THE TRUE DRIVERS OF men and women are often hidden from them, and from others, and with such huge family debts, why Graham chose a career as an MP, to the further detriment of his financial position, can only be conjectured. It appears, however, that at the beginning of his political career, he was motivated by a fundamental but nebulous humanitarianism, combined with a powerful moral indignation and a careless spontaneity, which prompted him to behave like a late Victorian evangelical preacher and crusader, with the religion missing. However, contrary to the belief that he was a romantic idealist, Graham, at this stage, was a somewhat simplistic rationalist, who experienced a spontaneous illumination that there were easily understood solutions to what had previously been considered intractable social problems.

Graham eventually won his parliamentary seat by a skilful blend of personal charm, bravura oration, and occasional dissembling, aided by propitious timing. When he entered the House, however, he quickly came to believe that it was an oligarchy in which MPs who claimed to have the interests of the nation and its people at heart, habitually put their party first, and strove for political dominance; his frustrations became more acute, resulting in what looks like a deliberate suicidal act of defiance. This led to unexpected and probably undeserved consequences, propelling him into the public eye, whereby he became a political martyr and celebrity overnight, who was lauded and derided in equal measure, establishing a revolutionary reputation among the chattering socialist elites.

Coming from a rural background, Graham initially saw exclusivity of land ownership as paramount, and it remains an issue that blights Scotland to this day. But after witnessing the more immediate consequences of unemployment and poverty at first hand, and what Engels described as ‘social murder’, whereby the lower orders were condemned by the ruling elites to lives that were nasty, brutish, and often short, he passionately pursued a desire for more fundamental and universal political change. This, via Morris, developed into an adherence to socialism, including, apparently, Marxism. Morris, inspired in his turn by Ruskin, had proposed, rather vaguely, mass class action, but Graham took Morris’s ideas to the next stage by envisaging a distinctive party of labour that could change legislation, and thus society, at its source.