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James Ramsay MacDonald and Lady Margaret Sackville

Over the last two hundred years our town of Seaham has had quite a number of claims to fame. Surprisingly, one of them is a political success that surpasses achievements by much bigger towns and cities.

In 1924 James Ramsay MacDonald was asked to form a government by King George V when Stanley Baldwin’s small conservative majority proved ungovernable. This was to be the first ever Labour government elected by the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and MacDonald was the first ever Labour Prime Minister. However, this first Labour government depended upon the goodwill of other political parties and it soon failed and a general election was called which the Labour government lost.

In 1929 James Ramsay MacDonald was selected to stand as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Seaham. In a long campaign involving speeches at Labour Party meetings all over the country James Ramsay MacDonald was electioneering on two fronts. He was fighting to win the seat of Member of Parliament for Seaham and also campaigning as leader of the Labour Party to persuade the electorate to return a Labour government for the second time. During this exhausting period, he was persuaded on medical advice to give up smoking his beloved cigars because his voice was suffering from the effects of constant speaking at public events. By the time of the May 1929 general election MacDonald had won his seat as MP for Seaham with a majority of nearly 29,000. The Labour party achieved the largest number of seats although by only a small margin and he was returned as Prime Minister for a second time.

The effects of worldwide economic depression proved beyond the understanding of the majority of the cabinet and MacDonald appointed opposition leaders in a new cross-party national government. His Labour colleagues were dismayed to learn that he was remaining in office as head of a coalition with Conservative and Liberal support. This coalition – a National government - was seen by the majority of Party members to be a cynical betrayal of their hopes. Members of the cabinet included Arthur Henderson as Foreign Secretary, Snowden at the Exchequer, JH Thomas as Lord Privy Seal assisted by a young radical Oswald Mosley who later became disillusioned with mainstream politics and became leader of the British Union of Fascists. Margaret Bondfield was appointed Minister of Labour becoming the first ever woman cabinet minister. Amid a tumult of anger, bitterness and unpopularity from within the Labour party MacDonald eventually resigned in 1935. His health deteriorated and he was advised on medical grounds to rest. He died just two years later on a ship travelling to South America.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s MacDonald was frequently entertained by the society hostess Lady Londonderry which was much disproved of by the Labour party because her husband was a conservative cabinet minister. Seaham at that time was in the strong position of being represented in the House of Lords by Lord Londonderry who was also Lord Lieutenant of County Durham and also in the House of Commons by Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister.

In his personal life MacDonald had been devastated by his wife’s death from blood poisoning in 1911 but as a devout Christian he brought up his young family of six children. Two years after his wife’s death he began a fifteen-year passionate affair with the poet Lady Margaret Sackville proposing numerous times which she declined on each occasion. Speculation suggest that she declined his proposals on religious grounds. She was a staunch catholic and he was a presbyterian. Lady Margaret never married.

Ramsay MacDonald wrote about 150 love letters to Lady Margaret Sackville. After her death in 1963 she had left no instructions on what to do with the letters which had been deposited with her bank and so her bank manager sent the letters on to the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1989. One of the letters from MacDonald closes with the words “Of course you will put this letter on the fire and it will blaze fiercely as love always does”. Thankfully Sackville never did and these remarkable letters survive.

One of his letters to Lady Margaret sent in 1915 is reproduced below together with a typed transcript: -

Transcript of the letter above: -

It is interesting to glimpse the inner thoughts of a man challenged by so many political problems. Can we assume from this that politicians are, like us, just ordinary human beings?

Fred Cooper