POLITICAL MYTH: RAMSAY MAcDONALD

A N D THE LABOUR PARTY

R O D N E Y B A R K E R

London School of Economics

In 1918 the Labour Party adopted a new constitution and a new statement of policy and aims.’ For a long time, it was argued that in so doing, it transformed itself into a different kind of political organization and acquired a distinctive ideology involving a radical commitment to socialism. But did it? Recent work has provided an opportunity for this view to be reconsidered, and in looking again at the events of 1918, for something more to be said about one aspect of the party’s ideology, myth, in its first 50 years of existence. To term myth an aspect of ideology can raise difficulties, and I can only plead that I am not attempting any general definition of either word but rather the application of one of them, myth, to a particular series of events and to the character and role of a particular political party. The use, or uses, of the word ideology are still sufficiently flexible to make this a practical application, rather than a violation, of both conventional and refined usage.

The Great War of 1914-18 was the occasion for several important developments in the position of the Labour Party. In May 1915, it was given a small representation in Asquith’s coalition government, Arthur Henderson the chairman of the Parliamentary Party and Secretary of the national organization becoming President of the Board of Education with a seat in the cabinet, and two other Labour M.P.s, W. Brace and G. Roberts going to junior ministerial posts. The following year, when Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister, Labour’s representation was increased, Henderson becoming a member of the war cabinet of five, John Hodge and George Barnes going to the new ministries of Labour and Pensions, and three other Labour M.P.s taking junior posts. This was a welcome recognition for the party of its importance, and one which gave it for the first time the opportunity to appear in any way as a party of gov- ernment. But the inclusion of the party in the war-time coalitions depended in large measure on the government’s estimation of the impor- tance of gaining the support of organized industrial labour for the war effort, and of the ability of parliamentary Labour to further that end.

It soon appeared that direct dealing with the unions was more effective than the absorption of their parliamentary representatives. By a series of agreements the trade unions consented to waive some of the rights of their members in order to expedite war production, an arrangement which emphasized the strength of the unions whilst at the same time causing a

I An earlier version of this article was given as a aper to the workshop on ideology and consensus of the European Consortium for Politicaf Research, LSE, April 1975, and I am grateful to all members of the workshop and to Dr. G. W. Jones and Roger Eatwell for their comments.

46

RODNEY BARKER 47 sense of grievance and frustration when it seemed that the sacrifices of labour were not matched by those of capital. This was taking place at a time when the membership of the unions was continuing to rise. It increased by 50 per cent between 1914 and 1918, and these developments were of particular importance for the Labour Party, which depended for much of its financial and organizational support on the unions affiliated to it. The number of such unions doubled during the war.

Thus parliamentary Labour and its trade union supporters had their ambitions whetted and their strength publicised during the war. In such circumstances the prospect of an electoral reform which would bring mas- sive increases in the number of voters gave the party cause to consider its relationship with the Liberals, with whom it had been in the years before 1914 in an uneasy electoral and parliamentary alliance. The departure of Arthur Henderson from the coalition in 1917 was the occasion for a reor- ganization of the party, a brief statement of its general purpose in a new constitution, and the publication of its first lengthy statement of aims. The reorganization was carried out with the authority of the conference of January and February 1918, and the party for the first time clearly accepted and provided for individual membership through local associa- tions. The fourth clause of the new constitution whereby these changes were enacted spoke of the Party’s intention ‘to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service’. In the summer, a second conference passed resolutions covering the substance of the pamphlet Labour and the New Social Order, a statement which included recommendations for minimum living standards and expanding social services, financed out of the fruits of industry which were to be plucked by a combination of nationalization and direct taxation.

For a long time there was general agreement amongst political historians as to what these events signified. Egon Wertheimer, writing in 1929, spoke of them as marking the evolution of the Labour Party ‘from social reform to socialism’. G. D. H. Cole in his History of the Labour Party from 1914 wrote that they ‘unequivocally committed the Labour Party to Socialist objectives’. Henry Pelling, writing in 1961, was more cautious than this, but equally sure of the importance of 1918, saying that clause four of the new constitution ‘for the first time explicitly committed the party to a Socialist basis’ whilst Labour and the New Social Order provided ‘a practi- cal programme’. For Ralph Miliband, though the events of 1918 did not mark the adoption of socialism, they did indicate ‘that Labour had finally done with its own version of Liberalism’.*

The account given by S. H. Beer in Modern British Politics follows on from this tradition-Beer describes the party as adopting ‘the comprehen- sive ideology of Socialism’ in 1918.3 But he also set a pattern for later

Egon Wertheimer, Portrait of the Labour Party (London & New York 1929) p. 50; G. D. H. Cole, History ofthe Labour Purty from I914 (London 1948) p. 56; Henry Pelling, A Short History ofthe Labour Party (London 1961) pp. 43-5; Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London 1961) p. 61.

S. H. Beer, Modern British Politics (London, 1965) p. 140.

48 RAMSAY MACDONALD AND THE LABOUR PARTY

historical writing by seeing the events of 1918 as the means whereby the Labour Party expressed its independence of the Liberal Party and of liberalism. There was a sense, in other words, in which the Labour Party did not strike out for electoral and parliamentary independence from the Liberals solely because it was socialist, but in which the reverse was true: the identification of the party as socialist was a means of sustaining and publicising its independence. Beer’s argument suggests therefore that there may be a significance other than the purely literary in programmes, resolu- tions, and declarations of principle. In this case, the importance of 1918 lay not only in what it may or may not have committed the Labour Party to, but in the sense of independent identity which it gave.

Following on from Beer, several historians have looked closely at the events of 1918. J. M. Winter has documented the contribution not only of Sidney Webb, but of Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald, to the ‘socialist’ clause of the 1918 constitution and to Labour and the New Social Order, and has argued that the constitution and the programme are to be seen in the light of, amongst other factors, Henderson’s experiences in Russia and his conviction of the need for a socialist alternative to Bolshevism, which would avoid both Liberalism and revolution and steer the Labour Party triumphantly between the

Thus both Beer and Winter regard the pronouncements of 1918 as being functional as well as prescriptive. Ross McKibbin has departed severely both from this view and from earlier version^.^ He is greatly disinclined to believe that ideas play much part in politics, and sees the growth of the Labour Party over the war period as a series of organizational and electoral developments virtually devoid of intellectual content. The decisions of 1918 insofar as they involved programmes or statements of belief were of little importance, and the trade unions who were the ones who mattered in the party accepted the socialist statements ‘partly because they had always been collectivist, partly because they had advocated nationalization of specific industries before the war, partly to indulge the Fabians, and partly because they did not think it mattered very much’ .6 McKibbin’s argument has this in common with earlier accounts, that it takes programmes largely at their face value: either the events of 1918 were a commitment to socialism, or they were nothing at all. But there is another dimension to these events, one hinted at by Beer and Winter, and suggested by Royden Harrison’s description of clause IV as ‘a rallying point around which the adherents of different ideologies and the representatives of different interests assembled.’ A recognition of this dimension enables us to see how, though the party did not receive a plan of campaign for the inaugura- tion of socialism, neither did it engage in actions of no significance. This other dimension is that of myth. One of the functions of the accounts of the Labour Party’s socialism-and the 1918 pronouncements are part of these accounts-was to describe the history of society, both past and future, in a manner which would justlfy and encourage the actions of the party, give its

J. M. Winter, Socialism and the Challenge of War (London, 1974). ’ Ross McKibbin, The Evolution of rhe Labour Parry, 1910-1924 (London, 1975). bibid., p. 102. ’ Royden Harrison, ‘The War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 1914-20’ in Asa

Briggs & John Saville (editors), Essays in Labour History 1886-1923 (London 1971) p. 259.

RODNEY BARKER 49 members a sense of identity, and provide a context for unity in a body which in terms of interest, aspirations and principles, was far from united. The truth of these accounts was not what mattered-they were not sub- jected to that kind of criticism, and as Henry Tudor has pointed out, ‘a myth cannot be refuted‘.* They provided the necessary political myth for a party which was slowly gaining a sense of identity and direction, and which needed an ultimate, non-rational basis for this achievement.

In 1918 the trade unions, who were increasingly giving their support to the Labour Party, had practical reasons for wanting some form of public ownership of their own particular industries, and had increasingly come to demand this. What they lacked were any general arguments or principles whereby to support these demands, and this deficiency was met by the kind of language contained in Labour and the New Social Order which provided, i n Malinowski’s phrase, the ‘charter of the institution’. The language had an authoritative ring, and thus did not arouse questioning, whilst it seemed to knit together and justify a series of particular aims: ‘The individual worker, or for that matter the individual statesman, immersed in daily routine-like the individual soldier in a battle-easily fails to understand the magnitude and far-reaching importance of what is taking place around him. How does it fit together as a whole?’ The account of socialism given to the party in 1918 provided the authority for social reform and collectivism, by propounding in elevated but vague terms an alternative social order ‘based not on fighting but on fraternity-not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned co-operation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain-not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a systema- tic approach towards a healthy equality of material circumstances for every person born into the world-not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject Colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest possible partigipation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of true Democ- racy’ .9

This authority gave the party and its members a specific identity, and one which placed it at the head of progressive opinion. It was thus a further stage in a long contest which had been going on since before the beginning of the century, between the liberal and socialist members of the progressive movement, for intellectual leadership.’O The importance of establishing such moral predominance arose from the slightness, if not non-existence, of the differences in actual policy and programme between the parliamen- tary representatives of Labour before 1914 and the socially radical mem- bers of the Liberal Party. It had thus been an argument not over details but over ultimate authority, and had been carried on vigorously and at length,

*Henry Tudor, Political Myth (London, 1972) p. 16. The Labour Party, Labour and the New Social Order (revised in accordance with the

resolutions of the Labour Party Conference, June 1918 (London 1918) pp. 3 and 4). l o For a fuller discussion of this point see: P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism

(Cambridge 1971); P. F. Clarke, ‘The Progressive Movement in England: Transactions ofrhe Royal Historical Society 5th series, vol. 24, 1974; and Rodney Barker, Socialism and Pro- gressivism in the Political Thought of Ramsay MacDonald‘ in A. J. A. Moms (ed), Edwardian Radicalism 1900-1914 (London 1974).

50 RAMSAY MACDONALD AND THE LABOUR PARTY

by Hobhouse and Hobson on the Liberal side, and in particular by Ramsay MacDonald on the Labour side. The presentation of socialism made in 1918 promised to gobble up all progressive enthusiasm into a single politi- cal stomach. Hence the stress on the programme’s grasp of the necessary underlying principles of the time: ‘What we now promulgate as our policy, whether for opposition or for office, is not merely this or that specific reform, but a deliberately thought out, systematic, and comprehensive plan for that immediate social rebuilding which any Ministry, whether or not it desires to grapple with the problem, will be driven to undertake’.”

In addition to authority and identity, socialism provided a sense of direc- tion and purpose. The impossibility of continuing in the present condition of things and the unanswerable superiority of the eventual alternative hav- ing been established, the party’s members could be assured of the way in which they were going, though without the impediments of any particular map or timetable.

Finally, authority and identity were combined in such a way as to be eclectic rather than exclusive. The ambiguity about pace was particularly important here, since there were not only existing Labour supporters to be aroused and united, but new recruits to be gained from the liberal side of the progressive movement. ‘We do not’, the party judiciously observed, ‘of course, pretend that it is possible, even after the drastic clearing away that is now going on, to build society anew in a year or two of feverish “recon- struction”. What the Labour Party intends to satisfy itself about is that each brick that it helps to lay shall go to erect the structure’that it intends, and no other‘.I2 Remarks like this have driven Miliband to comment despairingly that Labour and the New Social Order was not about socialism at all, but only about Labourism: ‘the new programme was much less the manifesto of a new social order, altogether different, economically and socially, from the old one, than an explicit affirmation by the Labour Party of its belief that piecemeal collectivism, within a predominantly capitalist society, was the key to more welfare, higher efficiency, and greater social justice’.13 But the world conjured up by Labour and the New Social Order was compatible both with socialism and with what Miliband calls ‘Labourism’. It described a direction rather than a pace of advance, and hence offered the possibility of uniting widely varying preferences and ambitions.

The place of the 1918 pronouncements within the Labour Party’s store of myth, their role as a non-rational account of the Party’s progress, pur- pose, and authority, was underlined in the events of 1959 when Hugh Gaitskell proposed a revision of clause four of the constitution which, by then, committed the party to the public ownership of ‘the means of produc- tion, distribution and exchange’. The 1918 constitution had only spoken of ‘production’, but myths telescope the past in order to relate a series of chronologically distinct acts directly to the authority of a single mythical lawgiver, like Lycurgus, or a single authoritative document, like the 1918 constitution. Thus the argument in 1959 involved frequent references to the constitution of 1918 and the need to defend it,’4 even though it was not

I Z ibid. p. 4. ‘ I Labour and the New Social Order p. 5 . l 3 Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London 1961) p. 62. I‘ See eg. R. T. McKenzie, British Political Parties (London 1964 ed) p. 612.

RODNEY BARKER 51 the constitution of 1918 but a much more recent constitution, which was at stake. Even the most scrupulous political scientists and historians have fallen victim to the same process of myth-making. Ross McKibbin, in a book which has little time for ideas let alone for myths, refers to the Labour Party in 1918 committing itself to ‘the nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange’; Richard Rose goes even further and, by attributing every amendment to the policy clauses of the constitu- tion to the same ancient creative act, has the party in 1918 declaring its support for the United Nations.I5

But myths cannot be created by vote, nor adopted and given force by the decision of conference, or even of two conferences.I6 If there is a mythical element in the Labour Party’s socialism, then it may have been referred to or publicly acknowledged in 1918, but its existence developed slowly, and was nurtured by constant reiteration and exposition. The single most important cultivator of the myth was Ramsay MacDonald, the Party’s secretary from 1900 to 1912, Chairman of its Parliamentary Party from 1911 to 1914, Chairman and Leader from 1922 to 1931, and twice Prime Minister in a Labour Government. His contribution to the formulations of 1918, though he was a member of the relevant sub-committees of the Party’s National Executive, seems to have been less than that of either Henderson or Webb. But for over ten years he had been the party’s princi- pal propagandist and mythologist. One of the media in which MacDonald propounded the Labour Party’s mythology was in the public meeting, where his grand and flexible style of oratory excited, inspired and encour- aged. The authoritative grasping of the lapel, paper in hand; the shouted syllables of earnest conviction; the slow, quiet statement; the outstretched arms; the waving fist; the precise, indicative finger-he employed them all with theatrical skill, and played them off against one another with dramatic impact.” The impression he made on his contemporary supporters confirms that what now appears a mastery of the political ritual was seen as such at the time. James Griffiths wrote of a meeting addressed by Mac- Donald in South Wales in 1924:

when the time arrived for the meeting to begin, the hall was packed to suffoca- tion and the street outside was crowded with people, many with tickets, who had failed to get in. When Ramsay arrived the vast audience inside-and out- side-joined in the singing of one of their favourite hymns-the bard Watcyn Wyn’s vision of the day when every continent ’neath the firmament would hail the Nazarene. The address was in tune with the hymn-with peace on the horizon if only we had the courage to reach out. The crowd was thrilled and after

I’ Ross McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party I91 0-1 924 (London 1975) p. 91 ; Richard Rose, Politics in England Today (London 1974) p. 289.

l6 H. M. Drucker, writing of the Labour Party, has distinguished between doctrine and ethos, and has observed that the latter ‘is not open to recruitment by agreement’. For different reasons myth shares some of this quality of ethos. See H. M. Drucker, Doctrine and ethos: political argument in the ideology of the British Labour Party’. Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, April 1974, p. 5. ” See, for example, the variety of styles employed on diplomatic, electioneering, and party

occasions between 1929 and 1931: The Rt. Hon. Ramsay MacDonald (Mandson Films Ltd. 1931); James Ramsay MacDonald, com ilation (Movietone, 1933). The contrast with other political styles is marked. At the World Lonomic Conference in 1933, there was more flair in MacDonald’s brief introduction of Neville Chamberlain than in the latter‘s speech: Scrapbook for I933 (Path6, 1949) Reel 4 .

52 RAMSAY MACDONALD AND THE LABOUR PARTY

the Prime Minister had gone on his triumphant way to Aberavon the streets rang with shouts and songs till the early hours of Sunday.'"

He was not only an energetic and popular platform speaker, but a pro- lific writer of books and articles. Between 1905 and 1918, his books included The Labour Party (1905), Socialism and Society (1905), Labour and the Empire (1906), Socialism (1907), Socialism and Government (1909), The Socialist Movement (191 l ) , Syndicalism (1912), The Social Unrest (1913), and Socialism After the War (1917).lg

MacDonald's account of socialism differed little from book to book, though the manner of argument shifted to suit varying persuasive require- ments. Appeals to evolution, philosophical idealism, or the organic analogy of society could all be made with equal skill. First, the achievement of socialism was described as a historical process, involving the growth of society to new and better forms. The new world was not to replace the old so much as to grow out of it. It was a style of argument typical of Mac- Donald, and one which linked him to the Fabians, to insist on continuity even at times of crisis, and the expression employed in Labour and the New Social Order was exactly in the tradition of argument which he had exem- plified: 'We of the Labour Party can so far agree in this estimate as to recognize, in the present world catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of civilization itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civilisation, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct. At such times of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to progress into higher forms of organisation'.20 Convulsions were thus equated with disaster, con- tinuity with progress. The importance of this account for the Labour Party was that the vision of ultimate socialism gave it purpose, whilst the insis- tence of continuity allowed for piecemeal reform and did not scare away the liberals, trade union pragmatists, and non-socialist social reformers amongst the party's supporters both in Parliament and in the country. Second, by giving an account of a socialist society, however distant, which was markedly different in its economic and political character from the contemporary world of his readers, MacDonald provided a moral basis for particular reforms which could thus be justified as part of a larger, and slower, scheme of social reconstruction and development. Third, the prac- tical proposals required by this account of socialism were flexible, even imprecise, and allowed room for manoeuvre both in Parliament and at the hustings. As MacDonald himself pointed out with devastating frankness to the national conference of the Independent Labour Party in 1907, the 'mere principles of Socialism do not carry us very far, because they are capable of application in so many different ways, and their meaning in relation to existing things is so very general'.*I Hence the Labour Party was able to enjoy all the advantages, if such they were, of being 'constantly in a state of flux and flow', 'a barque floating upon currents and moving with

"James Griffiths, Pages from Mem0r.y (London, 1969) quoted, though with a different interpretation, by David Coates, The Labour Party and the Srruggle for Socialism, (Cam- bridge, 1975) p. ix.

I' For a fuller account of MacDonald's pre-1914 writings, see Rodney Barker, 'Socialism and Prokressivism in the Political Thought of Ramsay MacDonald' in A. J. A. Morris (ed.) Edwardran Radicalism 1900-1 914 (London, 1974).

2o Labour and rhe New Social Order p. 3. 2 1 Independent Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1907, p. 3.

RODNEY BARKER 53 the stream’ .22 Finally, MacDonald emphasised the assimilative rather than the divisive purpose of socialism. Hence, he claimed, the I.L.P. ‘believes in class conflict as a descriptive fact, but it does not regard it as supplying a political method’.23 The way forward was not so much by the destruction of the existing social order, as by its transformation, and by the inclusion within its pale of the excluded working class. This inclusion would both advance the position of the workers and further the transformation of society: ‘No community will ever find peace whilst its working class masses have no responsibility for their own conditions, and that responsibility will never be given by Profit Sharing, Whitley Councils or any such expedients which do nothing but involve the workmen in capitalist concerns, entangle them without freeing them, bind them without changing their status. The piece of work which now has to be done is to take the workmen into full social partnership, to use him not only as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water but as a colleague in the management of industry’.24

There were three principal audiences for the political myth presented by MacDonald on behalf of the Labour Party. The first audience was made up of those engaged in parliamentary politics, or in articulate political argu- ment, and more particularly those outside the Labour Party b ~ t holding ‘progressive’ opinions, who might be won over. The persuasion of this audience became increasingly necessary once the Labour Party had finally separated itself from Liberalism, since there was no place for two progres- sive parties. Thus in Parliament and Revolution, published in 1919, Mac- Donald took trouble to distinguish English socialism from the revolution- ary behaviour in Russia, and the following year in A Policy for the Labour Party he appealed to those who wished to place the national interest above that of any single class: ‘Other parties complacently believe that they are national. Labour has proved in its experience that they are class, and its opposition to them consists of a more comprehensive view of national need and national welfare than theirs’.2* In case the point should be lost, the appeal was even more specifically made two years later in ‘An Open Letter to a Young Liberal’, published in the Labour Leader: ‘Liberalism has done its work and lingers on as a political machine with funds, head offices, leaders, summer schools, but with no spiritual and intellectual mission or gospel for the future’.26 The language used here was very similar to that employed by Liberals who did cross over, and who talked of their transi- tion in terms of their search for a ‘new spirit’. The Labour Party, wrote C. P. Trevelyan in 1921, gave a chance to ‘create hope and a new social spirit, which will be far stronger than the cynicism and greed which are the ruling guides today’.27 The progressive appeal was sufficiently broad for R. L. Outhwaite, a former Liberal M.P. who joined the I.L.P., to see the

22 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Society (London, 1905) p 142. 23 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Parliament and Revolution (Manchester, 1919) p. 103. 2‘ J . Ramsay MacDonald, A Policy for the Labour Party (London, 1920) p. 94. *s J. Ramsay MacDonald, Parliament and Revolution (Manchester, 1919). A Policy for the

Labour Party (London, 1920) p. 45. 26 Re rinted in J. Ramsay MacDonald, Wanderings and Excursions (London 1925 [quote

from lJ32 ed.]) p. 249. 27 C. P. Trevelyan, From Liberalism to Labour (London 1921) p. 71; cf. Bernard Barker’s

description of a Yorkshire Liberal (C. H. Wilson) who joined the Labour Party: ‘His transi- tion . . . was not a question of a conversion to Socialism, or even of the victory of a Socialist generation, but one of shared idealism and conviction of the need for new moral values in

54 Labour Party in 1919 as the parliamentary champion of land reform.28

The second audience was the electorate, whose greatly expanded num- bers after 1918 provided one of the incentives to the Labour Party’s asser- tion of its independence. Insofar as they were not already sympathetic to the Labour Party, but might still be won because of general progressive sympathy, it was important to appeal to their radicalism without offending their Whiggery. There was a mixture of innovation and caution in Labour and the New Social Order, for as Sidney Webb explained to the second conference of 1918, the declaration was ‘not an appeal to the converted but the basis of an appeal to the 20 million electors-10 or 12 million of them being new elector^'.^^

The rank and file of the party could not be ignored however, despite Webb’s explanation. One of the consequences of the success of the Labour Party in securing the adhesion of the trade unions was not so much that the unions were converted to socialism, as that the ideological character of the party, which had always been eclectic, became even more so. Particularly after the Russian Revolution, the socialist myth which united the party had to do so in ways that did not alarm. Thus at the very moment when the party was apparently fixing a socialist nameplate to its door, it had to do so by using not a revolutionary banner but solid, respectable brass. Robert Moore’s comments on the growing support for the party in the Deerness valley of the Durham coalfield at this time, are i l l~minating:~~ ‘Prior to 1914-18 the I.L.P. had been a non-respectable body and the Labour cause weak. The activists had been committed Socialists, hostile to the estab- lished local leadership, which was Liberal and largely Methodist. After 191 8 the Labour Party was sufficiently respectable for non-Socialists to join.’

To describe political arguments as having mythical elements involves a problem. It is in the nature of such myths that they be accepted, and not subjected to the kind of practical scrutiny which may be involved in rational argument or the discussion of policy. (It is interesting to note that MacDonald was notably less impressive in this kind of ~ituation).~’ This makes the actions of the myth-makers ambiguous, since they can be sup- posed neither to believe wholly the myths, nor to be engaged in simple deception. There were occasions on which MacDonald appeared both to recognize the role of myth in social movements, and to repudiate it as appropriate for a Labour Party where cool intellect was required: ‘Apocalyptic visions as an impetus to effort have to give place to the satisfying and blessed weariness which comes at the end of a day’s work’ .32

But in the same passage, written in 1909, he continued, ‘The crude expec- tation of the Second Coming was necessary for the founding of Christian-

indust and politics’. Bernard Barker ‘Anatomy of Reformism: the social and political ideas of theTabour leadership in Yorkshire’. International Review of Social History 1973 XVIIl Part I p. 7. 28-R. E. Dowse, ‘The Entry of the Liberals into the Labour Party 1910-1920’ in Yorkshire

Bulletin of Economic and Social Research (Nov. 1961) p. 80.

30 Robert Moore, Pit-men, Preachers and Politics (Cambridge 1974) p. 178.

RAMSAY MACDONALD AND THE LABOUR PARTY

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1918 (Jan.-Feb.) p. 44.

See, for instance, his relative1 poor performance in debate with Hilaire Belloc, reported verbatim in South West London Jederation of the Independent Labour Party, Socialism and the Servile State (London, 1911).

32 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Government (London 1909) p. xxx.

RODNEY BARKER 55 ity; the abandonment of that expectation for a faith in eternal purposes was necessary for the survival of the Church’ .33 There was more than a pinch of ‘faith in eternal purposes’ in MacDonald’s socialist dish, and earlier in the same book he had written of socialism coming silently, ‘in the night, when the watchers are looking elsewhere . . . Only by looking back for a period of years can we mark the advance that has been made’.34 MacDonald was clearly aware of the kind of considerations which led to the pronounce- ments of 1918, and of the non-literal importance of socialist statements. Writing to a friend in 1894, he said of the Independent Labour Party, ‘the socialist conversion was not primary . . . but secondary, as a necessity imposed upon the new party to find a sufficiently ample basis for indepen- dent existence’ .35 Equally, again in private correspondence, he could indi- cate clearly the importance for propaganda purposes of placing oneself within a historical narrative which gave ultimate victory to oneself and one’s cause. Describing his work as a peripatetic socialist speaker, he observed, ‘In order to live you summon more angels from heaven who come with advanced copies of human evolution in the pages of which you read the doom of John Burns and the Daily Chronicle and the divine calling of yourself and Fabian Questions for Poor Law Guardians’.36 When MacDonald attacked Sorel, in Syndicalism in 1912, one of the points he took hold of was precisely Sorel’s use of myth, as something, he said, which ‘may never really happen, but it will be the delusion which will be the cause of whatever does happen’.37 But the cause of his hostility to Sorel was not that Sorel described the non-rational element in politics, but that he em- ployed it for causes of which MacDonald did not approve. At times, his own recognition of this non-rational element could lead him to extreme gloom, particularly after disappointing election results.38 But he also appears to have been aware of the importance of the non-rational motive at the root of political actions and loyalties. ‘In every workman’s heart’ he wrote in 1913, ‘there is a dim perception of a social order based upon the instinct of human equality and justice. He feels himself to be that divine and superior something called a man, with certain rights inherent to his manhood which can never be argued away by the verbal accuracies of philosophers nor by the economic reasoning and convenience of business men. These instinctive perceptions and feelings are imperative, uncon- querable, and can never be made subject to expediencies or business advantage’ .39

MacDonald has not generally been written about with much enthusiasm, and most political historians have regarded him either as a fool or a villain, when they have not thought him both. His account of socialism has been dismissed, often contemptuously, as it was by Asa Briggs who simply em- ployed derisive inverted commas to refer to MacDonald‘s ‘evolutionist

33 ibid. p. mi. 34 ibid. p. xxx. 35 MacDonald to Enid Stacy, Summer, 1894, quoted in Anne Fremantle, This Little Band

36 MacDonald to Stacy, n.d., quoted Fremantle, p. 126. 37 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Syndicalism (London 1912) p. 20. 38 See e.g. Rodney Barker, Education and Polifics 1900-1951: a Study of the Labour Party

39 J. Ramsay MacDonald, The Social Unrest: its cause and solution (London 1913)

ofProphets (London 1961) p. 125.

(Oxford 1972) pp. 138 n. and 145.

pp. 99-100.

56 RAMSAY MACDONALD AND THE LABOUR PARTY

writings on ‘‘socialist theory” ’.40 J. M. Winter has delivered a similar judgment on the early socialist propagandists and on MacDonald in par- ticular: ‘Most of these writers agreed as to the need for a new approach in socialist thinking, but their comments are all too frequently marred by a vagueness which made (and make) it difficult to grasp the essence of many socialists’ ideas. A prominent example is that of J. Ramsay MacDonald . . . MacDonald, who remained a master of obfuscation throughout his event- ful political life, wrote about socialism regularly and with consistent impre- cision’ .41

Most of this criticism of MacDonald and of the socialism of the Labour Party is misapplied for it assumes that what was going on was an attempt either at ‘socialist theory’-a sophisticated exercise of a kind not often undertaken by English politicians-or at practical planning. To this extent it credits MacDonald with more and wider ambitions than his writings suggest. But it also gives him too little credit for what he did achieve, which was to provide, more than any other single person, (with the exception, perhaps, of Keir Hardie), the myth which unified and sustained the Labour Party, not only in the years when he led it before 1931, but for many years after, up in fact until the end of the Attlee government in 1951, when the myth was overtaken by history.

The critics of MacDonald point to the almost pathetically inviting targets of the first two Labour Governments and the massive disparity between their achievements and the superficial promises of Labour and the New Social Order and the whole tradition of socialism to which it referred. But the socialist myth did not fail. On the contrary, it was too successful, and having done its job of unifying the party, giving it a sense of direction, and authorhing its demands, it encouraged the impression that that was all there was to it. As R. H. Tawney pointed out, ‘In 1918, the Labour Party finally declared itself to be a Socialist Party. It supposed, and supposes, that it thereby became There were particular and personal reasons for the performance of the Labour Party in the inter-war years, and the politi- cal career of Ramsay MacDonald is among them. But there was also the absence of either distinctive interest or distinctive ideology (or ideology as doctrine, as Drucker calls it)43 whereby the party might be enabled to take distinctive action when in office. Leo V. Panitch has suggested that the Party had an ideology which assisted integration into the British political structure.u But it was rather the case that the fumes of the myth, stressing as they did continuity and the building of socialism out of the fruits of capitalism, prevented the development of an ideology of dissent. The par- ty’s myth stressed the need to create fundamental unity, whilst its aspira- tions were such as to present it as a claimant on the existing order of things, rather than a challenger to them. It was the absence of a distinctive radical ideology, rather than the presence of an integrative one, which prevented the Party from ever threatening disintegration.

Asa Bri s, ‘Introduction’ to Asa Briggs and John Saville (eds.) Essays in Labour History 1886-1923 b n d o n 1971) p. 3. “ J. M. Winter. Socialism and the Challenne of War (London 1974) D. 3. ” R. H. Tawney, ‘The Choice Before thelabour P a w (1934) in‘fhe Attack and Other

Papers (London 1953) p. 58. ” H. M. Drucker, op. cit. ‘‘ Leo V. Panitch, ‘Ideology and Integration: the Case of the British Labour Party’ Political

Studies vol. X I X June 1971 no. 2.