Once the working classes were allowed to vote it was inevitable that sooner or later they would elect a government which reflected their interests. That moment came with the appointment, in January 1924, of the first Labour government.   

The circumstances could hardly have been less auspicious. There had been three general elections in as many years. No party had an overall majority. Labour, with 191 seats, was not even the largest, with the result that, throughout its short life, the government was entirely dependent on the goodwill of the Liberals, which soon ran out. With a couple of junior exceptions during the wartime coalition, no Labour MP had any experience of government. In the House of Lords, which, apart from the bishops and the law lords, was entirely hereditary, the party had virtually no support. It was, according to a witness at the time, ‘an untried body of men travelling in an unknown land surrounded by enemies’.

With no credible candidate for foreign secretary, MacDonald combined the job with the office of prime minister

The immediate problem, and it was the subject of much newspaper interest, was what the Labour ministers would wear when being sworn in as privy counsellors by the King. Visits to the palace required top hats and tails, which were beyond the means of all but a handful of grandees. The King obligingly relaxed the dress code.

In the main, the new government was composed of men of humble origins. Many had left school at 12, and one had worked from the age of nine. The prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, although he soon adapted to the warm embrace of the establishment, was the illegitimate son of an agricultural worker. Philip Snowden, the chancellor of the exchequer, was the son of weavers. The home secretary, Arthur Henderson, was the illegitimate son of a domestic servant. The health secretary, John Wheatley, was one of eight children who grew up in a cottage without drainage or running water. And so on. They owed their secondary education, such as it was, to the trade unions and Methodism.  

There were exceptions. The education secretary, Sir Charles Trevelyan, came from a family of Liberal gentry, owners of a large estate in Northumberland. Perhaps the grandest member of the new government was Viscount Haldane, who had served as lord chancellor in a Liberal government and who, in the absence of a suitably qualified Labour man, gamely agreed to resume office. He proved to be the source of much useful advice to the fledgling government. In the absence of any credible candidate for foreign secretary, MacDonald decided to combine the job with the office of prime minister, adding greatly to his already considerable workload.

Many of the issues faced will be familiar today. The press, with the exception of the Daily Herald, were wholly hostile.   Expectations among Labour supporters were unrealistically high. The promise of a wealth tax (‘a capital levy’) was swiftly jettisoned; likewise home rule for Scotland. The state of the public finances left limited room for manoeuvre over tax and spending. Almost from the outset the government came under attack from left and right. In Northern Ireland, Unionists were boycotting the boundary commission set up to demarcate the border between north and south.   There was a scandal over the discovery that Sir Alexander Grant, a businessman friend of MacDonald’s, had given him the use of a Daimler and a large loan.

Despite all this, there were achievements: improvements in unemployment benefits, an increase in agricultural wages, a reduction of the national debt, a programme of urgently needed social housing building and the expansion of secondary education. It was far from being the revolution that many Labour supporters had demanded and their opponents feared, but as David Torrance writes in The Wild Men: ‘Many governments with substantial majorities and fuller parliamentary terms have delivered less.’

The final straw was the publication of the Zinoviev letter – which turned out to be a forgery

The main problem was recognition of Bolshevik Russia, which also involved the promise of a large loan, leading to MacDonald’s defeat in the Commons on a motion of no confidence in October. The Russian revolution and the murder of the Tsar and his family were still fresh in the public memory and many, not least the King, were unhappy at the prospect of normalising relations with the new regime. The final straw was the publication in the Daily Mail, four days before the autumn election, of the Zinoviev letter, purporting to be from the president of the Communist International, encouraging Labour members to engage in seditious activities – later revealed to be a forgery. Even so, Labour increased its share of the popular vote by more than a million.

Torrance tells an absorbing, meticulous and balanced story through the eyes of the main players, using a wide range of sources, some of which have not been seen before. The Royal archives, in particular, shed light on the fascinating relationship between MacDonald and George V. As the historian Peter Hennessy says: ‘In the nick of time, as its centenary approaches, David Torrance has rescued the first Labour government from the lay-by of British political history.’

A Century of Labour treads more familiar ground, taking the story from 1924 to the present. Jon Cruddas is a member of that relatively rare species, an active politician who is also an intellectual. He sets out to assess the party’s performance in and out of office with reference to unresolved tensions between the ideological and intellectual strands at its core. 

Labour does best, he observes, when it seeks to combine these various traditions. But when pragmatism (he calls it ‘utility’) takes precedence over human rights or the pursuit of social justice, the party tends to fall apart. Witness the Iraq debacle, which arguably (although Cruddas does not quite say this) led directly to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.

Although Cruddas is essentially a Labour loyalist he is not particularly enamoured of the current leader:

It is difficult to identify the purpose of a future Starmer government – what he seeks to accomplish beyond achieving office. Labour appears content for the coming election to amount to a referendum on the performance of the governing Conservatives rather than a choice between competing visions of politics and justice.

Where will that lead in the long term? We shall see.