Book review: The Wild Men, by David Torrance

David Torrance has written a thoroughly-researched and very readable account of Britain’s first Labour government, writes Allan Massie

Labour is expected to win the coming General Election. Few will be surprised and few, except on the hysterical Tory right wing, will be greatly alarmed. Things were very different, however, when the first Labour Government was formed just over a hundred years ago. There was apprehension in much of the country, the City of London and the royal court. How would these “wild men” behave? Weren’t some of them Bolsheviks?

In fact fears were quickly allayed. Panic subsided. For one thing it was a minority government, dependent on Liberal support for a majority in the Commons. It had been a snap election and, though the Conservatives remained the largest party in the Commons they had clearly lost support. The outgoing Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who was determined to prevent a class war in Britain, saw the merit of bringing the rising Labour Party into office. So did the veteran Liberal leader and former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. But no one did more to demonstrate that Labour could be a sensible and competent government than the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald.

MacDonald is the first hero of David Torrance’s admirable, thoroughly researched and yet very readable account of the first Labour government. MacDonald, who very successfully served as Foreign Secretary as well as Prime Minister, was a remarkable man.

Born in Lossiemouth, the illegitimate son of a ploughman and a servant girl, self-educated – well educated – high-minded and, in his youth a great platform orator, a widower who had lost the Labour leadership in 1914 and his parliamentary seat four years later because of his fierce opposition to the Great War, he was intelligent, moody and somewhat vain – John Buchan thought he would have been a fine Jacobite clan chief. But he was determined to show Labour capable of competent government, and he constructed his cabinet carefully with this in mind, excluding most of the Red Clydesiders and Marxists.

He found an unlikely ally in the King. George V was a dull man with – it has often been said – neither intellectual nor artistic interests, and of limited intelligence. He was a stickler for propriety but he had common sense and a profound sense of responsibility. He liked MacDonald from the start. Unlikely as it might have seemed, they became friends. There has probably been no closer relationship between monarch and Prime Minister than theirs.

MacDonald brought in former Liberals with experience of government, notably Sir Charles Trevelyan as President of the Board of Education and Lord Haldane as Lord Chancellor. (Almost 20 years earlier at the War Office, Haldane had created the Territorial Army.) At the Treasury, Phillip Snowden was as orthodox as the City could have wished for. The Clydesider John Wheatley was an efficient Minister of Health. Jimmy Thomas, a railwayman, was a success at the Colonial Office; there was, he said, to be “no mucking about with the British Empire”; he too became friendly with the King – they shared a taste for dirty jokes.

Torrance offers rich character sketches and takes us through the often difficult history of the government with exemplary skill. He has written a scholarly book, but one which will have an appeal to the intelligent and interested general reader. Already the author of biographies of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, this is his best book.

David Torrance

Macdonald’s tragedy came in 1931 when his second Labour Government, again a minority one but this time the largest party in the Commons, was faced with the Great Financial Crash and a run on the pound. There were calls for a National Government and the King urged MacDonald to lead it. He accepted this as his duty. Most of his party thought otherwise and refused to serve. McDonald was reviled. It was “the Great Betrayal”. In retrospect, the party betrayed MacDonald and shirked its duty.

I have always thought MacDonald a fine and attractive man, even a great one. It is a pleasure to find Torrance doing him justice. The publishers have given us fine photographs, among them one of MacDonald on the golf course at Lossiemouth. Like other leading politicians of his time, even Asquith and Lloyd George, he was a keen golfer. Perhaps today’s politicians should return to the links.

The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain's First Labour Government, by David Torrance, Bloomsbury, £20