Prime minister and foreign secretary: the dual role of James Ramsay MacDonald in 1924

Abstract

The career and reputation of James Ramsay MacDonald are generally influenced by his actions in 1931, and yet, as Donald Cameron Watt has stated, it is ‘not really possible to blackguard him for 1931 without having to cast aspersions on his extraordinary achievements earlier on’. This article examines some of these ‘extraordinary’ achievements by considering the role of MacDonald himself in the formation and leading of the 1924 minority Labour Government. It considers the difficulty he experienced in creating a Cabinet from colleagues whom he generally considered to be unsuitable and incapable, and which led him to become both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. He faced criticism from many in his party for his failure to implement a measure of socialist reforms, yet given the nature of the domestic problems with which his government was faced, and the tenuous nature of this government, held in place, as it was, by a fractured Liberal Party, this ‘failure’ is scarcely surprising. However, this article maintains that in foreign policy, and in his powerful joint role, MacDonald's reputation in 1924 really can be described as outstanding.