Our series this summer has taken a look at historical cases of division within political parties. In our last post of the series, this week we discuss the Labour party of the 1930s, and how Ramsay MacDonald came to be reviled by the party he led for many years…
Ramsay Macdonald, via Wikimedia
The wartime split in the Liberal party and the increase in suffrage in 1918 and 1928 created an opportunity for the Labour party to emerge as the new opposition to Conservatism. After the war the party ended their electoral arrangements with the Liberals, and twice formed minority governments (in 1924 and 1929-31), both led by Ramsay MacDonald. Yet in a dramatic reversal in 1931 Labour’s first Prime Minister was expelled from the party, and after the October election fewer Labour MPs were returned to Westminster than in 1918.
MacDonald had risen from humble beginnings to become…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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