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James Ramsay Macdonald – an 'Aristocrat' Among Plain Men?

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James Ramsay Macdonald – an 'Aristocrat' Among Plain Men? CHAPTER 8 James Ramsay MacDonald – An ‘Aristocrat’ among Plain Men? No person ever did more to help build up a new political party than James Ramsay MacDonald. Few subsequently did more to damage their own creation. That was the essential tragedy of his life. It began in the most obscure and discouraging of circumstances. He was born on 12 October 1866, the illegitimate son of a young servant 125 D. Leonard, A Century of Premiers © Dick Leonard 2005 126 A Century of Premiers girl, Annie Ramsay. She had been working on a farm near the fishing village of Lossiemouth on the Moray Firth. His father, John MacDonald, was a ploughman on the farm, who soon afterwards disappeared from the area and from all subsequent trace, though not before he and Annie had together confessed their sin before the local Kirk and been granted absolution. They had been engaged to be married, and it is probable that it was Annie herself who broke off the engagement, though whether this was of her own volition or because her formidable mother, Bella Ramsay, regarded him as an unworthy suitor is far from clear and will presumably never be known. MacDonald grew up to be an exceptionally handsome and attractive man, which led to a great deal of speculation – particularly among the aristocratic women who took him up after he became Prime Minister – that his ‘real’ father must have been a Highland laird, or even, it was suggested, the Duke of Argyll. There was never the slightest justification for such a belief. He was raised in a tiny cottage in Lossiemouth by his mother and grandmother, both of whom scratched a living as seamstresses. The centre of their lives was young Jamie, who was lavished with care and attention, neither woman doubting for one moment that he was a superior being destined for higher things. Apart from them, the greatest influence on his young life was James MacDonald (no relation), the remarkable teacher, or dominie, of Drainie village school, four miles’ walk from his home. During the ten years that he attended the school, whose 70 pupils shared a single teacher, assisted by a student teacher and a sewing mis- tress, Jamie acquired a remarkably wide education. He became adept at Latin and Greek, devoured the works of Scott, Carlyle, Ruskin and Hazlitt and acquired a passion for science, which he fostered by reading university textbooks which he picked up at a second-hand bookshop. At 15 he left to work in the fields, but was rescued from manual labour, after a month or two, by the dominie, who eagerly recruited his prize student to replace the pupil teacher who had left for Edinburgh. He brought to his new duties a lively intelligence, a soaring imagina- tion and a burning ambition to succeed. He had a commanding physi- cal presence and an appealing personality, though this concealed a darker side – he was suspicious, secretive and quick to take offence, a sensitivity perhaps related to his illegitimacy. As a child the only time he had been in any trouble was when he seriously injured a fellow pupil who had referred to him as a ‘bastard’, and as an adult he took pains to conceal his origins. When during the First World War he was viciously James Ramsay MacDonald 127 attacked as a ‘traitor’ and ‘coward’ by the right-wing jingoist Horatio Bottomley, he appeared unconcerned. Yet when Bottomley followed this up by publishing a facsimile of his birth certificate in the magazine John Bull, he was devastated, saying repeatedly: ‘Thank God my mother is dead for this would have killed her’ (Williams 1965, p.62). MacDonald remained at the school for a further four years, deepen- ing his own education and playing a full part in the social and intellec- tual life of the local community. Yet the wider world beckoned, and at 18 he began to scour the situations vacant columns of The Scotsman, and to apply for posts all over Britain. Eventually, he was successful and left in the summer of 1885 to take up a position in Bristol, assisting a clergyman to set up a Boys’ and Young Men’s Guild. Within six months he was back in Lossiemouth, though it is unclear whether he had left the job of his own accord or had been found wanting by his employer. While at Bristol, however, he had become a Socialist, joining the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and playing a very active part in its local branch. After a few frustrating months he left Lossiemouth again, this time for good. He headed for London, after hearing from a Bristol friend of a suitable post that might be available. On arrival he found that it had been filled only the day before, and he embarked on a dispiriting and increasingly desperate search for work, living in cheap lodgings in Kentish Town and surviving on a diet of oatmeal and hot water. Eventually he found a temporary job addressing envelopes for the National Cyclists’ Union, at 10s. a week, and subsequently a more permanent post in the City as an invoice clerk, starting at 12s. 6d. a week. His spare time was divided between Socialist activities – he aban- doned the SDF in favour of the Socialist Union, a short-lived movement which adopted a much more moderate approach – and serious scientific studies at the Birkbeck Institute. These he hoped would lead to a schol- arship at the South Kensington Museum. But his health broke down through over-work, before he was able to take the examination, and he abandoned his hopes of a scientific career. Instead, in 1888, he was for- tunate to obtain a post as private secretary to Thomas Lough, a tea mer- chant and aspiring radical Liberal politician, who was to be elected as MP for West Islington in 1892. This appointment substantially changed MacDonald’s life. His income rose sharply, to £75 a year rising to £100, and the work was much more congenial, bringing him into contact with a wide range of radical Liberal circles, and introducing him into prosperous middle- class society. He joined the Fabian Society, the East London Ethical 128 A Century of Premiers Society and even the Fellowship of the New Life, a Utopian Socialist group, from which the more down-to-earth Fabians had split off some years before. If the Fabians appealed to his practical sense, the Fellowship gave full rein to the high moral aspirations which were to characterise his speeches and writings throughout most of his political career. He became active in the Fabians, spending some time in 1892 as a paid lecturer touring the provinces on their behalf. By then he had resigned his post with Thomas Lough and was eking out a precarious existence as a freelance journalist. Through his Liberal contacts, he had come into touch with the Labour Electoral Association, a body devoted to securing the election to Parliament of working men. Its favoured tactic was to obtain their selec- tion by local Liberal associations as Lib-Lab candidates, particularly in two-member constituencies where they could balance the ticket by run- ning in harness with more traditional middle-class candidates. Had the Liberals been more open to such arrangements it is possible that the movement towards founding an independent Labour Party might never have got off the ground. Yet time and time again, aspirant Lib-Lab can- didates were turned down, and this was MacDonald’s fate in 1894, when he responded to an invitation to offer himself as the second Liberal candidate in Southampton, then represented by one Liberal and one Conservative MP. He was rejected, and this prompted him to join the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which had been founded the previ- ous year by Keir Hardie and others. He fought the 1895 general election in Southampton as an ILP candidate, coming bottom of the poll by a wide margin. His intervention, however, almost certainly led to the defeat of the sitting Liberal MP, the Tories capturing both seats. His candidature had a momentous consequence for MacDonald. He received a cheque for £1 towards his election fund from an unknown sympathiser, signed ‘M.E. Gladstone’. This turned out to be a 25-year- old social worker, Margaret Gladstone, who came from a distinguished and prosperous academic family. She had fallen at least half in love with MacDonald before she had even met him, and their courtship proceeded rapidly. They became engaged on the steps of the British Museum in July 1896, and married the following November. It was an ideal partnership – Margaret, while sharing his basic values and commitment, was a much more outgoing personality, which did a lot to mitigate the aloofness which tended to surround her brooding Scottish husband. As well as bearing him six children, one of whom died in infancy from diphtheria, she threw herself wholeheartedly into all his activities, and their apartment in Lincoln’s Inn, as well as their James Ramsay MacDonald 129 Buckinghamshire cottage, became an ever-welcoming meeting place for his growing number of political associates. As well as her personal qualities, Margaret brought, for the first time, financial security to MacDonald. Though not conspicuously wealthy, she had a sufficiently large private income to enable him to devote himself full time to his political work. They were also in a position to undertake a series of lengthy overseas tours – to the United States, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand, which stimulated MacDonald’s inter- est and left him far better informed on foreign affairs than any of his Labour colleagues.
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