Betrayal of the Labour by Ramsay MacDonald in 1931

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Betrayal of the Labour by Ramsay MacDonald in 1931

There were many problems faced by Ramsay MacDonald which, forced him

to resign however, in this essay I will be discussing whether he

betrayed the labour government.

This essay will be broken down in to five main bullet points which

will all sum up to answer the question above.

The main problems faced by Ramsay MacDonald was economic and also the

minority position. Ramsay MacDonald’s government was opposed by the

liberals and so as a result Ramsay MacDonald had to do something, a

deal was struck with the Liberals that they would not stand against

each other in by-elections leading up to 1914. Ramsay MacDonald was a

double, meaning that he under took two positions in the labour party

they were: Foreign Secretary and also the prime minister of England,

however several years later he didn’t want to do the “double” job

again so he suggested that the labour government should appoint a man

who he Knew, J.H. Thomas. This never happened because a man called

Arthur Henderson insisted that he would take no post other than being

Foreign Secretary, Ramsay MacDonald had to appoint him because of

“the claims of such an experienced and widely respected colleague” was

hard for him to resist, “even if he did not trust or like him”. Ramsay

MacDonald was not ready to stand aside completely and as a result

there was friction between him and Henderson.

The economic problems faced by the Labour government were that there

was that unemployment benefit rules were changed and there were a lot

of people who were unemployed; Coal Mines Act reduced the standard

eight-hour shift by 30 minutes. But the real problem came in October

1929, when the stock market crashed, known as the “Wall street crash”.

This stock market crash was “not merely another periodic recession but

the Great Depression, whose catastrophic effects were felt world

wide”. Britain felt the force of the economic downturn as the value of

export declined nearly by a half, and unemployment reached its highest

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