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...