Taking office

The story of Labour's rise to power, and the circumstances under which the Party took the decision to form a minority Government has been well documented elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁸ The Liberal Opposition was bitterly divided between supporters of Asquith and of Lloyd George. With the support of the former group, Baldwin's Conservative Government could conceivably have remained in power, but this support was denied to them, and the first Labour Government assumed office on 22 January 1924. Dependent on support from the fractured Liberals, the new Labour Government had little hope of implementing any significant socialist policies, and, of necessity, had to follow a more cautious approach than many of its more left-wing members would have liked to see. The question of who was to be responsible for formulating and carrying out the new Government's policies was an issue which caused MacDonald much difficulty. ‘Busy, busy’, he lamented in his diary on 13 January 1924, ‘Cabinet making. Looks as if it is to be the most horrible job of my life […] Somebody has to do it, and probably no one but myself would be disturbed so much by the pain I am causing that the honour is lost sight of […]’.Footnote ¹⁹ It was because he saw the Labour Party in 1924 as badly lacking in first-class talent, that he took almost all the responsibility on his own shoulders. When faced with the formation of his first Cabinet he lamented that ‘some weak appointments seem to be necessary; whole not as good as I would wish; must have some specialist outsiders […]’.Footnote ²⁰ MacDonald, in fact, retreated to Lossiemouth to draw up his team, rather than remaining in London and consulting with colleagues,Footnote ²¹ but throughout his account of the process of Cabinet formation there runs the feeling of disappointment with the individuals from whom he had to form a team.Footnote ²²

MacDonald was not, of course, alone in his disappointment. He could not hope to satisfy all his colleagues, either in terms of appointments or of policy, and continually had to endure what one of his close friends, and his appointee as Under-Secretary for Air, William Leach, called the ‘sniping’ of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).Footnote ²³ There were many on the left wing of the party who accused him of betraying Labour principles, whereas some of the Liberals attacked him ‘for having no principles to betray’.Footnote ²⁴ His bitter frustration with many of his own Party colleagues caused him, in Leach's words ‘to begin to despise far too many of his own Parliamentary friends’.Footnote ²⁵

However, whilst wrestling with decisions over appointments of colleagues in whose abilities he had grave doubts, his hesitation over the appointment of the important position of Foreign Secretary was apparently short-lived. The post-war instability in Europe meant that foreign policy would be of the greatest importance, and the role must be filled by a high-ranking politician who could get his own way in Cabinet and work harmoniously with MacDonald.Footnote ²⁶ The list of possibilities was depressingly short; J. H. Thomas was the most likely candidate but was not supported by the ILP. Arthur Henderson, one of the stalwarts of the Labour movement and Party, but who lost his seat in the 1923 election, was another possible contender. MacDonald's deliberations over the appointment of Henderson have received particular attention, from historians and party members alike, though MacDonald himself seems to have seen it as less contentious than other members of the Party appear to have done.Footnote ²⁷ MacDonald did, in fact, spend much time debating the construction of a Cabinet both with and without Henderson as Foreign Secretary.Footnote ²⁸ E. D. Morel could also have been a suitable candidate, but, rightly or wrongly, in MacDonald's possibly arrogant opinion only MacDonald himself appeared to meet the criteria and, given that the life of the Government was likely to be very short indeed, he decided that the only option was to be his own Foreign Secretary.

The Cabinet was not, of course, the only area in which MacDonald had to make appointments. The recently created post of Cabinet Secretary was one which Maurice Hankey had made his own, and as Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence he also exerted a strong influence over this body, in which MacDonald had a keen interest. The influence exercised by Hankey was undoubtedly a factor in the continuity of government policy. Hankey's opinion of the new Labour Government was more positive than might have been expected. The Government, he believed, were ‘very businesslike’, and even where he disagreed with their policies, he ‘had no criticism of their methods’.Footnote ²⁹ For MacDonald personally, he had even greater praise: after two months of working with him he commented: ‘Everyone […] likes him personally, and for my part I have not had a better chief to work under.’Footnote ³⁰ This good opinion was not diminished with the passage of time. Towards the end of MacDonald's period in office, Hankey still felt positive about him: ‘Whether [he] remains in office or not, I shall always look back with pleasure on my association with him.’Footnote ³¹ Although Hankey's biographer, Stephen Roskill, does note that ‘the admiration, even affection, which he had felt towards MacDonald […] never recovered from the shock he suffered over his handling of the notorious “Campbell Case”’,Footnote ³² for the majority of the period his government held office in 1924, Hankey's view of MacDonald's conduct was favourable.

Despite the difficulties in filling the Cabinet posts, and the fact that it would be so heavily dependent on the support of the Liberals, there appeared to MacDonald to be no option but to form a government. To refuse to do so would, in his assessment, mean throwing away the gains Labour had made since the war, and jeopardising its position as a major party. It would have to do its best; it could not refuse to accept the challenge.

Domestic challenges

On assuming office, the Government was obviously faced with a number of issues which it had inherited from Baldwin's Conservative Government, as well as dealing with those which arose during its tenure. At its first meeting on 23 January 1924, the Cabinet had to consider such varied issues as an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, a railway strike, which was causing problems with milk and food supplies, the possible sale of British government shares in the Anglo-Persian oil company, and discussions on ‘the boundary between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland’.Footnote ³³ The Secretary was also instructed to ‘place the question of Russia on the list of questions for early consideration by the Cabinet’.Footnote ³⁴ By the next meeting, three days later, the threat of a docks dispute had appeared and MacDonald began to delegate tasks ‘in view of the great pressure on his time’: in this instance, the railway strike being handed into the care of the Lord Privy Seal.Footnote ³⁵ Some of these issues were dealt with more successfully than others, but without a working majority, the government could not hope to implement the radical policies favoured by the Left Wing of the Labour movement. By mid-May Hankey was convinced that:

Because this article is chiefly concerned with this ‘big success in Foreign Policy’, it will not consider domestic policy in any detail, other than to note that the domestic pressures would inevitably affect the time and energy which MacDonald had to devote to foreign affairs. The studies by Lyman, and Shepherd and Laybourn provide substantial detail on domestic affairs, and the latter sum up the situation succinctly. They note that, given a period of only nine months in office, the government had barely time to develop its policies, far less to implement them. However, ‘in such a precarious political situation, the MacDonald ministry went boldly on’.Footnote ³⁷ The government's greatest achievement was the Wheatley Housing Act, but ‘in the end, the 1924 Labour government […] changed little in the lives of the country's population, even though its policies pointed in the direction of future change and improvement’.Footnote ³⁸ In essence, MacDonald's government had steered the only course open to it: nothing other than compromise was ever an option.

Foreign achievements

A judgement on the ‘search for a big success in Foreign Policy’ referred to by Hankey, is perhaps easier to make. On the international front, there were three main areas to be addressed: these concerned Britain's relations with France and Germany – a situation with which any British government would have had to deal at this time – and with the Soviet Union, with whom the Conservatives and Liberals probably would not.Footnote ³⁹ Addressing the question of establishing relations with the Soviet Union was a delicate process. On the one hand, the Labour party was convinced that peace and stability in Europe could not be restored unless relations with the Soviet Union were also restored, but on the other hand Conservative and Liberal opposition would almost certainly accuse the Government of harbouring Communist sympathies.Footnote ⁴⁰

MacDonald, in fact, took immediate steps to recognise the Russian Government, without calling a Cabinet meeting to discuss the issue. He informed his Cabinet colleagues that he knew their ‘general view’ and had had to move quickly in view of the imminent dispersal of the representative Congress of Soviets of the USSR.Footnote ⁴¹ To wait for consultation with other Powers would have meant a postponement of three months, and he reported to his colleagues that the representatives of the Soviets of all the Russias ‘had […] sent a very cordial telegram of acceptance’.Footnote ⁴² The Cabinet ‘offered their congratulations on the promptitude with which it [the recognition of the Soviet government] had been accomplished’.Footnote ⁴³ There is speculation MacDonald's action only came about because of intense pressure from the left-wing members of the Party, and that the Foreign Office advised against it, but evidence suggests that MacDonald had always intended to recognise the Soviet regime and that any delay in so doing was purely routine rather than evidence of his hesitation and having to yield to pressure.Footnote ⁴⁴

Moves were set in motion to settle the differences between the two parties, to conclude an official treaty with the Soviet Union and to offer them a substantial loan. The Soviets were invited to a conference in London to discuss, inter alia, the claims of the Government and of British citizens against the Soviets; they accepted the invitation and the conference opened on 14 April. The conference continued for four months during which time the protagonists in Britain continued to voice their opinions. Those on the left maintained that it was essential to provide new markets for those British industries where unemployment was highest, and those on the right argued that it was impossible to do business with Russia, as the Soviet Government was ‘capricious, and foreign commercial interests were at its mercy, without proper legal protection’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Naturally there was concern in the country at the prospect of offering a substantial loan to the Soviet Union without some redress of the enormous losses suffered by British investors during and after the Revolution.

The question of Communist propaganda and subversion also influenced the climate in which negotiations took place, and as Lyman points out, the Soviets did little ‘to relieve the tensions or reduce the abnormality of the situation’Footnote ⁴⁶ with the Moscow press persisting in its abuse of the British in general and the Labour Government in particular. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, the Government pressed on with its efforts. A secret memorandum by Arthur Ponsonby, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, summed up both negative and positive reasons to reach agreement. On the negative side, a ‘great chance of conciliation tending towards general recovery in Europe would have been lost’, and on the positive side, only by reaching some agreement with Britain would the Soviet Union have a chance of coming to an agreement with France and ‘cut off from Western Europe, might become the focus of dangerous activities in Eastern Europe’.Footnote ⁴⁷ In this memorandum Ponsonby also felt that failure to reach an agreement would be resented very bitterly by the Party, not only in the House of Commons but in the country, and ‘a chance of getting work for the unemployed would again have been missed’.Footnote ⁴⁸

Through many twists and turns, two treaties eventually emerged, a fairly straight-forward Commercial Treaty and a rather loose and non-committal General Treaty, in which the possibility of a substantial loan to the USSR was incorporated. Both were immediately roundly condemned by the Conservatives, but greeted with less hostility by the Liberals, though the issue did highlight the split within that Party. After much internal wrangling, the Liberals finally refused their support for the proposed treaties. Thus, whilst the Labour Government's attempts to establish more than mere recognition of the Soviet Government had eventually failed, their efforts had been considerable and neither Conservatives nor Liberals, whilst recognising that some working relationship with the Soviets had somehow to be established, could offer any better alternative.

Whilst there was undoubtedly pressure from an ideological perspective from the more left-wing members of the Government, there is no evidence that MacDonald was unduly swayed by this. The perceived delay in implementing moves towards the Russian treaty is a reflection of his pragmatism and caution, rather than evidence of submitting to pressure. The Conservatives, of course, would make a great deal of this perceived weakness. Cuthbert Headlam, newly-elected MP for Barnard Castle in 1924, for instance, commented that:

Sidney Webb, on the other hand, maintained that the reproach levelled against the Labour Government that it ‘must, would or did suffer improper influence or control from “the extremists” or its “Left”’ was ‘from first to last’ quite unwarranted.Footnote ⁵⁰ Whilst negotiating the Russian treaties MacDonald's government closely observed the activities of British Communists in connection with strikes and disputes.Footnote ⁵¹ In mid-April the Industrial Unrest Committee produced an interim report which examined the state of the Communist Party in Great Britain, and concluded that it had received aid ‘financial and otherwise’ from the Third International which, it stated was ‘so intimately associated with the Soviet Government as to be identical with the latter in all but name.Footnote ⁵² Such interference was in direct contravention of the undertakings of the Soviet Government to abstain, directly or indirectly, from all propaganda in the British Empire. The Committee, however, concluded that, despite this support, there was no evidence that the Communists themselves had actually initiated a dispute and that their importance and influence was often greatly exaggerated. The recommendation was that the Government should not participate in propaganda directed against the Communist Party, as it did not wish to give further credence to the importance of Communists.Footnote ⁵³

Perhaps the most pressing item on the international agenda was the question of relations with France, which had been soured by the recent disagreement over the occupation of the Ruhr. MacDonald declared to his colleagues that he was ‘acting on the principle that the Government wishes to maintain entirely friendly relations’.Footnote ⁵⁴ The problem of relations with France was, at this time, uppermost in his mind. He noted in his diary that ‘France must have another chance’, but that, whilst he would offer cooperation, France must be reasonable and ‘cease her policy of selfish vanity. This is my first job.’Footnote ⁵⁵ But this would not be an easy job: the majority of British politicians, including MacDonald, saw France as the major cause of instability in Europe, yet some of her grievances would have to be met if there were to be any chance of achieving some improvement in Franco-German relations. His first step, almost immediately upon entering office, was to write a personal letter to the French Premier, Raymond Poincaré, in which he expressed a hope that ‘France and Great Britain can advance together to establish peace and security in Europe’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Poincaré's response was equally cordial and it looked as though a small step had been made towards improving relations.

At the root of any European settlement lay the problem of reparations, and it was this issue which had led to French intervention in the Ruhr. The question of the reparations which Germany must pay for her part in the War had considerably taxed the negotiators of the Treaty of Versailles; the final figure of £6.6 million comprised a mix of cash and payment in goods and raw materials, including coal to be supplied to France from the coal-fields of the Ruhr. The Ruhr crisis, and Britain's attitude towards it, has been comprehensively examined elsewhere, and it is not the purpose of this article to attempt to précis these accounts.Footnote ⁵⁷ MacDonald, however, played a crucial role in the London Conference which brought the crisis to a conclusion, and it is this role which is important as far as an analysis of his record in office is concerned. The crisis had arisen in January 1923 when France had refused to agree to a German request for a two-year moratorium on cash payments in view of her severe economic situation. Britain had been willing to accept this request but the French looked for ‘productive guarantees’, meaning the occupation of the Ruhr, in order to extract the payments which were due to them, and on 11 January 1923 French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr in order to ensure that the payments were made. The German government responded with a policy of passive resistance, but the German workers still had to be paid, and the result was the total collapse of the currency. In an attempt to restore Germany's financial position, the Reparations Commission appointed two subcommittees to examine the possible options, and in April 1924 one of these subcommittees, chaired by American financier, and future vice-president, General Charles C. Dawes, produced a plan which was accepted by the Commission. This involved a loan of 800 million gold marks to assist Germany in re-establishing control over the currency, and a reduction in the amount of annual reparations payments.

The implementation of the Dawes Plan would involve a substantial revision of the Treaty of Versailles, and must therefore be agreed by the major powers, and a conference was convened in London. Negotiating agreement between the French and Belgians on one hand and the Germans on the other was to test MacDonald's diplomacy almost to breaking point, but it was his handling of this delicate agreement which was to provide the big success in foreign policy to which Hankey had referred.

He began by attempting to persuade the French and Belgians to accept their part of the agreement. He had grave doubts over the new French Prime Minister, Edouard Herriot, who was, in his words, an excellent but weak man, who ‘seems unable to face opposition and apparently fights his opponent by giving him all he wants’.Footnote ⁵⁸ When the Conference began on 16 July, MacDonald commented that his policy was to take his time ‘but allow the French and Belgians to do the work’.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Belgians, he declared, were now free. ‘The spell which bound them to France has been broken. They will put up their own case’ and he ‘felt instinctively that in that way agreement will come’.Footnote ⁶⁰ His diary entries over the next few weeks demonstrate clearly that he became frustrated with both French and Germans. France was ‘as near to being impossible as it well can be’, having seemed ‘to have been taught nothing’ and still chasing after ‘will-o'-wisps in armed power, tricky diplomacy, stupid economics, a vile press – the vilest in the whole world’.Footnote ⁶¹ The Germans were ‘so German in appearance that dread entered my heart so much did they suggest long speeches and meticulous points’.Footnote ⁶² The tensions between the French and Germans are equally graphically described: Herriot at one point ‘looked as though he were having a tooth drawn’.Footnote ⁶³ Perhaps his diary entry for 7 August best sums up the difficulties he faced in even getting the French to agree amongst themselves over the question of evacuating French railwaymen from the Ruhr – and yet he appeared to enjoy it enormously. There is wry humour in his descriptions of General Nollet's outbursts of ‘unreason and passion’, and Herriot's ‘distressed & dumbfounded’ attitude. At 11.00 p.m., after two hours of attempting to reconcile French differences of opinion, he left to deal with his Foreign Office boxes, but when he returned, his secretary ‘rushed along the passage’ to meet him. ‘“Quiet”, he whispered & pointing to the Cabinet Room said, “They are in there still fighting & I have sent for refreshments.” I slipped upstairs & went to bed.’Footnote ⁶⁴ The following day he ‘played one of [his] big cards’,Footnote ⁶⁵ clearly stating his government's position on the situation in the Rhineland and the evacuation of the Ruhr, which he felt would help Herriot in Paris ‘if he is firm’.Footnote ⁶⁶

MacDonald's own diplomatic handling of the negotiations was threatened as much by one of his own team as by the French and Germans. Snowden offended not only the French but the Americans too. His dealings with the French caused MacDonald to comment that ‘it is not so much the case that S. has, but the spiteful kind of way in which he makes it. He makes calm consideration of an accommodating spirit impossible.’Footnote ⁶⁷ His ‘method of negotiation’ is to throw daggers about him.’Footnote ⁶⁸ At one point, Herriot announced that ‘Snowden is my enemy & the enemy of my country’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Snowden also ‘played the deuce with the American Ambassador by a most mal-apropos speech’ at which the Ambassador ‘got into a trembling rage’.Footnote ⁷⁰

MacDonald's diary entry for 13 August provides another example of the frustrations and tensions with which he had to deal, but on 16 August he wrote: ‘It is to be all over today & I breathe like one with a load off his chest. Up to the end the French fussed and in the afternoon come in solemn deputation to urge me to join with them in pinpricking Germany about military control. I refused.’Footnote ⁷¹ His handling of the whole conference was masterly: a balanced mix of firmness, humour and calmness in the face of heated opposition. Whilst it is perhaps unwise to rely too heavily on MacDonald's own assessment of his achievements his efforts were recognised by the master-strategist, Hankey, who informed Haldane, the Lord Chancellor, that he should ‘make no mistake, it was Ramsay MacDonald's conference’,Footnote ⁷² and even by his political opponents: on the fall on the Labour government, Baldwin told MacDonald ‘You have done at least one big thing […] the London Conference’.Footnote ⁷³

The question of disarmament was another of the major issues with which MacDonald had to deal, both in relation to his Government's stance on Britain's own commitments and in terms of international policy in attempting to establish an international arms control agreement. In the first of these areas MacDonald insisted on making a stand in attempting to halt the construction of the British naval base at Singapore. The decision to build this base had been taken by the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) in May 1921, as it was seen as impossible to defend Hong Kong without such a strategic base. Now that the war with Germany was over, the Committee had concluded that ‘the most likely war for some time to come would be one between the white and yellow races whose interests lay in the Pacific’.Footnote ⁷⁴ The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 had been replaced by the security provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, and it was felt that the development of Singapore was implicit in this replacement. The CID declared the Singapore naval base to be a necessary defensive measure to ensure the security of British interests in the Pacific, most notably including Australia and New Zealand, who would be expected to bear a proportion of the cost of developing the naval base. On assuming office, MacDonald attempted to demonstrate the pacifist policy of the Labour Party, and immediately issued a statement of policy in which it was pointed out that his government could not ask Parliament to proceed with this scheme as to do so ‘would exercise a most detrimental effect on our general foreign policy’.Footnote ⁷⁵ MacDonald repeated the statement he had made to the French Premier, M. Poincaré, on 21 February, that ‘our task […] must be to establish confidence’ and that ‘to continue the development of the Naval Base at Singapore would hamper the establishment of this confidence and lay our good faith open to suspicion’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The Government's reasoning was that, should circumstance arise in which a defensive strategy in the Pacific became a practical necessity, the whole question would have to be reconsidered, ‘but in the opinion of His Majesty's Government that has not now arisen, and it is the duty of His Majesty's Government to try and prevent its arising’.Footnote ⁷⁷

Needless to say, this statement was greeted with dismay by the Admiralty. Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Beatty, believed that if MacDonald abandoned the base at Singapore the Admiralty could not protect the Empire. Only the scrapping of Japan's entire battle fleet would, in his opinion, be ‘an adequate response to the abandonment of the Singapore base’.Footnote ⁷⁸ With few exceptions, Beatty was less than impressed with the calibre of the new Labour Government, declaring in a letter to his wife on 6 February 1924 that ‘we have to teach them Imperialism […] It is quite extraordinary the amount of real ignorance that exists in their minds on questions of the greatest importance.’Footnote ⁷⁹ In fact his despair at the prospects of working with Snowden, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, caused him to consider resignation from his post.Footnote ⁸⁰ Snowden, he believed, was a ‘bitter pacifist’ who ‘would do away with the Navy altogether if he had half a chance’.Footnote ⁸¹ However, Beatty's apparent contempt for the new government contrasts with his view that its support for the Navy was better than he could have expected from the Conservatives.Footnote ⁸² Whilst obviously delighted that Admiralty pressure had eventually persuaded the new Government to support the current naval budget, Beatty knew that the next ‘big fence’ would be Singapore.Footnote ⁸³ And so it proved to be. Beatty declared that the Government's decision to halt the development of the Naval Base, despite the costs so far committed, and the threat to the defence of the Empire, was an example of ‘loyalty to party taking precedence over loyalty to country’.Footnote ⁸⁴ For MacDonald, however, it was a question of principle: he believed that ‘a decision not to proceed with the Naval Base at Singapore will give [our] policy the best possible chance of success and is an earnest of our good faith’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Needless to say, the decision to halt the building of the base was overturned immediately by Stanley Baldwin's incoming Conservative administration, but nevertheless, MacDonald had made his statement of good faith. He almost certainly knew that this would be the case, and in that event he could perhaps afford to make such a statement, but it is interesting to note that when once again in office in 1929, MacDonald's government returned to the issue of Singapore, though this time contented itself with declaring that whilst it would prefer to stop building, that was now impracticable, and opted instead to continue the Conservative government's suspension of the original scheme.Footnote ⁸⁶

The second of the disarmament issues related to a proposal which had been formulated, albeit reluctantly, by the outgoing Conservative administration. The draft Treaty of Mutual Guarantee had been drawn up by Lord Robert Cecil, a committed supporter of the League of Nations who possessed an apparently inexhaustible faith in the League's ability to find, ultimately, a solution to the search for security, via disarmament, to which it was committed.Footnote ⁸⁷ In essence, the proposed Treaty did little more than tighten up the commitments to which the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations had already agreed. It embodied the concept of collective security on which the League was based, by requiring its signatories to ‘agree that if any one of them is attacked all the others will forthwith take such action as they may respectively have agreed to take in accordance with this treaty’.Footnote ⁸⁸ Objections within the previous Conservative administration to this tightening of obligations had been loud and persistent, chiefly, and unsurprisingly, from the War Office and Admiralty, but also from a number of Conservative ministers, including the First Lord, Leopold Amery, and the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare.Footnote ⁸⁹ In vain did Cecil protest that the Treaty committed signatory governments to no greater responsibilities than they had already accepted. The overwhelming opinion of the Committee of Imperial Defence was that Britain, and especially the British Royal Navy, would be placed at the disposal of the Council of the League, which would decide, by a three-fourths majority, firstly which state was guilty of aggression, and secondly the nature and timing of the response. The Conservative government left office before the fate of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee could be decided, and the matter was one with which the Labour Government had to deal.

At first sight, it would seem that the ideology of Britain's first socialist government would be well in tune with the concept of disarmament. In Marquand's words ‘the British Labour movement had always been in favour of “peace”’ and ‘had inherited the anti-militaristic attitudes of the nineteenth century radicals’.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, its patriotism had triumphed over these principles on 5 August 1914, when it decided to support the Liberal Government's request for war credits of £100,000,000, and MacDonald had promptly resigned as Chairman of the Labour Party in protest. MacDonald's own pacifist and anti-militaristic credentials, therefore, remained intact, but this did not necessarily mean that his government could automatically accept an international security agreement, for whilst disarmament was high on his agenda, he recognised that, in his own words, ‘the “weather” must be improved’ before results could be expected.Footnote ⁹¹ Significantly, he declared that ‘Armaments and such problems that are really consequences must wait’.Footnote ⁹² For this reason MacDonald channelled most of his energies during his first period in office towards improving the ‘weather’. The improvement would take years of steady work, and MacDonald was very much aware that his ‘official life’ might be short-lived.Footnote ⁹³

MacDonald had, in fact, given Cecil little hope that his administration would accept the Draft Treaty: before assuming office he had written to Cecil giving his comments. He pointed out that he thought ‘any attempt to remove the fear of France by military guarantees [would] fail’, and that the contemplated series of military conventions could ‘quite easily become military alliances capable at any moment of being cut away from League of Nations obligations and being made independent powers’.Footnote ⁹⁴ The fact that the Council of the League was to be the arbitrating authority meant ‘the big powers only’. MacDonald preferred to attack the problem ‘from the other end’, as he described it. ‘I do not believe’, he stated, ‘that we can get a political condition which will make a policy of disarmament successful until we get a more complete political settlement’,Footnote ⁹⁵ a point which he repeated when in office. ‘My own feeling about Disarmament is that we ought to advance the political side a bit further before we can expect any good result from a direct approach to the problem.’Footnote ⁹⁶

In the event, on 30 May 1924, after many months of considering the Service Departments’ objections, MacDonald's Cabinet concluded that the ‘the British Government is definitely opposed in principle to the proposed Treaties of Mutual Assistance’.Footnote ⁹⁷ Nevertheless, in rejecting Cecil's concept of security and arms reduction, the Cabinet professed itself to be ‘in favour of an International Conference on Limitation of Armaments whenever a favourable opportunity presents itself’ and stressed the ‘constructive side of the Government's attitude’ towards such treaties.Footnote ⁹⁸

This constructive attitude was to manifest itself in the drafting of a different security and disarmament proposal; the Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, or Geneva Protocol. The Protocol was very much a product of the League of Nations itself, and MacDonald was closely involved in its formulation. He and Herriot were the first Premiers ever to attend an Assembly of the League of Nations, and MacDonald's decision to go to Geneva to attend the Fifth Assembly gave a strong signal of his support for that body. He arrived on 3 September to learn that it was believed he was to ‘make a great pronouncement’, though he had nothing prepared.Footnote ⁹⁹ ‘The Friends of the League’, he wrote in his diary, ‘appealed to me to say something that would revive them, otherwise the League was dead.’Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The speech which he hastily drafted in his hotel room appeared to do just that. It covered four main points: he proposed the immediate entry of Germany into the League, the general ratification of the Optional Clause in the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, a wider system of arbitration, and the calling of a General Disarmament Conference.Footnote ¹⁰¹ He stressed his aversion to paper pacts, declaring that it could take fifty years to make a correct judgement on who had been the aggressor in an international crisis. The speech was a resounding success,Footnote ¹⁰² despite the fact that the French press reacted violently to it.Footnote ¹⁰³ MacDonald's own assessment of the French was, once again, less than positive. ‘The Frenchman’, he declared, ‘is too prominent […] They did not like my speech […] and encouraged misunderstandings about it’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Nevertheless, his recent dealings with Herriot at the London Conference had eased tensions between the two countries. One of the senior British Delegates to the League, Lord Parmoor, commented that he sensed a much more friendly attitude on the part of the French, which he attributed, in major part, to the ‘influence of the support’ which MacDonald had given to the League.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ MacDonald's relations with Herriot, reinforced during the London Conference, enabled them to collaborate to an extent on the drafting of the Protocol, thus ensuring at least Anglo-French agreement on the form it should take. The joint Anglo-French resolution established two committees, one of which was charged with considering ways in which the Optional Clause could be made more acceptable, and from the other eventually emerged the Geneva Protocol. In Marquand's opinion, the Protocol was ‘an adroit, indeed a brilliant compromise between Herriot and MacDonald’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ As well as apparently sinking Anglo-French differences, MacDonald had, in fact, revived the League, albeit temporarily.

The Geneva Protocol was intended to demonstrate the Labour Government's commitment to peace, security and disarmament, and sought to eliminate one of the major objections to the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee; the problem of defining an aggressor and thus enabling action to be taken without the delay to which the Service Departments had objected so strongly. The actual detail of the proposed Protocol is less important here than its fate: could it have been a major success for MacDonald's Government, or was it something from which it would have retreated had it remained in power long enough to have to address the question seriously? Certainly the proposed Protocol appeared to suffer from the same flaws as had its predecessor, at least that was the case in the eyes of the Service Departments. The Admiralty's view was, perhaps, predictable: the Protocol would place the Navy in a false position; it would mean the inability of the Fleet to move in self-defence, and could even result in the destruction of the Empire.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The Treasury and the Board of Trade both registered strong objections to the Protocol, declaring that the economic sanctions upon which it relied, would cause great injury to British trade. The Service Chiefs made little comment, opting merely to declare that the proposed Protocol was no different from the Treaty of Mutual Assistance in that it incurred exactly the same objections. Their strongest comment was that they saw it as their solemn duty

France and nine other countries signed the Protocol during the session of the League Assembly in September 1924. Briand, the head of the French Delegation, declared that ‘France is honoured in adhering to the Protocol, and for myself […] the most memorable event in the whole of my political career is that I have come to this platform to bring you my country's adherence to the Protocol […]’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The British delegate, Lord Parmoor, deeply regretted that he was not allowed to sign the Protocol. Whilst recognising that it was ‘consistent with the British Constitution that before the Protocol was signed the House of Commons should have an opportunity to give its verdict’,Footnote ¹¹⁰ he believed that the fact that he, as head of the British Delegation, withheld his signature was one of the major reasons why the incoming Conservative government rejected the Protocol.

After the fall of the Labour Government, a subcommittee of the CID was formed to consider the question of whether to accept or reject the proposed Protocol, given the serious objections of the Service Departments and the Foreign Office. This subcommittee did, however, recognise the importance of finding an acceptable disarmament and security agreement, declaring that ‘it was impossible for the Government of this country to turn it down without making a serious effort either to amend the present form of the Protocol or to substitute something else for submission to the League of Nations in its stead’.Footnote ¹¹¹

Baldwin's Conservative administration did dismiss the proposed Geneva Protocol, but was responsible for the negotiation of one of the more successful diplomatic initiatives which, at least on the surface, reconciled French and German security fears – the Locarno Pact of 1925.Footnote ¹¹² In criticising the Locarno Pact, MacDonald vigorously defended the Protocol, declaring that he doubted ‘if any greater calamity could have happened to Europe in these days than the declaration made by Mr Chamberlain at Geneva that the British Government had torn up the Protocol […]’. He went on: ‘The Protocol may be faulty in this provision or that, in this or that mode of expression. These can be altered as the result of reflection and arrangement.’Footnote ¹¹³ He accentuated its benefits thus:

The Pact, on the other hand, embodied the balance of power system again, and meant that in exchange for a promise to help France in the event of aggression against her, she would have the ‘right to interfere in our military preparations, otherwise it would not know what help we could give’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The Pact would be countered by a balancing one promoted by the threatened nation, a competitive arms race would ensue and war would be inevitable. ‘I should describe that as security possessed by a suicidal mania’, he declared.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Although he did later appear to welcome the Locarno Pact it was only insofar as it ‘had removed the remaining obstacles to the Protocol’.Footnote ¹¹⁷

In later years, the Geneva Protocol assumed an almost mythical quality, especially for the French who appeared to believe it could have been the answer to their security needs, and certainly it would appear to have many attributes which MacDonald's socialist government would find appealing. But this is not to say that MacDonald would have accepted the Protocol, had the life of his administration been longer. In correspondence with Cecil, for instance, in February 1923, he commented that ‘any attempt to remove the fear of France by military guarantees will fail’,Footnote ¹¹⁸ but it has already been shown that he believed pacts and protocols to be very different propositions. He also commented that, whilst in his present position (that is, leader of the Labour party in opposition) he could ‘indulge in absolute ideas, had he to face the actual day-to-day responsibility he might be compelled to make compromises’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ He had admitted that he would not have been able to accept the Protocol without some amendment, but whilst in office, he displayed nothing but support for the proposal. Both contemporaries and historians agree that it was unlikely that MacDonald would have signed the Protocol,Footnote ¹²⁰ though this can, of course, never be proved. Critics of the Protocol have stated that it was no more than the Treaty of Mutual Assistance ‘ingeniously dressed in a new form’.Footnote ¹²¹ It was, in Cecil's opinion, ‘too Latin in its temper’ which was perhaps why it appealed to the French, but not to Britain, or many other members of the League of Nations, which was, he confided to MacDonald's successor, Stanley Baldwin, ‘an Anglo-Saxon creation’.Footnote ¹²² The best that can be said for the Protocol, in the context of the current article, is that it demonstrated MacDonald's determination to implement a disarmament and security system, and that his personal diplomacy as far as the French were concerned, appeared to have been successful once again.

Having looked in some detail at the way in which MacDonald tackled the dual role of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, it is perhaps necessary, in order to provide some balance to the argument, to look briefly at how the Foreign Office reacted to his approach to foreign affairs. There is little to be gleaned from Foreign Office documents of the time to suggest how MacDonald approached the day-to-day activity of working with the Office. However, there is clear evidence that senior members of the Office regarded his conduct very positively. Despite a natural apprehension at the advent of the Labour Party to power, evidence shows that ‘members of the Foreign Office were agreeably surprised not only by [MacDonald's] personal charm and his warm and easy manner […] but also by the moderation and realistic common sense which he brought to his new tasks, and the way in which he worked hard at his briefs and […] listened to official advice’.Footnote ¹²³ This willingness to take guidance from the Foreign Office is echoed in Keith Neilson and T. G. Otte's account of Sir Eyre Crowe as Permanent Under-Secretary in 1924. They maintain that Crowe's relations with MacDonald were ‘surprisingly good’ and that MacDonald leaned heavily on Crowe for advice,Footnote ¹²⁴ although Otte does comment that their differences over relations with the Soviet Union were ‘profound’, and that Crowe ‘did not often exercise much direct influence over MacDonald’.Footnote ¹²⁵ Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office between 1930 and 1938, wrote that ‘Ramsay MacDonald proved a good Foreign Secretary, the only member of his Labour Party whose mind approached the first order’.Footnote ¹²⁶ One of the few voices raised in dissent in regard to this generally favourable report of MacDonald's tenure is that of Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, a diplomat in the Western Department in 1924. Kirkpatrick commented that ‘the experiment of combining the two offices was not a success […] Ramsay MacDonald thought, for example, that he could delegate to Ponsonby and the Permanent Under-Secretary, the duty of receiving the heads of foreign missions’.Footnote ¹²⁷ This did not sit well with the foreign ambassadors, but this seems to be the extent of Kirkpatrick's complaint against MacDonald. John Ferris, however, believes that ‘MacDonald brought the Foreign Office into the heart of strategic decision making for the first time since the war while his diplomatic actions set the stage for those of his successors’,Footnote ¹²⁸ a move which the Office could only have applauded. In general it would appear that, having recovered from the shock of a Labour administration, the Foreign Office worked well with the new Foreign Secretary.

Overall, does examination of the major issues faced by MacDonald's first Labour Government, enable a decision to be made on whether he was unwise to combine the two roles? Is there evidence that taking on the dual role hindered the achievements of his government, or that it could have performed any differently in the circumstances in which it found itself in 1924? Were his achievements in 1924, in Donald Cameron Watt's words ‘extraordinary’ or a grave disappointment? There were, of course, foreign policy issues on which the First Labour Government was less than successful. Although efforts were made to defuse tensions with Egypt over the Sudan, for instance, they continued to rise, and were exacerbated by the murder of the British Governor-General of the Sudan, Sir Lee Stack, in November 1924. According to Shepherd and Laybourn, the first Labour government ‘continued along established lines and did little to shape, or reshape, British policies in the Middle East.Footnote ¹²⁹

Given that MacDonald saw no alternative to forming a government, and his rather low opinion of the calibre of the personnel from whom he had to choose, his decision to take the role of Foreign Secretary would appear to be inevitable. As leader of the party he almost certainly had to lead the government, that is, to be Prime Minister, but he was aware that any major success would be in British foreign policy, and even if a suitable Foreign Secretary could have been found from within the ranks of his Party it would appear unlikely that MacDonald would trust the role, and possible success, to anyone else. Whilst he was hopeful that his government could remain in office long enough to establish more socialist programmes, he was aware that this was unlikely to be the case, therefore the joint role would not have appeared too onerous at the outset. In 1931, when the possibility of a longer term in office was more apparent, he did not choose to combine the roles.

On the domestic front it was always going to be difficult to make much impact: even had the whole-hearted support of the Parliamentary Liberal Party been forthcoming, the problems could not be solved in the short-term. Wheatley's Housing Bill was perhaps the high-point as far as domestic policy is concerned, but MacDonald was able to steer a diplomatic course through the industrial disputes which surfaced during his tenure. A more socialist response, however much desired by his left-wing, would almost certainly have brought strong opposition from the Conservatives and Liberals and have brought his Government down. On the international front, however, his achievements were almost certainly outstanding. To have steered the London Conference through the minefield of Franco-German relations, not to mention the internal disputes amongst the French themselves, was, as Baldwin admitted, a ‘big thing’. The impact which he made internationally by his attendance at the Fifth Assembly of the League of Nations, and the compromise he reached with the French over the Geneva Protocol were remarkable achievements. Critics might argue that he was never called upon to ratify the Protocol he helped to create, but arguably he could not have known that at the time.

His stance over the Singapore Naval Base brought him into a head-on conflict with the Admiralty, which he won, although in the event it was probably no more than a token victory. It is, however, interesting to note that in his second administration, when hosting the London Naval Conference of 1930, he again took on the Admiralty and won his case. His Government's insistence on negotiating a treaty with the Soviet Union perhaps demonstrated their socialist sympathies, but it also demonstrated their awareness that international stability, which perhaps even had an impact on the unemployment question, could only be achieved if the Soviet Union was brought back into the international fold. Nevertheless, it was the effort to conclude treaties with the Soviet Union which was finally to bring about the fall of MacDonald's government. Despite their efforts to distance themselves from Communism, they were still seen by their political opponents as uncomfortably close to Communist influence. It was the infamous Campbell Case, involving the proposed prosecution of a leading communist, J. R. Campbell, for seditious writing, which finally provided the excuse for the Conservatives and Liberals to join against MacDonald's government and bring it down.Footnote ¹³⁰ The release of the so-called Zinoviev Letter during the election campaign was perhaps the final blow to the Labour Party, and MacDonald's hopes of re-election.Footnote ¹³¹ Arguably MacDonald's rather inept handling of the former case cast doubt on his abilities to see the implications of his actions; a factor which must have weighed against his Government's re-election. The provenance and impact of the latter are still matters which exercise historians and politicians alike.

Judging the effectiveness of MacDonald's First Labour Government is problematic and very much depends on one's perspective. From the viewpoint of the left-wing of the Labour Party it was almost certainly a grave disappointment, but if, as Marquand observes, ‘one of MacDonald's main aims in taking office was to prove that Labour could form a competent Government, without turning to the Liberals for help’,Footnote ¹³² then it must be judged to have been a success. In 1929 his Government was re-elected: it had proved its competence, though no-one could have foreseen that it would end with MacDonald being disowned by the Party he had led for so long. Opinion is equally divided over MacDonald's conduct in 1931, but this article has demonstrated that his achievements earlier on in 1924 must be judged to have been outstanding.