![]() In 1886 MacDonald moved to London and obtained a job as an invoice clerk in a city warehouse. ![]() Be it so! I hope there may be many who can now see to what they have been trusting, and how they have been used, many who love the grand principles of Socialism more than the distorted doctrines of the Federation and who have the courage and manliness to act accordingly." (6) It has been plainly shown in the history of the Federation that the great virtues it recognises are unscrupulousness, unfairness and slander. We have over and over again had to read arguments in favour of Socialism that never went deeper than calling an opponent an 'outrageous old hypocrite', 'a bloodsucker', 'ignorant, and many other epithets as delicious as the fumes of a Billingsgate market. To read that paper ( Justice) one would think the SDF's hand was against all other Socialist societies in England and that its duty was to heap slander of all sorts upon them. In his resignation letter he wrote: "If practical Socialism means an autocracy or the Government of a Cabal I for one will have nothing to do with it. MacDonald claimed that the actions of Hyndman and Champion "lacked a spirit of fairness". The objective being to split the Liberal vote and therefore enable the Conservative candidate to win. Champion, without consulting their colleagues, accepted £340 from the Conservative Party to run parliamentary candidates in Hampstead and Kensington. MacDonald left a couple of months later after he heard that during the 1885 General Election, two of the SDF leaders, Henry M. "We had all the enthusiasm of the early Christians in those days. MacDonald later recalled that the small group met in a workmen's cafe. MacDonald became the librarian, organizing the sale of the SDF's newspaper, Justice. Later that year MacDonald joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the first Marxist political group in Britain. He was to admit several years later: "Something is constantly saying to me that I will do nothing myself but that I will enable someone else to do something." (3) He hoped to become a social worker or a teacher. ![]() In 1885, MacDonald left Scotland to take up a position as an assistant to a Bristol clergyman who planned to establish a Boys' and Young Men's Guild at St Stephen's Church. MacDonald was also influenced by the political radicalism of the fishermen and farm workers and by 1884 considered himself to be a Christian Socialist. The author believed that higher taxes on the rich could help to deal with the increasing number of people living in poverty. During his time as pupil teacher he read widely including Progress and Poverty, by Henry George. His appointment saved him from a lifetime working on the land. At fifteen, after a few months working on a nearby farm, MacDonald was appointed as a pupil teacher. MacDonald went to the parish school at Drainie. Anne's mother, Isabella, held firm Calvinist beliefs and objected to James and Anne marrying: "The young couple, however, were exonerated by their local free kirk as they were not living in sin, in a rural area which had a high incidence of births out of wedlock." (1) His father, James MacDonald, was a ploughman on a farm some miles away. James Ramsay MacDonald, the illegitimate son of Anne Ramsay, a maidservant, was born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire, on 12th October, 1866. John Maynard Keynes and the Labour Government.The Labour Government and the Soviet Union.
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