2 weeks Ago
This year sees the centenary of the first Labour government and the first government in which a woman – Margaret Bondfield – held any kind of ministerial post, serving as parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Labour. The first Labour prime minister was Ramsay MacDonald. He was born at Lossiemouth in Scotland, a few miles from where my family are, though he is unrelated.
He was the illegitimate child of a servant girl and a ploughman. He grew up in his granny’s house and moved to London aged 19. A member of the Labour Party from 1894, he was one of 29 Labour MPs elected to Parliament in 1906.
Ramsay MacDonald - no relation! (Image: PA Archive/Press Association Images) He was opposed to the First World War and resigned as Labour leader. His anti-war stance cost him his seat at the 1918 election and the Lossiemouth golf club threw him out too. The well-to-do of Lossiemouth also prevented him building a house on Prospect Terrace, a 100 foot high ridge which has a fantastic view along the coast.
He built a house which has a complete stone wall with just two narrow staircase windows facing Prospect Terrace. He was re-elected to parliament in 1922, allowing him to become Prime Minister in 1924, the first from a working-class background. He led a minority government with under 200 MPs.
The Government lasted only nine months, but it was still able to support the unemployed with the extension of benefits and a Housing Act was passed, which greatly expanded council housing for low paid workers. The first council houses in Ipswich, in Allenby Road, had been built in 1921 and I’m sure that the Act would have helped create more council housing in our town. This is an interesting parallel with the current Labour Government which is keen on building council housing and is to pledge an extra £500m for this.
Four days before the election, the Daily Mail reported on a letter sent from Grigory Zinoviev, the President of Communist International, to the British representative to "develop the ideas of Leninism in England". Historians agree the Zinoviev letter was a forgery, but this is not the last time that the Daily Mail has thrown mud at the Labour Party! The biggest legacy of the 1924 parliament was that Labour replaced the Liberals as the main opposition to the Tories. In 1929, MacDonald again formed a minority government.
This government was in a stronger parliamentary position than his first, and he was able to raise unemployment pay, improve wages and conditions in the coal industry and pass a second Housing Act which focused on slum clearances. Margaret Bondfield was appointed as Minister of Labour, becoming the first-ever woman cabinet minister. She paved the way for others to follow and now Keir Starmer’s Cabinet has 12 female members, just under half.
I attended a recent Labour in Local Government event, where five of the six people on stage were women. Halfway through, three of the women were swapped for three other women. The depth of talented Labour women has come a long way in 100 years.
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will deliver the first Budget of this Labour government. This budget is Britain’s last chance to escape the high-tax, low-growth doom loop of the past 14 years. She will take the tough choices necessary to fix the foundations of the broken economy the Tories left behind and has said: “In 1945, we rebuilt after the war; in 1964, we rebuilt with the ‘white heat of technology’; and in 1997, we rebuilt our public services.
We need to do all of that now.” Labour will deliver on our promise of change..
