Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. It's the 12th of October
and I brought you here for a birthday celebration.
Now if I told you that a boy could be born the illegitimate son of a servant girl
and a peasant farm worker in Victorian Britain, brought up in this single parent
butt 'n' ben in Lossiemouth, and finish his
full-time education at the age of 12, but go on to become Prime Minister of
Great Britain, would you know his name?
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In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
Now there's no way that I can cover the life of Ramsay Macdonald in a 10 minute video,
all I can do is to give you just a taste.
Now his mum wasn't only, or always a servant, she was also a seamstress,
a dirty seamstress.
It's actually also been suggested that the reason for his illegitimacy
was that Macdonald's grandmother thought that her daughter, Anne Ramsay,
was above marrying a peasant farm worker even if she'd .... you know ....
Macdonald was lucky to have been born in Scotland
where an impoverished child could get a basic education if his mother really wanted it.
At the age of 12, he was able to continue with his education by being a pupil teacher,
helping out the master with education of the younger boys,
and whilst he was probably sure that his career wouldn't end this way,
his first ever job was as a farm labourer, just like his dad,
but this was a man who was destined for higher things. He read widely
and well.
They've built a roundell here to Ramsay Macdonald in Prospect Terrace where he later wanted to build a house,
but Lossiemouth could never have contained his ambitions,
and after a six-month spell in Bristol, this young man from a small fishing village of Lossie,
who like many Scots of his time, grew up humble in means, but rich in education,
found himself in London.
Now many of us would have felt crushed between the hammer of ambition and the anvil of metropolis,
but it forged him.
Initially the clerical equivalent of a coal miner heading to the pit face each morning,
with quill in hand he toiled with little purpose.
He later said 'I went every morning to the city in the wake of the monarchs of finance;
scrawled and scribbled and added and subtracted all day ... and felt like I was one of those
undistinguished ants who would be lucky if they continued by honest and effective service to earn
a latchkey and daily bread', but his evenings?
His evenings were filled with socialist meetings, discussion circles, the Ethical Movement,
the Scottish Home Rule Association, as well as studies at the Guildhall Library,
the British Museum Reading Room and a course of science at Birkbeck Institute.
The Birkbeck Institute was part of London University that operated evening studies for workers,
and as a steam hammer pounded, he worked himself to exhaustion.
Now this was in the more fluid period on the political left, where party politics wasn't as well defined.
For Macdonald, it was natural to be a member of the Socialist Union, attend Fabian Society
gatherings, and take up a job as the Secretary to an Irish Liberal MP.
Liberals were seen as radical,
and the job that he took up in professional politics transformed him.
Although he would have jobs in both Politics and Journalism, his life's work would be the hewing of
words, the mining of inspiration and the struggle to bring peace and social unity to the surface.
So in 1888 Macdonald worked as secretary to the radical Liberal candidate for West Islington,
Thomas Lough down in London, and also helped Seymour Keay to win a parliamentary by-election
here in Moray and Nairn.
The world was seeing the metamorphosis to the colourful butterfly that emerged from the caterpillar peasant
that had grown up in a butt 'n' ben down there.
Now this transformation wasn't overnight.
They say that behind every great man there's an astonished mother-in-law,
and it's important not to minimize the impact of Macdonald's marriage to Margaret Gladstone.
She was an active socialist campaigner herself, in fact she even has her own monument in London.
At the first meeting of the Women's Labour League, she was elected to the Executive.
She was independently wealthy, and that's why that meeting was held at the house that
her income had recently bought for her and her husband, in fact the house effectively became the
headquarters of the Labour Party until it had enough funds to buy a premises.
She had nobly thought about giving away what wealth she had, but the more humbly raised Macdonald told her,
'if you knew what it was to have ideal plans for work, a conviction of the strength to carry
them out at least to a valuable point and no breakfast, you would see the real immorality
of neglecting to use the opportunities that you have in life'. Her moderate wealth
allowed the couple a financial independence that he could not have obtained himself. Her income
gave him the freedom to pursue a political career and equality for those that had none.
There were attempts to stand as a Liberal candidate and then a crossover to the newly
formed Independent Labour Party. There were failures at the ballot box and then
an electoral alliance with the Liberals before the Labour Party's 26-seat
breakthrough election in 1906, where Ramsay Macdonald won a seat in Leicester.
After the next election in 1910 there was another Liberal Government,
who sent overtures for Macdonald to become part of it but he declined.
Now if you're paying attention you can see 1914 approaching.
A continent of crisscrossing military alliances, a Sarajevo shooting and a nation
mobilising for war. Now in the 'patriotic' clamour for war,
it would take a principled man, and a suicidal politician
to stand in a House of Commons and oppose it,
and yet that's what Ramsay Macdonald did.
The right-wing press must have been delighted to have lack of patriotism
to add to lack of paternity to justify their bile.
Macdonald was vilified in the press, verbally abused in the streets,
and then voted out of office in his Leicester constituency.
What was much worse,
his opposition to the war led to being withdrawn
from membership of the Moray Golf Club ... tragic!
Now during the war, Macdonald had actually visited the front line,
and remained calm under fire, while visiting troops. He'd shown more courage
than most parliamentarians or journalists, but the John Bull Newspaper's campaign
against his treachery, was enough to keep him out of the parliament at the 1921 election.
Nevertheless, the dignity that he showed throughout, meant that he was elected
Leader of the Labour Party the following year. In the 1923 election,
the Conservatives failed to get a majority, and Labour,
gaining a greater share of the vote, and more seats than the Liberals
were for the first time asked to form a government and Ramsay Macdonald,
the educated peasant from Lossiemouth, became the first ever Labour Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
After victory he came back here to Lossie to plan his cabinet, in fact, he came back regularly
throughout his life to this house that he built for his mother in 1909.
He'd wanted to build it at Prospect Terrace, but local worthies didn't want a 'red' building there.
His mum could never imagine on the 12th of October 1866, as she brought her only child into the world, fatherless,
that on the 22nd of January 1924, he would become the first Prime Minister of a workers party,
that has yet hadn't even been established. We can only imagine how proud she must have been.
That was almost 100 years ago now. Alot happened to Ramsay Macdonald and our country
in the years that followed. Today's story stops here, although I would like to finish
with a couple of questions. For example, I don't know who lives in this house today.
They're probably much better off than the young Ramsay Macdonald ever was,
but I do wonder if there was such a thing as the son of a peasant farmer, from a single
parent family in Lossiemouth today,
what are the chances of them growing up to be Prime Minister?
Did the 20th Century really make us more equal?
Given that Ramsay Macdonald, Keir Hardy and Nye Bevan were all born illegitimate,
why is it that it's the Tory cabinet that's full of bastards?
Also why is it that the Labour Party's first ever Prime Minister was expelled
from the Labour Party? That's a question for another video, but please share this one and
click the link below to support the channel. Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.