Mark Stuart: Warning for Clegg in fate of Ramsay MacDonald and putting nation first

We’re in the middle of an economic slump, as Europe faces a major banking crisis

Large cuts are demanded in public expenditure by the money markets to tackle the worsening budget deficit. Tax levels are saturated, so the nation’s books will have to be balanced by slashing benefits.

After much discussion, Coalition Government is seen as the best means of lifting the nation out of its difficulties.

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I refer not to the present day, but to 80 years ago this month – August 1931 – when the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, made his fateful decision to form a coalition with the Conservatives and the National Liberals.

Within a short space of time, MacDonald became a hate figure within the Labour party, widely viewed as a man who had betrayed all his socialist principles.

His noble pacifism in the First World War, his pre-eminent role as a socialist philosopher, and his undoubted skills as an orator in the days of large outdoor gatherings, were all forgotten.

Only five backbench MPs supported the actions of MacDonald and the three other senior Cabinet Ministers who took Labour into a National Government.

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The rest of the Labour movement rounded on MacDonald, accusing him of being part of a “banker’s ramp”, a capitalist conspiracy. Even his young Parliamentary Private Secretary, Clement Attlee, claimed his former boss had committed “the greatest betrayal in the political history of this country”.

MacDonald was effectively hounded to his grave, his former brothers and sisters seeing him as “the embodiment of wickedness”, as he later put it in his diary.

The legacy of 1931 for Labour was a culture of betrayal that has beset every subsequent Labour leader. In the 1940s, Clement Attlee was condemned for the extension of compulsory national service; a few years later, he was pilloried by Aneurin Bevan for introducing prescription charges.

In the 1960s, Harold Wilson was castigated by Michael Foot for his support for the American war in Vietnam, despite not sending a single soldier to South-East Asia. In 1976, James Callaghan and his Chancellor, Denis Healey, were booed by delegates at the Labour conference for introducing painful public spending cuts, while Britain went “cap in hand” to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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Even in Opposition, Labour leaders were accused of betraying the faithful. When the Left-winger, Neil Kinnock shifted to the Right in the 1980s, ditching policies on nuclear weapons, EEC membership and nationalisation of industries, he was unkindly dubbed by the Left as “Ramsay MacKinnock”.

The truth is that Labour has never been a very socialist party, at least not in terms of what it has done in Government. When he was elected Labour leader in 1994, Tony Blair did everything he could to get over that sense of betrayal while the party was still in Opposition by symbolically ditching Clause IV of Labour’s 1918 constitution. The tactic, though clever, didn’t work.

In government, Blair too became portrayed as a betrayer or principles, first over cuts in lone parent benefit in 1997, then in his second term over foundation hospitals, top-up fees and most obviously, over the war in Iraq.

Indeed, such is the culture of betrayal in the Labour party that there are real doubts about whether it could be entrusted as a serious player in a future coalition charged with getting Britain out an economic mess.

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Wouldn’t similar members of a Labour Cabinet cry foul at the prospect of cuts to unemployment benefit as those who denounced Ramsay MacDonald 80 years ago?

Wouldn’t the temptation be just too great for Labour to stick to its principles instead of making the tough choices required?

Despite a positive biography by David Marquand penned in 1997, the historical reputation of Ramsay MacDonald is still in dire need of rehabilitation.

We need to put ourselves in MacDonald’s shoes. His fear of imminent economic collapse was pressing and real. As a pioneer Labour leader, he had to show that Labour was a credible party of Government, not just one in hock to the trade unions.

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In order to do that, he had to put together a package of measures that would reassure the money markets. Instead of being pilloried, he should be remembered as that rare breed: a politician who put his country before party. In that respect, he deserves to be ranked alongside the equally prickly Sir Robert Peel, whose abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 may have split the Conservative party for a generation, but in the noble cause of cheaper food for the masses.

Nick Clegg is the modern incarnation of Ramsay MacDonald, denounced for betraying his principles when in fact, tough compromises over policies are at the heart of what Coalition Government is all about. Sadly, political leaders who put country before party meet political oblivion, but we should still remember them as noble servants of the nation.