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James Ramsay MacDonald FRS (né James McDonald Ramsay; 12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a Scottish politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931. From 1931 to 1935, he headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members. MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party as a result.
At the November 1935 election MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell, but he was re-elected to Parliament at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat. After Hitler’s re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, MacDonald declared that he was “pleased” that the Treaty of Versailles was “vanishing”, expressing his hope that the French had been taught a “severe lesson”. MacDonald was one of the signatories to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936.
However, his health was failing. King George V died a week before voting began in the Scottish by-election, and MacDonald deeply mourned his death, paying tribute to him in his diary as “a gracious and kingly friend whom I have served with all my heart”.
There had been genuine affection between the two and the King is said to have regarded MacDonald as his favourite prime minister. Following the King’s death MacDonald’s physical and mental health collapsed.
A sea voyage (with his youngest daughter Sheila) was recommended to restore MacDonald’s health, but he died on board the liner MV Reina del Pacifico, which operated between Liverpool and Valparaíso, Chile, via the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, the West Indies and the Panama Canal, on 9 November 1937, aged 71.