Duncan Harley

I see that as part of this weekends Doors Open Day, Ramsay MacDonald’s family home in Lossiemouth is to open to the public. From humble beginnings he became not only the first ever Labour Prime Minister but also one of the first members of parliament to embrace aviation as a means of transport to and from his Lossiemouth home to the powerhouse of Westminster. In pre-RAF Lossiemouth days he regularly flew out of grass airstrips on the outskirts of the town. Born in 1866 he entered Parliament in 1906 as MP for Leicester following an early career as a journalist. A fierce opponent of the Boer War he was outspoken in his opposition to WW1. His pacifist convictions and unshakeable socialist stance quickly made him a hate figure both locally and nationally. He was blackballed by Moray Golf Club in 1916 and vilified in the likes of John Bull magazine as “A traitor and a coward, a libeller and a slanderer of his country … he is nothing more than the illegitimate son of a Scotch ser...

One can almost imagine the frantic conversation as the Foreign Secretary advised his minions that he was not after all planning to put his head on the chopping block in a last-ditch effort to stop the Heathrow third runway extension: “Don’t be silly. Is my middle name Goering? Or Meyer? I mean come on, it’s not as though a single bulldozer has actually been dropped on the bloody place.” “But sir, you made a pledge to the electorate” “Well perhaps, but that was yesterday; or at the very least a long long time ago. And I can do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.” “Well, erm, what would you like us to do? You obviously can’t attend the Common’s vote on the matter. You would have to resign in protest after all.” “Just get me out of here for a bit for god’s sake. What about India, or maybe somewhere important like Borneo or Greenland. I’ve got it! Send me to Kabul, that should bloody well do it.” “But there’s nothing much happening in Kabul at the moment sir. Perhaps you...