From humble beginnings, Ramsay Macdonald rose to become Britain's first Labour prime minister. He possessed many qualities - the gift for oratory, organizational skills and the capacity to work hard among them - but, despite all of his services to the Labour Party, he is rarely referred to in party literature today. In the demonology of the Labour Left he has a special place, for he has not been forgiven for abandoning his party to head an all-party National Government. Macdonald believed that in 1931 he was acting out a sense of duty. Others, less charitable, detected an excess of personal ambition and a loss of socialist zeal. Historians have also often been highly critical of Macdonald and have tended to portray him as another second-rate prime-minister of the inter-war era. In this
… read more...volume, the author sets out to redress the balance of the picture, by examining Macdonald's contribution to the early development of the Labour Movement as well as the better-known events of the period from 1920 to 1931.Read More read less...