The 1924 General Election took place 100 years ago this week.
Labour led by Ramsay MacDonald had formed a minority administration in January 1924 but the Liberals called a vote of no confidence in early October 1924 which Labour lost. A General Election took place on 29th October. The Tories won easily, taking seats primarily from the Liberals who ended up with 40 seats. They did not recover a significant Parliamentary presence until recent decades.
Labour also lost seats but still held 151.
A feature of the campaign was the Zinoviev letter, allegedly written by the Chair of the Third International outlining Communist plans for Britain and Labour. The letter was a forgery probably constructed by Russian anti-Bolsheviks. They were likely concerned that Labour was prepared to do business with the Bolshevik Government which the Tories were not. Labour of course was not pro-Bolshevik simply pragmatic.
The forgery was promoted by the Tories and the Daily Mail and possibly facilitated by the security services. A political conspiracy- all concerned were anti-Bolshevik and well disposed to anything that could promote that.
The actual impact of the letter was probably not as great as sometimes thought, Labour’s fairly modest losses being due to other issues.
On 27th October Ramsay MacDonald who sat for Aberavon spoke on Cardiff about the ZInoviev letter. One hundred years on Labour leaders still struggle with a hostile media it seems and still struggle with the reality that standing on the grounds of a right-wing political agenda makes it more difficult to deal with media scare tactics.
Leave a Reply