Ross Campbell was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the editor of Workers Weekly, a Communist Party newspaper. A provocative article entitled ‘An Open Letter to the Fighting Forces’ appeared in the issue of July 25 which could be construed as an incitement to mutiny.

The attorney general advised prosecuting Campbell under the Incitement to Mutiny Act of 1797 but pressure from Labour backbenchers forced MacDonald to withdraw the charges on August 13.

The Conservatives put down a censure motion, to which the Liberals added an amendment. MacDonald resolved to treat both motions as matters of confidence. On October 8 the Liberal amendment was carried by a rather large majority (166 compared to the single vote which brought down James Callaghan’s government in a confidence vote in 1979 – the next occasion when a government fell on a confidence motion), and the King granted MacDonald a dissolution the following day. The Campbell Case and the Russian treaties dominated the election campaign, coalescing into the single issue of ‘the Bolshevik threat’ or ‘the Red menace’.

A Conservative victory was virtually preordained. From the beginning of the year the Parliamentary arithmetic suggested the inevitability of another election before its end and the Conservatives prepared accordingly. Opposing a weak government was not difficult – a situation rendered even easier by the government’s lack of control over its backbenchers –and the Liberal Party’s state of disarray.

On important votes, it was not unusual for the Liberals to split three ways which greatly undermined their credibility. Possessing the largest cohesive bloc of votes in the Commons, Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative leader, dominated the House and appeared like a prime minister in waiting.

On October 29 1924 the Conservative Party was duly returned with 412 MPs, making an astonishing 154 gains.

MacDonald had fully appreciated that a Conservative landslide was the most likely outcome and correctly anticipated that Conservative gains would be disproportionately at the expense of the Liberal Party – as nervous Liberals frightened of socialism defected to the Tories.

Although Labour lost 40 seats, in part through fielding 87 additional candidates the party managed to poll an extra million votes. More importantly, with 151 seats, Labour remained ‘the alternative party of government’ – well ahead of the Liberals who were reduced to a rump of only 40.

The Liberals lost 118 of their 158 seats. Asquith even lost his own seat.

Labour mythology attributes defeat to ‘dirty tricks and lies in the press’ – a reference to the ‘Zinoviev letter’. Labour believed that the ‘Zinoviev letter’ was a forgery given to the press a few days before the election by elements of the Establishment, principally the intelligence services, the Foreign Office and the Conservative Party, to discredit the party and to ensure its electoral defeat.

Grigory Zinoviev was a high-ranking and influential Bolshevik, a close associate of Lenin and chairman of the Communist International (Comintern) between 1919 and 1926.

The letter allegedly issued in Zinoviev’s name was a directive to the CPGB to mobilise ‘sympathetic forces’ in the Labour Party to support an Anglo-Soviet treaty (including a loan to the Bolshevik government) and to encourage ‘agitation-propaganda’ in the armed forces.

The letter also suggested that the normalisation of Anglo-Soviet relations would radicalise the British working class and put the CPGB in a favourable position to foment revolution. Furthermore, the impact would extend throughout the Empire.

Zinoviev denied authorship of the letter and probably accurately blamed the production on White Russians. Nevertheless, the views expressed in the letter chimed perfectly with those of the Comintern.

Irrespective of its provenance, the impact of the letter was probably negligible. Any damage to the Labour’s electoral prospects was the self-inflicted result of the Campbell case and the Russian treaties.

The historian and Conservative politician Robert Rhodes James observed that the letter provided Labour ‘with a magnificent excuse for failure and defeat’ but from the other end of the political spectrum, A J P Taylor reached a virtually identical conclusion – that the letter's most important impact was on the Labour mindset which for years afterwards blamed foul play for the party’s defeat, thereby misunderstanding the political forces at play.

However, the Campbell case and the Russian treaties dented neither MacDonald’s almost unassailable standing within the Labour movement nor prevented the party winning the most seats in the House of Commons for the first time in the general election of 1929. Labour won 287 seats, a net gain of 136, placing MacDonald and the second Labour government in a significantly stronger parliamentary position than they had been in 1924.