The fall of the first MacDonald government, 1924

Keith Laybourn

doi:10.1057/9781137314215

The fall of the first MacDonald government, 1924

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

Abstract

On leaving his Whitehall office on a cold January evening in 1924, Thomas Jones, assistant cabinet secretary, saw the newspaper placards announcing ‘Lenin Dead (official), Ramsay MacDonald Premier’ (Jones, 1960: 266). This juxtaposition of two monumentally important headlines was unfortunate, but remarkably apposite in the short history of the first Labour government, whose fortunes were very much determined by the relationship between Britain and the Soviet Union, although that was played out within the context of a nine-month-long minority socialist Labour government dependent upon the Liberal Party to maintain it in power.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	How Labour Governments Fall
Subtitle of host publication	From Ramsay Macdonald to Gordon Brown
Editors	Timothy Heppell, Kevin Theakston
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
Chapter	2
Pages	14-37
Number of pages	24
ISBN (Electronic)	9781137314215
ISBN (Print)	9780230361805
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314215
Publication status	Published - 31 Jul 2013

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The fall of the first MacDonald government, 1924

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