This is the biography of Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. It attempts to disentangle the real MacDonald from the MacDonald of legend, painting a sympathetic portrait of him. The illegitimate son of a Scottish servant girl, MacDonald became a Socialist at the age of 19 and spent nearly half a century preaching his own brand of parliamentary socialism. He did a great deal to shape the thinking of the early Labour Party and to transform it from a weak and deferential trade union pressure group into the main left-wing party in the state. However, after the crisis of 1931, when MacDonald broke with the Labour Party in an agony of conflicting loyalties, and formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals, adulation turned to abuse.
- ISBN10 0224012959
- ISBN13 9780224012959
- Publish Date 3 March 1977
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 21 August 1997
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 976
- Language English