First Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2019
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first Prime Minister, is chosen by Shaun Ley.
In 1931 Ramsay MacDonald went to see the king in order to resign. George V persuaded him to stay, and a story of party betrayal began.
Broadcaster Shaun Ley and journalist Anne Perkins pick through events that have a contemporary ring as the political class of the thirties struggled to cope with fast moving events.
MacDonald's own story and background is remarkable too - illegitimate son, born in Lossiemouth in Scotland, he is remembered as one of the early founding fathers of the Labour party, and a man who bravely spoke out against the First World War.
Presenter: Mathew Parris
Producer: Miles Warde
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan |
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| 0:41.6 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:45.7 | The Great Lives Club already counts a few Prime Ministers among its members, Clement |
| 0:50.6 | Attley, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli, Duke of Wellington, David Lloyd George, not yet Margaret Thatcher. |
| 0:57.0 | These are all fairly well-known names. |
| 1:00.0 | Today's addition to the list is not in that pantheon. |
| 1:03.4 | Ramsey McDonald, but my goodness he's interesting. |
| 1:06.7 | His nominator, the political broadcaster Sean Lay, |
| 1:09.8 | describes him as the rock star politician of his day. |
| 1:13.8 | Let's just listen to a brief, rather creaky clip |
| 1:17.0 | of McDonald himself speaking. |
| 1:19.7 | We, in common with every nation in the world have been going through hard times. |
| 1:27.0 | The world's commerce has been contracting. |
| 1:30.0 | Our own national income has been shrinking. The suffering of too many of our fellows has been deplorable. |
... |
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