MR RAMSAY MACDONALD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23203, 29 May 1937, Page 12

MR RAMSAY MACDONALD

The retirement from office of Mr Ramsay MacDonald, coincident with, that of Mr Baldwin, more or less' marks the end of a chapter in British political history, for they were virtually the joint creators of the first National Government in 1931. Only about half a dozen representatives of the National Labour group —it can hardly be described as a party —remain in the House of Commons, and of these Mr Malcolm MacDonald alone will have Minis-

terial status. Mr Ramsay MacDonald's decision to retire from the Government along with Mr Baldwin excited no surprise when it was announced some months ago. Indeed, there would have been none had he elected to return to private life when Mr Baldwin took over the leadership of the Government from him in 1935. His health had begun to fail some years before, and the strain of office was telling heavily in 1933, when his eyesight was giving grave cause for concern. But, while he was content to hand over the Prime Ministership to Mr Baldwin, whose parliamentary influence had been greater than his own from the inception of the National Government, he was apparently not willing to surrender his position entirely, with the result that he clung to Cabinet rank, and enjoyed what is generally regarded as a sinecure, as Lord President of the Council. Few will begrudge Mr MacDonald the satisfaction of his closing years in office, to which formal participation in the Coronation ceremonial was doubtless a fitting sequel. His political career had been an extraordinarily chequered one, and he was entitled to some reeompense at the end of it. His critics have never shown any disposition to spare him. He has been described as "the creator and despoiler of the Labour Party." He has been called " proud " and "vain," and even his own colleagues at one stage were irritated by his " insufferable superiority." It was Mr Churchill who, towards the end of Mr MacDonald's last term as Prime Minister, when his utterances frequently showed anything but clear thinking, declared that he possessed the "gift of compressing the maximum of words into the minimum of thought "—surely an unnecessarily harsh comment, in view of the physical weaknesses that were then besetting him. For, whatever may be the judgment of posterity, it has to be admitted that there was much in his disciplined climb to political eminence that was greatly to his credit. His early struggle in London, as clerk and student, his headstrong denunciation of the war in 1914, which threatened to send him back to obscurity for ever, the part he played in building up the Labour Party into a powerful political machine, his picturesque eloquence and genuine skill in negotiation— ( these things meant the revelation of qualities which the nation interpreted as fitting him for leadership. That he found himself almost literally without a political following of members of his own party when he became the leader of the first National Government must have'troubled him, but it is more jist to argue that he showed strength and courage in thus forsaking his party to follow what he believed to be the right course than to accuse him of succumbing to the temptation to secure power at any price. Mr MacDonald may,go into virtual retirement with little glamour attaching to his name. There will be no question, however, of forfeiture of any of the gratitude and respect due to him for important contributions made to world stability during a period of unprecedented political difficulty.