RAMSAY MacDonald was the UK’s first Labour prime minister yet he remains an oddly obscure figure in the party’s political history.
He served nine months for his first term as head of a minority government in 1924. His second term lasted longer, from 1929-31, but ended in disaster when financial disaster overwhelmed it amid the Great Depression.
However, he served a third term for four years as head of the so-called National Government, a coalition of all major parties intended to meet the crisis and the slump of the 1930s. In fact it was dominated by the Conservatives, who steadily undermined MacDonald until by 1935 could do little but resign.
