Ramsay MacDonald
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"He wishes to do the right thing...Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!"
—King George V
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James Ramsay MacDonald was a British politician, twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924.
His first government was a minority government that lasted about 9 months. MacDonald took the post of Foreign Secretary as well as Prime Minister and made it clear that his main priority was to undo the damage which he believed had been caused by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In order to try and get an overall majority he called an election, and then one of the biggest scandals of the age hit: the Zinoviev letter. This falsified document made it look like MacDonald had been trying to establish a communist government in the UK. Naturally his defeat was monumental.
Labour came back to power in 1929 but then got swept away by The Great Depression and MacDonald's insistence that the government did not use deficit spending to stimulate the economy. In 1931 he formed a "National Government" which was mostly Conservative, meaning that most Labour party members labelled him a traitor. His health deteriorated and most of the actual power got handed to Stanley Baldwin, handing the Premiership over in 1935. MacDonald stayed in government until 1937 and died later that year.
- One Monty Python's Flying Circus episode shows him arriving in Downing Street after his election victory, and promptly removing his clothes to reveal somewhat... specialised underwear.