1. See the Times, Manchester Guardian, and Daily Herald, all for 22 Nov. 1922; also Kirkwood, David, My Life of Revolt (London, 1935), pp. 194–98Google Scholar; Snowden, Philip, Autobiography (London, 1934), II, 573–74Google Scholar; Shinwell, Emanuel, Conflict Without Malice (London, 1955), pp. 83–84Google Scholar.

2. Snowden, , Autobiography, II, 574.Google Scholar

3. McKenzie, R. T., British Political Parties (London, 1955), p. 351Google Scholar; Mowat, Charles L., Britain Between the Wars (Chicago, 1955), p. 148Google Scholar. Weir, L. MacNeill's polemical biography, The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald (London, 1938), esp. pp. 66–67Google Scholar, goes further still, and tries to show that MacDonald was guilty of similarly calculated hypocrisy throughout the war itself.

4. Williams, F., Fifty Years March (London, 1949), p. 298Google Scholar; Cole, , A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (London, 1948), pp. 129-30, and 151Google Scholar.

5. Cf. Bassett, R., 1931 Political Crisis (London, 1958), p. 14Google Scholar, who makes this point.

6. Forward (Glasgow), 27 July and 3 Aug. 1918Google Scholar.

7. MacDonald to J. S. Middleton, Assistant Secretary of the Labour Party, 12 Dec. 1918, letter on file at Labour Party, Transport House, London. I am grateful for access to this and other materials granted by Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party. Sir Gordon Hewart, then Solicitor General and Coalition candidate at a neighboring Division, was later Lord Chief Justice. This and other letters of MacDonald are quoted by kind permission of the Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald.

8. For the results, see the Times, 30 Dec. 1918; on Riley, see Leicester Pioneer, 10 Jan. 1919.

9. Leicester Pioneer, 20 Dec. 1918. See also Forward, 21 Dec. 1918, and Socialist Review, Jan./Mar. (1919), 15Google Scholar.

10. Letter, 14 Jan. 1921, in the Webb Papers, London Library of Political and Economic Science, II, 3 (i.). Quoted by kind permission of the Passfield Trustees.

11. Lecture at Secular Hall, Leicester, 10 Mar. 1918; see Leicester Pioneer, 15 March 1918.

12. See, for example, Labour Party, Annual Report, 1919, pp. 127-32; 1920, pp. 147-56; 1921, pp. 174-88; 1922, p. 180.

13. Witness the passage, without debate, of the so-called “Bradford Resolution,” calling for “the abolition of the Cabinet System” and its replacement by a system of Standing Committees of Commons. Independent Labour Party, Annual Report, 1920, pp. 91-92.

14. Forward, 19 April and 5 Nov. 1921; Socialist Review, April/June (1921), 107Google Scholar.

15. Forward, 21 Feb. 1920, 23 July 1921.

16. See bitter criticism of the P.L.P., of which MacDonald was then chairman, at the I.L.P. Conference in 1914, Report, 1914, pp. 75-88.

17. Forward, 10 Jan. 1920; see also 29 May and 17 July 1920, 30 July 1921.

18. Labour Party, National Executive Committee Minutes, Vol. XIX, 20 April 1920. At Transport House, London; cited subsequently as N.E.C. Minutes.

19. Memorandum, n.d., found in carbon copy at Transport House. This deals only with the committee meeting, not with the subsequent sessions of the P.L.P.

20. Labour Leader, 10 June 1920. This account is consistent with the Transport House memorandum, except that the latter describes the discussion as “non-committal,” whereas the Leader has the committee making a positive recommendation to the P.L.P. The memorandum may have been written after the proposal was rejected; if so, it would have been natural to minimize the degree of commitment. In a letter of 15 May 1920, Sidney Webb wrote to his wife: “Henderson's son told me yesterday that a committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party had decided to recommend that J. R. MacDonald be ‘asked to give the Party the benefit of his knowledge and experience’; and it is suggested that he should be given the very first chance of getting back to Parliament. It remains to be seen whether this is adopted, and how much it means.” (Webb Papers, 1.3. (i.), fol. 279-280). Mrs. Webb's account of the whole affair generally supports the Labour Leader version. See Webb, Beatrice, Diaries 1912-1924, ed. Cole, M. (London 1952), pp. 181–82Google Scholar.

21. See letter of 25 Oct. 1922, MacDonald to Clifford Allen, Allen Papers, III A. He complains of “a persistent boycott” since 1914 by some elements in the party, and adds: “Had I not been able to keep my position, unaided by any of them, I should be sitting at my own fireside for the next three weeks [that is, through the election campaign then in progress]. When I offered to help the Parliamentary Party, a special meeting was called and the proposal turned down, much to my injury outside.” These papers made available to the author by kind permission of Lady Allen of Hurtwood. See also letter from MacDonald to Oswald Garrison Villard, 26 May 1920, quoted in Venkataramani, M. S., “Ramsay MacDonald and Britain's Domestic Politics and Foreign Relations, 1919-31,” Political Studies, VIII, (1960), 233–34Google Scholar.

22. Socialist Review, Oct./Dec. (1919), 309Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., April/June (1919), 100; Forward, 7 Dec. 1918. For his pre-war position, see his Syndicalism: A Critical Examination (London, 1912)Google Scholar.

24. Socialist Review, April/June (1919), 104–105Google Scholar.

25. Forward, 18 Oct. 1919.

26. Socialist Review, Oct./Dec. (1920), 299Google Scholar.

27. Ibid., Jan./Mar. (1919), 12.

28. Ibid., Oct./Dec. (1919), 320.

29. Ibid., April/June (1920), 105; Forward, 20 Mar. 1920.

30. Socialist Review, Jan./Mar. (1921), 13–14Google Scholar.

31. Ibid., July/Sep. (1921), 197-98. If MacDonald's criticism of the miners' allies seems unfair, given what we know of the M.F.G.B. Executive's behavior at the time (See Bullock, Alan, Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, I [London, 1960], ch. viiGoogle Scholar), this merely underlines the lack of mutual consultation, which left Clynes proclaiming Labour's solidarity in the Commons when Lloyd George already knew that the Alliance had crumbled. MacDonald, like Clynes, was on the Joint Subcommittee created April 14th by the T.U.C., the N.E.C. and the P.L.P. to give effect to their resolution of support, and “to watch events in consultation with the Triple Alliance.” (N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XXI, 14 April 1921).

32. Forward, 14 May and 25 June 1921.

33. Forward, 7 Dec. 1918; Socialist Review, Jan./Mar. (1919), 17Google Scholar.

34. Forward, 5 June 1920; Socialist Review, Oct/Dec. (1920), 299Google Scholar.

35. Forward, 5 July 1919.

36. Socialist Review, July/Sep. (1920), 206Google Scholar, and Oct./Dec. (1920), 297 and 299-300.

37. See memorandum by Arthur Henderson, n.d., in N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XXI, and discussed in the N.E.C. on 22 Sep. 1920.

38. See Labour Leader, 19 Aug. 1920. Clynes was reported as saying “that every member of the party was prepared to commit himself to the policy of direct action”; this was in contrast to his passionate attack on the same proposal at the 1919 Party Conference (see Annual Report, 1919, pp. 160–61Google Scholar). The N.E.C. Report for 1921 (Annual Report, 1921, p. 11Google Scholar) commented that the resolution creating the Council of Action had passed the joint meeting of T.U.C., N.E.C. and P.L.P. “with a surprising unanimity.”

39. Labour Leader, 19 Aug. 1920. At the joint meeting of T.U.C., N.E.C. and P.L.P. of 18 Oct. 1920, a move to wind up the Council then and there received eighteen votes, against thirty-two for a resolution providing “That the Council remain in existence until the Russian question has been satisfactorily settled”—a clear indication that its functions were to remain circumscribed. (N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XX, 18 Oct. 1920).

40. Daily Herald, 22 Nov. 1922, cited MacDonald's grasp of foreign affairs as a factor in his victory over Clynes.

41. For good discussions of this point, and of the general subject of the conflict over the Internationals in Britain, see Graubard, S. R., British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917-24 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), ch. ixGoogle Scholar, and Brand, Carl F., British Labour's Rise to Power (Stanford, Calif., 1941), ch. vii, and ch. viii, esp. pp. 241–42Google Scholar.

42. Forward, 24 Jan. 1920. See also Socialist Review, April/June (1920), 109Google Scholar.

43. Socialist Review, July/Sep. (1919), 209–10Google Scholar.

44. Forward, 12 Jan. 1918.

45. See, for example, Cole, , History of the Labour Party, p. 33Google Scholar. Even Graubard, whose general account of the Convention is scrupulously fair, suggests something of the sort regarding both MacDonald and Snowden. Graubard, , British Labour and the Russian Revolution, pp. 39–40Google Scholar. Of the seven “persons of note in the Labour community,” to be associated with whom Graubard says “had certain political advantages of which MacDonald and Snowden cannot have been ignorant,” six were opponents of the war, and therefore as much under a political cloud at that moment as MacDonald or Snowden.

46. Daily Herald, 9 June 1919.

47. Forward, 18 and 25 Jan. 1919.

48. Ibid., 26 April, 24 May 1919, and 15 April 1922. The “retreat” refers to Lenin's New Economic Policy.

49. Ibid., 11 Dec. 1920.

50. Socialist Review, May (1922), 258Google Scholar.

51. Forward, 17 Jan. 1920 and 26 Mar. 1921.

52. Forward, 28 May 1921. See also ibid., 12 Aug. 1922.

53. Socialist Review, April/June (1919), 98–99Google Scholar.

54. Forward, 20 Nov. 1920. One may dispute the propriety of the analogy; MacDonald's intention was plainly to identify Moscow with reactionary forces, however.

55. Ibid., 22 Oct. 1921.

56. Ibid., 20 Nov. 1920. See also his speech at I.L.P. Conference, I.L.P. Annual Report, 1922, p. 80Google Scholar.

57. Letter to the editor, Labour Leader, 7 July 1921. For MacDonald's visit to Georgia, see Forward, 23 Oct. 1920.

58. Forward, 24 Jan. 1920. On the other hand, he reminded his readers that many of the parties affiliated to the Second had “the hampering responsibilities of government … It is very easy, and all but profitless, for parties whose difficulties have never been other than those of the fireside and the Socalist Conference, to criticise.” (Socialist Review, May 1922, 255).

59. Not 529-155, as in Graubard, , British Labour and the Russian Revolution, p. 192Google Scholar. See I.L.P. Annual Report, 1920, pp. 66-76 and 79-86 for this debate, and Labour Leader, 8 April 1920.

60. Letter to the editor, Labour Leader, 23 Dec. 1920. He was nominated for the post at a meeting of the International Joint Committee by the T.U.C. side, an indication of the lessening of trade union suspicions towards him. (N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XX, 10 Nov. 1920).

61. Paton, John, Left Turn! (London, 1936), p. 78Google Scholar. Both Patrick Dollan and Emanuel Shinwell urged MacDonald to break clearly with the Second (I.L.P., Annual Report, 1921, pp. 128-129). Hamilton, M. A., J. Ramsay MacDonald (London, 1929), p. 83Google Scholar, speaks of MacDonald's “mischievous delight” at this situation; his speech sounds more uncomfortable than delighted. He remained Secretary of the Second until the summer of 1922, by which time the negotiations that led to merging the Second with the Vienna Union were under way. (Forward, 26 Aug. 1922).

62. I.L.P. Annual Report, 1922, p. 72. The Communists walked out when the 1921 Conference rejected the Comintern, 521-97. (I.L.P. Annual Report, 1921, p. 124, and Manchester Guardian, 30 Mar. 1921).

63. For example, by Paton, , Left Turn!, p. 84Google Scholar. For a strong instance of MacDonald's defence of the I.L.P., see Forward, 3 July 1920.

64. There is a revealing passage in a letter to Clifford Allen, 24 August 1922, in which MacDonald explains that he cannot shift his weekly column from Forward to the New Leader because “I cannot give up old friends who gave me a corner when I could not get freedom elsewhere.” Allen Papers, III A.

65. In 1921 he had 471 votes, his nearest rival, Neil Maclean, 270. The next year he again headed the poll, with 327 to 211 for the top rival, F. W. Jowett. (I.L.P. Annual Report, 1921, p. 125Google Scholar; 1922, p. 77). In the Labour Party, the main issue was not the Comintern but the Communist Party's bid for affiliation to the Party. Many I.L.P.ers who opposed the Comintern favored C.P.G.B. affiliation; e.g., the London Divisional I.L.P. Conference in 1921 voted fifty-three to twenty-one against the Third International, but forty-seven to thirty-nine in favor of the Labour Party's accepting “all advanced workers' organizations that wish to affiliate,” including the Communists (Labour Leader, 3 Feb. 1921). Yet MacDonald delivered a powerful speech against C.P.G.B. affiliation, to wind up the debate at the 1922 Party Conference.

66. See National Agent's report, N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XXI.

67. Daily Herald, 16 Feb. 1921. On Woolwich organization, see “A.F.B.” (A. Fenner Brockway) in Birmingham Town Crier, 11 and 18 Feb. 1921.

68. Bradford Pioneer, 13 Sep. 1918; for Spen Valley, see Labour Leader, 8 Jan. 1920, and Forward, 17 Jan. 1920. The I.L.P. candidate, Tom Myers, had won with an uncompromising campaign opened by MacDonald and closed by Snowden.

69. See his election address in Manchester Guardian, 15 Feb. 1921, and his column in Forward, 19 Feb. 1921.

70. John Bull, 19 and 26 Feb. 1921.

71. Labour Leader, 2 Mar. 1921.

72. Manchester Guardian, 28 Feb. 1921; Forward, 12 Mar. 1921. Gee appeared on the eve of poll with his arm in a sling. His health must have improved subsequently; he died in Australia in 1960, ae. 84 (Who's Who, 1961). The description of pro-Labour rowdyism in the Daily Herald, 21 Feb. 1921, has a repellant complacency about it, however: “Capt. Gee's supporters had a lively time and eventually had to abandon the meeting. One of the speakers had a Daily Herald contents bill pinned to his back and another was folded up and placed on his head. ‘The Red Flag’ was sung by hundreds of people ….”

73. Daily Herald, 17 Feb. 1921. See also Brand, , British Labour's Rise to Power, p. 246Google Scholar.

74. Officially, the poll was 74%, but the register was said to be obsolete. Manchester Guardian, 2 and 3 Mar. 1921.

75. “A.F.B.” in Birmingham town Crier, 11 Mar. 1921; Forward, 12 Mar. 1921.

76. Labour Party, Annual Report, 1922, pp. 200-203.

77. David Kirkwood pointed this out at the time (Birmingham Town Crier, 4 Mar. 1921). Henderson made potent use of Woolwich in opposing C.P.G.B. affiliation at the 1921 Labour Party Conference (Report, p. 166).

78. The other books include Parliament and Revolution (1919), Parliament and Democracy (1920), A Policy for the Labour Party (1920). Tributes to MacDonald's presence, voice and rhetorical skill are too numerous to list; M. A. Hamilton, J. Ramsay MacDonald, discusses these aspects at great length, and perceptively, although she praises the rhetoric too highly.

79. N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XXIV, 18 July 1922.

80. Ibid., Vol. XXII, 14 Dec. and 7 Dec. 1921; Forward, 7 Oct. 1922.

81. There is fragmentary correspondence involving MacDonald, Henderson and others, at Transport House, in a box labelled “Russia: Imprisonment and Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, 1922.”

82. For Allen's work, see Paton, , Left Turn!, pp. 151–55Google Scholar; also Brockway, A. F., Inside the Left (London, 1942), ch. xvGoogle Scholar, which is lively but marred by inaccuracies. Arthur Marwick of Edinburgh University, is at work on an authorized biography of Allen (later Lord Allen of Hurtwood). R. E. Dowse, of the University of Hull, will soon publish a history of the I.L.P. from 1918-32, based on extensive coverage of primary materials. In one case, there is evidence that MacDonald tried to find a Parliamentary candidacy for an individual who had contributed £2,500 to the support of the New Leader. See letters, MacDonald to Allen, 18 Sep. and 14 Oct. 1922, Allen Papers, III A.

83. Allen to MacDonald, 21 June 1922: “Frankly, the personnel of the N.A.C. disgusts me. I was never more amazed in my life when at the first E.C. meeting it happened that not a single member had come to the meeting with a thought out proposal for any item on the Agenda ….” MacDonald to Allen, 3 Aug. 1922: “If the maudling [sic] inefficiency of the N.A.C. is to go on there must be some very plain speaking.” Allen Papers, III A.

84. MacDonald to Allen, 24 Aug., 14 Oct. and 20 Oct. 1922, Allen Papers, III A.

85. MacDonald to Allen, 12 July 1922, Allen Papers, III A.

86. MacDonald to Allen, 13 May 1922, Allen Papers, III A.

87. Memorandum by MacDonald, n.d., Allen Papers, III A. Allen refers to it in a letter to MacDonald dated 21 June 1922, and he habitually replied to MacDonald's communications very promptly.

88. Bottomley was now out of the way, sent to prison for fraud in 1922; see Symons, Julian, Horatio Bottomley (London, 1955)Google Scholar.

89. Labour Leader, 20 July 1922.

90. Forward, 16 Sept. 1922.

91. MacDonald to Allen, from Port Talbot. Allen Papers, III A.

92. The date of the issue is 25 Nov., but it was clearly written before Parliament met; there would have been no point in most of it had it not been published before that.

93. Manchester Guardian, 22 Nov. 1922; for Clynes' statement, see Daily Herald, 22 Nov. 1922.

94. “Labour in Parliament,” by “Our M.P.s,” in Transport and General Workers Record, Dec. 1922, p. 5Google Scholar. The reference to “at least two sections” would seem to imply that no more were known, or even rumored, for had there been more evidence of caucussing this report would have seized upon it.

95. The I.L.P. Annual Report, 1923 (p. 48) gives “about 40” as the number of M.P.s members of, but not sponsored by, the I.L.P.; but this must apply to the previous session, for the I.L.P. counted 129 out of 191 Labour M.P.s in the 1923-24 Parliament, and 106 out of 151 in the House elected in late 1924. (See I.L.P. Reports, 1924, p. 9, and 1925, p. 13.) Total Labour strength after the 1922 General Election was 142.

96. See, for example, Shinwell, , Conflict Without Malice, p. 84Google Scholar; McKenzie, , British Political Parties, p. 352Google Scholar; Weir, , Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald, p. 108Google Scholar.

97. Webb, , Diaries, 1912-24, p. 210Google Scholar. See also Clynes, J. R., Memoirs 1869-1924 (London, 1937), p. 329Google Scholar.

98. Weir, , Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald, pp. 104–10Google Scholar; Kirkwood, D., My Life of Revolt, pp. 194–98Google Scholar. These are discussed in McKenzie, , British Political Parties, pp. 347–52Google Scholar.

99. He had been ill in December and January, 1921-22; his Mediterranean trip in February and March was part of his recuperation.

100. The almost complete lack of speculation about the leadership in these journals contrasts with more recent times, when Labour journalism has been almost morbidly preoccupied with the subject. But it is worth noting that the Manchester Guardian, 22 Nov. 1922, in the most sophisticated newspaper account of MacDonald's election, anticipated McKenzie (pp. 306-307) by pointing to the phrase “chairman or leader” in the official announcement as indicating a trend in the P.L.P. towards the common practice of the older parties.

101. See, for example, Labour Leader, 1 Dec. (E. D. Morel); Leeds Weekly Citizen, 24 Nov.; Leicester Pioneer, 1 Dec.; National Union of General Workers Journal, Nov./Dec.; Post, 2 Dec.; all 1922.

102. For example, Labour Leader, 10 Feb. 1921; Birmingham Town Crier, 11 Feb. 1921; Leicester Pioneer, 2 Jan. and 13 Feb. 1920.

103. This assumes that all I.L.P.-sponsored M.P.s supported MacDonald, whereas we know that some—Snowden, for example—did not. Snowden, , Autobiography, II, 573.Google Scholar

104. Lansbury to Clifford Allen, 5 July 1922. Allen Papers, III A. Quoted by kind permission of Mr. Raymond Postgate.

105. Daily Herald, 21 Nov. 1922. See also Lansbury's signed article in the issue of 18 November, “After the Election,” which gives a general greeting to “Snowden, MacDonald, Webb, Ponsonby, Trevelyan, and many others,” and adds: “They will also teach us tactics. These latter are important, but not at all so important as clear-cut day-by-day fighting on the floor of the House of Commons for the things we want done.”

106. The P.L.P. consisted of eighty-six “new” Members (including those who had lost their seats in 1918), and fifty-six re-elected Members. (Derived from Cole, , History of the Labour Party, p. 127Google Scholar).

107. T. and G.W.U. Record, Dec. 1922, p. 5Google Scholar. The Daily Herald, 22 Nov. 1922, made the same point.

108. See MacDonald's deprecation of this incident, Forward, 13 Mar. 1920.

109. For example, the Railway Clerk, 15 Dec. 1918, wished that Clynes et al “had responded more readily to the desire of their Party [to leave the Coalition], for after all they owed their positions in the Government to their membership of that Party.” At the Party Conferences of both June and November, 1918, Clynes was the leading advocate of Labour's remaining in the Coalition, and at the 1919 Conference he went out of his way to show that he had not changed his mind (Annual Report, 1919, pp. 141 and 160). The National Union of General Workers, of which he was President, refused to take the November decision as final, and asked the N.E.C. to call another special conference when the General Election ended, to consider “the desirability of resuming membership in the Coalition Government.” (N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XV, 27 Nov. 1918).

110. Forward, 26 July 1919; Leicester Pioneer, 23 Jan. 1920; Agenda for Labour Party Conference, 1922, p. 13.

111. See, for example, debate on P.L.P. failure to divide the House against the Second Reading of the Government's Reparations Bill in 1921; Clynes had opposed the majority on this, but spoke in the Party Conference as if the leader were no more than the agent of the Party majority in such a case (Report, 1921, p. 181). Ironically, MacDonald never did come out in clear opposition to the principle of reparations during these years, and was criticized several times by Thomas Johnston in Forward for having defended some form of indemnity from Germany (Forward, 12-26 Mar. and 10-17 Sep. 1921).

112. Labour Leader, 12 and 19 Feb. 1920.

113. N.E.C. Minutes, Vol. XXIII, 1 Mar. 1922.

114. Times, 17 Nov. 1922, commenting on the election results, makes this plain.

115. One sample must suffice: “The value of the Prime Minister's word had unfortunately suffered the same deterioration as the German mark, and that he should put up his word against that of anyone else shows that whatever change may have come over him him his genius for audacity is as vigorous as ever.” (Forward, 27 Sep. 1919).

116. Socialist Review, April/June 1920; Webb's article appeared in the New Republic (New York), 4 Feb. 1920Google Scholar.

117. Labour Leader, 11 Nov. 1920. What is left of Parliament's supremacy after coordinate authority has been given to some other body in all “purely political and economic functions,” the article does not vouchsafe. It goes without saying that the purpose of the draft was not at all “to lay down that the supreme authority in the State is the civic authority of Parliament,” however much MacDonald may have wished that it were.

118. Letter, Lansbury to Clifford Allen, 5 July 1922. Allen Papers, III A.

119. Railway Review, 11 Mar. 1921. This description was plainly meant to be complimentary, which merely makes the implied limitations upon Clynes's capacity the more telling.

120. Labour Leader, 1 Sep. 1921.