British politician, born at Lossiemouth, and educated at a board school. He early threw himself into the Socialist movement, and became before long, as organizer and writer, an important personality in it. He was appointed secretary of the Labour party in 1900 and held the position for eleven years; and editor of the “Socialist Library” in 1905. He naturally turned to public life, and served on the London County Council from 1901 to 1904.
In 1906 he was elected to Parliament as Labour member for Leicester, and held the seat for a dozen years. It was as chairman of the Independent Labour party—the section led by Mr. Keir Hardie—that he entered the House of Commons; and he explained at the congress of the party in April 1907 that its object was to mould society into the socialist State. He adapted himself early to parliamentary conditions. One of the points which he constantly pressed, with eventual success, was that the terms of Government employment should be as good as those offered by the best private firms. In the controversy with the House of Lords he openly proclaimed himself a Single-Chamber man. On the National Insurance bill in 1911 he pointed out that a fundamental change of opinion had taken place, both parties now accepting the principle that social welfare was the care of the State. In that year he became the chairman of the Labour party in Parliament. He brought the whole weight of his party to bear in favour, first of the Parliament bill, and afterwards of the Home Rule bill. But he was suspicious of Sir Edward Grey’s foreign policy, which he thought too slavish in its following of Lord Lansdowne; and he opposed the naval increases of the years before the World War, as the socialists in Berlin had opposed the German increases which provoked British rejoinders.
His devotion, indeed, to the ideal of international socialism caused him, at the outbreak of the World War, to lose touch not only with British public feeling in general, but even with the sentiment of the Labour party which he led. In response to Sir Edward Grey’s statement in the House of Commons on August 3, 1914, he contended that no proof had been given that the country was in danger; that the conflict could not be confined to the neutrality of Belgium; that the action of Russia was suspicious; that France could not be annihilated; and that, in consequence, Great Britain should remain neutral. He found, however, that the bulk of the Labour party were convinced by the words of Sir Edward Grey and by the action of Germany; and he resigned the leadership of his party, being succeeded by Mr. Arthur Henderson. He remained a pacifist throughout the war, and used his influence in this direction in the labour and socialist movement, but he seldom spoke in Parliament, though he associated himself with the occasional anti-war demonstrations of Mr. Snowden and Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, and claimed the right of public meeting and free speech for pacifists. He endeavoured unsuccessfully to prevent the Labour Conference in January 1916, at the time of the first Military Service bill, from pledging themselves to support the Government in the prosecution of the war; but he declared at the same time, to the general surprise, that he and his friends were the most bitterly anti-German section of the people. He was active in the summer of 1917 in promoting the participation of representatives of the English Labour and Socialist parties in an International Socialist Conference at Stockholm, to which German representatives were coming, and he went to Paris with Mr. Arthur Henderson on a fruitless mission to secure the cooperation of French and Belgian socialists. He himself did not get to Stockholm, as the Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, whose distrust of Germany was based on practical knowledge of her crimes at sea, refused to permit him to sail. His record as a pacifist cost him his seat at Leicester at the general election of December 1918; he received only 6,347 votes to the 20,570 polled for his opponent, Mr. J. F. Green, a leading member of the National Democratic party.
Mr. Macdonald published several works on socialism and labour, besides a couple of books on India, which he visited in 1913 as a member of the Public Services Commission. He also wrote a memoir of his wife, Margaret Ethel, daughter of the eminent chemist, Dr. J. H. Gladstone, a woman of much character and ability, who died in 1911, leaving two sons and three daughters.
