The first Labour Cabinet January 1924

The period of the 1920s was characterised by the decline of British Imperialism, and world economic crises with massive unemployment.

Consequently it was a period of bitter class struggle wave upon wave of strikes, mutinies among the armed forces, police clashes with demonstrations and the ruling class preparing for a showdown with the workers.

The revolutionary upheavals inevitably reflected themselves within the Labour Party, which wrested the support of the workers from Liberals, the other party of capitalism. The Labour Vote jumped from 400,000 in 1911 to 2 1/2 million in 1918 to 4.35 million in 1923. As working class support was peeled off from the Liberal the Tories crystallised as the major capitalist party.

Clause 4, part 4 of the party constitution  advocated  common ownership of the means of production, distribution and was inserted in 1918 under the impact of the Russian Revolution. The Labour leaders were also forced to accept a radical programme.

“Labour and the New Social Order” declared that Labour wanted not the reconstruction of this or that piece of social machinery, but of society itself” and advocated nationalisation of land, railways, mines, power, insurance companies, docks and water transport and(for eccentric temperance reasons) the breweries.

But the election at the end of 1923 did not give Labour an overall majority. The vote was 5 1/2 million for the Tories, 430,000 for Labour and 400,000 for the Liberals.

The Tory leader, Baldwin, tried to form a government at the instigation of the King and was brought down by the combined Labour and Liberal vote.

The King then sent for Ramsay MacDonald to form the first minority Labour Government.

A couple of weeks ago, when the whole working class was holding its breath waiting to see whether Heath would get off our backs (This article was written in February 1974 ed), the Labour leaders learnedly staked their claim to government by quoting this” constitutional precedent”. It is important for workers to understand how this precedent arose, and how the monarchy is used as a ruling class weapon.

George V was guided not by any democratic body but by the “Privy Council” which consists of the leading lights of capitalist society. They set out to put in office a minority Labour administration which was hamstrung by dependence on the Liberal vote  and obstruction in theTory House of Lords. Their policy was to “teach the workers a lesson” with a spell of  Labour government. Since they would be unable to push through their programme, the Tories would gain from the demoralisation of  Labour support.

This strategy however, depended on the Labour party leadership playing ball. If they had campaigned on their programme, presenting the Tories and Liberals on every  occasion with the necessity of being seen to vote against measures of urgent importance for the working class, then as soon as Labour was defeated in a parliamentary vote they could have gone to the country certain of winning over the working class Liberal and Tory vote and coming back with a real mandate for socialist change.

But the strategists of big Capital know their men. The Labour leaders made no attempt to implement socialist measures. But in that period of shrinking profits and bitter class struggle no important reforms could be maintained for long without taking economic power out of the hands of the capitalist Class.

Reforms cost money — money which the bosses needed to fuel the profit-making process. So the Labour leaders, “practical” men with a programme of “practical” reforms and no time in their  heads for “dogmatic” socialism,  came out of their experience of government -despite the pressing problems of poverty and unemployment which faced the workers,  practically barren of reforms.

The ruling class  coped with the new situation  by using both the velvet glove and the mailed fist. They made every attempt to ingratiate the Labour leaders (mainly working class at this stage) into London society. MacDonald and co for  their part greedily abandoned the cloth cap for evening  suits or plus fours for the golf links.

The aristocracy  must have secretly laughed behind their hands at the  “gauche” behaviour of the Labour leaders. MacDonald hired a Liberal  as Lord Chancellor and included several other open enemies of the working class among his cabinet

The Parliamentary representatives of Labour strove to liberate working class one at a time, beginning with themselves !

On the other hand, for the mass of the workers and particularly  for the militants, the ruling class had nothing but a torrent of hatred and spite. Despite the pathetic craving for respectability among the Labour leaders a vicious press campaign began and ended Labour’s  term of office.

MacDonald’s attempts to recognise Soviet Russia and open trade negotiations (a rational step in the interests of the capitalists themselves) provoked cartoons depicting him “selling the country” to greasy, unwashed Bolsheviks.

The Labour Government was actually  brought down by the Campbell prosecution. The “Labour” Attorney-General decided to prosecute the Communist. JR Campbell for a class appeal which he had made to the troops, very similar to Mick McGahey ( a Communist  elected National Vice-president of the NUM in 1972 ed) recent appeal, which  the Tories and the press made such a great play of.

The charge of sedition was dropped — for the  straightforward reason that there wasn’t enough evidence – and so was the Labour Government The campaign was sealed with the infamous Zinoviev letter forgery, which the ruling class used to  “prove” Labour was in the pay of the Russian Communists.

Labour will always be confronted by a vituperative press campaign, particularly  in a period of a crisis for capitalism. But the mud will only stick if there is no answering campaign from the leadership.

So the first Labour Government was cast off by the ruling class with a sigh of relief. Even after the fiasco, the basic working  class core of support still voted solid Labour.

The vote in fact went up by a million. It was the Liberals who were decimated as the middleclass were  stampeded into voting Tory.

The  period of the 1924 Labour Government  is pregnant with lessors for all now.

Like Wilson, MacDonald refused a coalition with the Liberals. But MacDonald in fact trimmed his programme to survive in office, and ended in losing both programme and office.

The coming to power of a Tory Government once again in 1924, laid the for an all-out confrontation with the working  class. The ruling class prepared well for the coming struggles which culminated in the General strike of 1926 in which the TUC and Labour Party leaders stepped back from the possibility of taking power and capitulated.

A bitter harvest of wage cuts and victimisation followed, during which the workers began  to weigh up the harsh lessons of their defeats in industrial  battles.

Mick Brooks January 1974


Mick and Barbara with Ealing Trades Council banner