Rise of the Labour Party: Trade Unions & Moderate Leadership

• The Labour Party was formed in 1900, and it did modestly well in the pre-war general elections, but it was very much the junior party to the Liberals
• However, in the 1923 election, Labour gained more votes than the Liberals for the first time, and in 1924, Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister
• In May 1929, Labour became the largest parliamentary party and MacDonald became Prime Minster for the second time
• One reason for Labour rose was because Labour emerged united at the end of the War: there had been splits in 1914 over whether to support the war, but in 1917 Labour ministers in the wartime coalition resigned and the Party was reunited
• The war also led to a huge growth in trade union memberships, this was significant as the Unions funded the party from membership fees and provided the vast bulk of party membership
• Thanks to unions backing Labour, the Party ran a successful local political machine and fielded similar numbers of candidates to the Conservatives in the 1922, 1923 and 1924 elections
• Historian Ross McKibbin has argued that Labour's ability to represent a growing sense of working class identity helped to win supporters from the Liberals
• Other historians have pointed to the significance of the Liberal Split led to he Rise of the Labour Party
• Asquith backed a minority Labour government after the 1923 election because he thought it would do a bad job and forced to rely on Liberal Support (Lloyd George feared losing a separate Liberal Identity)
• Asquith's gamble on the minority Labour Government was a huge mistake, MacDonald ruled with economic caution and impressed everyone with his conduct of foreign affairs
• Although, MacDonald made it clear that the country was safe in Labour's hands, he was compelled to resign
• A Left-wing journalist, J. R. Campbell had written an article in the Communist Newspaper "Workers' Weekly", calling on working class soldiers not to shoot at fellow workers on the other side in any future war
• When J. R. Campbell was threatened with prosecution for inciting mutiny (revolt), MacDonald used hiss political influence to have the case dropped so now, MacDonald faced and lost a vote of no confidence
• MacDonald's resignation resulted in a General Election (this was due to MacDonald backing J. R. Campbell who incited mutiny)
• Four days before the election (after MacDonald's resignation), the Daily Mail printed a letter supposedly written by Gregory Zinoviev (a leading Soviet Politician) to the British Communist Party, which stated Labour promoted Communism by recognising the Soviet Union
• The Campbell Case and Zinoviev letter clearly helped boost Conservative votes in 1924, but Labour won the 1929 election in part because of MacDonald's earlier economic prudence (wisdom)