THE NEW PREMIER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 200, 10 June 1929, Page 6

THE NEW PREMIER

MR MACDONALD’S CAREER. CREATOR OF THE LABOUR PARTY Mr James Ramsay MacDonald, who for the second time has formed a Ministry in Britain, was born in Lossiemouth 63 years ago. He represents the Seaham Division of Durham. His father was a farm labourer. As a student, young MacDonald paid diligent attention to his work, and eventually became a pupil teacher. When 20 years of age, he went to London and obtained a humble clerkship for the meagre wage of 12s 6d a week, and, despite long hours of duty, he continued his studies. Subsequently he secured a post as secretary to a politician, and he also began to contribute articles to various journals. Mr MacDonald was appointed secretary of the British Labour Party in 1900. He was chairman of the Independent Labour Party from 1906 to 1919, and leader of the Labour Party from 1911 to 1914. He has been editor of the Socialist Library, and has published various works on Socialism. He visited Australia in 1906, and has an extensive knowledge of the Empire, gained through touring various dominions. He is an effective speaker, and a deep reader. He is one of the intellectuals who have led the Labour Party., Under his guidance, the organisation has gained momentum, influence and status. Mr MacDonald is a tall, handsome man, ’ with a sweeping moustache, a pleasant voice and a plausible manner. Although he advocates Socialism, he is by uo means a revolutionary. He smokes a big cigar, and is one' of the best amateur golfers in Great Britain. He enjoys the close friendship of several men highly placed in the Conservative and Liberal Parties. It was' through him that a close working alliance was maintained with Liberialism fi’om 1906 to 1914. Mr MacDonald is a pacifist, and was a bitter opponent of British participation in the Great War.

Mr A. G. Gardner, a former editor of the “Daily News,” who is a staunch Liberal, contributes to that paper a character sketch of Mr Ramsay MacDonald. “Few men have reached such eminence with so aloof a bearing and so lonely a spirit,” writes Mr Gardner. “He is at once shy and proud, with the shyness of the raw Highland youth, Who can never he quite at ease in the world he has conquered, and the sombre pride of the Highland clansman, which nurses iteelf in secret and feels a slight as if it were an insult to the Most High. Of the savoir fair© of the Welsh celt—the supple gaiety of Lloyd George -and the breezy, winking gaiety of J. H. Thomas—he has no trace. Mr G. N. Barnes once complained of the ‘vein of insufferable superiority,’ which had become almost habitual with Mr MacDonald, and it is undeniable that no Prime Minister Was ever more inaccessible to his colleagues, with the possible exception of Salisbury, who did not always know his own Cabinet colleagues when he met them in the lobby. How* much his solitariness is the effect of his shyness and lack of ease with others, and how much is due to an inordinate selfsufficiency and pride, is doubtfull, but I think that, like the late President Wilson, he has a weakness for the companion who says .‘Yea’ to his ‘Yea’ and J Nay’ to his ‘Nay.’ and that he does not easily forgive those who have done him the dishonour of disagreeing with him.”

His industry is a legend. N*o statesman of his time has laboured so hard to master his profession as he has done. He is the most travelled man who ever occupied 10, Downing Street, and he has travelled always with a purpose, notebook in hand. His gifts are conspicuous, a handsome presence, with that suggestion of hinterlands of thought to which you are not invited, that keeps the mind wondering; a deep, powerful and musical voice; a considerable rhetorical power; and that sort of genius which consists of the “capacity of taking infinite pains.” But his mind is pedestrian. There are no wings to his thought. He lacks clarity and candour. His motives are obscure, his speech often equivocal, and, if he were at your back in a row, you would be tempted to look over your shoulder to see what he was doing. " He is without the high and rare gift of dispassionateness, and personal feeling plays havoc with his judgment. But he has the quality of power and tenacity of purpose, is the most formidable figure the movement he so largely created has thrown up, and he has a future in spite of his recent past.