One pearl-clutching countess shuddered that they would “cut the throats of every aristocrat and steal all their property”. The septuagenarian Tory MP for the City of London, Sir Frederick Banbury, declared that he would personally lead the Coldstream Guards to Westminister to protect the constitution. An apprehensive George V wrote in his diary: “Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama [Queen Victoria] died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!” Fear and fury trembled through the traditional ruling classes when Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour prime minister a hundred years ago this month. There was also much disdain. The former Liberal prime minister, Herbert Asquith, sniffily thought them “for the most part a beggarly array”.
There was incredulity at this shock turn of events within the new cabinet, many of them men from humble backgrounds. MacDonald’s deputy, John Clynes, expressed feelings of awe when Labour ministers were sworn in as privy counsellors at Buckingham Palace. “Amid the gold and crimson of the Palace, I could not help marveling at the strange turn of fortune’s wheel, which had brought MacDonald, the starveling clerk, Thomas, the engine driver, Henderson, the foundry labourer, and Clynes, the mill hand, to this pinnacle.” Philip Snowden, the chancellor, wrote: “It had come at last! Few of us who had toiled through the years to achieve this object had expected to see it realised in our lifetime.”
