“Every day they were in led us further from socialism.” Thus spake a disappointed Jimmy Maxton of the first, and brief, Labour government which had flopped out of power at the end of 1924 and was now back where it was most familiar, on the opposition benches.

Bitterness and recrimination reverberated across the Labour movement. Both the left and the right agreed that maybe it was time to replace Ramsay Macdonald as leader.

Philip Snowden, former resident of 11 Downing Street, tried to annoy his onetime prime ministerial neighbour by agitating for Arthur Henderson to challenge for the leadership, as well as mowing his lawn really early on Sundays.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Maxton and the red Clydesiders sounded out George Lansbury for similar purposes (the leadership, that is, not the lawn mowing).

The unions were busy grumbling too. The Labour government had proved just as happy to threaten them with the emergency powers act as the Tories and Ernest Bevin, leader of the T&G and one of politics’ all-time great haters, led the angry backlash from the brothers.

He had not forgiven Macdonald for the Labour government’s handling of the docks and tramway strikes in early 1924, telling all and sundry that he’d be happy with anyone but Macdonald as leader.

Bevin wasn’t alone either. They unions had shifted decisively left during the Labour government, partially as a result of their older leaders like Margaret Bondfield and dockers’ leader Harry Gosling, being made ministers in said government, clearing the way for more radical voices to take the reins.

Unfortunately for the serried ranks of the discontented though, they were to be disappointed. In line with the long PLP tradition of factional infighting, the only person each group of MPs disliked more than the current leader was the alternative favoured by the other lot.

So, after a flurry of backroom Westminster chats, whispers in corridors and plenty of ‘our guy’s better than your guy’…. nothing happened.  With no obvious alternative Macdonald retained the leadership.

As the MPs returned to Westminster at the start of 1925 and parliamentary business resumed, Stanley Baldwin’s government got cracking with their long-promised retrenchment.

In April 1925, the chancellor Winston Churchill, newly returned to the Tory fold from a twenty two year sojurn with the Liberals, put Britain back on the gold standard. This fixed the pound to a stated value of gold, which had the effect of devaluing the pound… and the British worker.

Winston Churchill always liked to be prepared for a game of giant Monopoly

In order to remain competitive in the new economic world, bosses and owners knew they would have to cut costs.

Finding new efficiencies, negotiating better prices for raw materials, increased mechanisation were all possible solutions. But they were hard.

Cutting wages, on the other hand, was easy. So they decided to do that instead.

This was a particularly favoured approach in the mining industry where, by the end of April over 60% of the mines were operating at a loss. For them, wages accounted for 70% of production costs, with pinstripe suits, monocles and comically oversized cigars making up the other 30%.

PM Stanley Baldwin “I wonder…should I tell people that the pound in their pocket is still worth the same?”

Unsurprisingly, then, the mine owners wanted to abandon the national wage agreements. The miners, equally unsurprisingly, thought this was a terrible idea. If a nasty confrontation was to be avoided, a consultative and co-operative approach was required.

Unfortunately, mine owners enjoyed co-operation  with the workers as much as Superman might enjoy a nice pair of Kryptonite cufflinks. On 30^th June 1925 they simply announced that they were going to cut wages.

The miners wouldn’t stand for it. Well, you can’t in those little tunnels can you? They turned to the TUC for support.

For once, they got it.  The new left leaning general council was keen to show that direct action was an alternative to the disappointing parliamentary ways of Macdonald and Labour.

On the 10^th July, the TUC pledged full support for the miners. They co-ordinated the railway, transport and seamen’s unions and declared an embargo on the transportation of coal until agreement could be reached. The deadline for some form of concession from the powers-that-be was the 31^st July.

Striking dockers audition hopefully for the role of Andy Capp

It was a powerful threat – the nation was dependent on coal and, more worryingly, behind the immediate embargo lay the possibility of a devastating general strike. The country was totally unprepared for a situation where the workforce simply stayed at home, partly because nobody had yet invented daytime TV.

So, under pressure and unable to reconcile the intransigent mine owners and outraged miners, prime minister Stanley Baldwin made an offer to avert to threatened embargo. He declared a temporary subsidy to maintain wage levels for the miners, to last nine months.

In addition, he instigated a Royal Commission (like a normal commission, but with more gold leaf and fur trim).  Sir Herbert Samuel, chairman of the commission, scampered off to investigate the issues in the mining industry.

This might have prompted a bout of déjà vu in the Labour movement.

Back in 1919 the threat of action had secured the Sankey commission and all sorts of promises from a majority Tory government. At the end, the workers got next to nothing.

But never mind boring old history, it was different this time, somehow, probably.

For the unions, after years of being stuffed, it looked enough like a government backdown to declare victory: a win for direct action and a win for the workers.

They promptly dubbed 31 July 1925 “Red Friday,” demonstrating there may be power in a union, but there isn’t a great deal of imagination.

Over at Westminster, unsurprisingly, Macdonald didn’t share his comrades’ jollity.

For Labour’s leader direct action was a dead-end for socialism and, more worryingly, didn’t end with him in the top job.

“The government has simply handed over the appearance, at any rate, of victory to the very forces that sane, well-considered, thoroughly well-examined socialism feels to be probably its greatest enemy,” he said.

“Up yours Macdonald” replied the TUC, “What did you do for the unions when you were in power eh? Bugger all. We don’t need you.”

Unfortunately Macdonald was right about the appearance of victory. The government was plotting.

They didn’t see Red Friday as a defeat at all, just a delaying tactic. As Maurice Hankey, permanent secretary to the Cabinet, reported to the King: “The majority of the Cabinet regard the present moment as badly chosen for the fight, though the conditions would be more favourable nine months hence.”

Or, as Baldwin put it rather more ominously, “We were not ready…”

Pete and Atul are not historians

Whenever we talk about Labour’s chances of winning the next election, there is always an elephant in the room that nobody wants to speak about. We thought it would go away, sort itself out. It hasn’t. Frankly, we can’t ignore it anymore, because it’s beginning to hurt our chances of success in a very visible way.

The elephant is the vocal minority in the Labour party who don’t believe we can win with Ed Miliband as our leader. It’s time to talk about the problems their defeatism is causing, and why it is misguided.

The MPs in our diverse shadow cabinet have done an admirable job in maintaining party unity. Their success is not, however, reflected by everyone in the party. The vocal minority who don’t believe in Ed Miliband are making their presence known, whether it is an unnecessary intervention by a former leader, or a (not so) subtle swipe at a pressure group conference. Their murmurings are becoming louder, and the media is starting to hear.

Their main criticism is that Ed has a “charisma” problem: but we all saw Ed’s fantastic One Nation speech. He can give a great performance when it counts. I suspect their discomfort runs a little deeper than that. The charisma problem is really an ideological problem: “We’re not polling better because of the direction Ed is taking us”.

It sounds to me like the defeatists don’t believe a centre-left platform can ever win a UK election. Perhaps they don’t believe it ever should. “Labour just isn’t connecting with business”, someone told me last week. “I mean, look at Ed’s speech about predators… He isn’t showing businessmen he wants to help them make money.”

Well, good.

The Labour party wasn’t created to help businessmen make money. There is a place for business in Labour’s vision, of course there is: but our primary concern should be building a better society.

Labour politics is about businesses as employers, the poor as deserving, inequality as a problem. We should not sacrifice our beliefs on the easy altar of populism. We should make the case for our beliefs in the public domain.

Am I suggesting that Labour should become a rallying point for militant socialism? To hell with public opinion, as long as we have our principles? Of course not. Public opinion matters, and we should listen and respond to it. But as the centre-left party in UK politics, we shouldn’t be afraid to say things that are (just sometimes) a bit centre-left. We should criticise predatory businesses, or businesses that don’t pay their taxes. We should stand up for the poorest in society. We should defend Europe when it is in the interest of Britain’s workers. Ed Miliband is doing all of these things, and rightly so.

Even if you don’t agree with Ed’s direction, it is undeniable that if we want to win the next election, we need to maintain a united front. Just look at the Conservatives: they are publicly consuming themselves, which is destroying their credibility with the general public. But even more damaging than their in-fighting, is the fact that the party members don’t respect their leader, which undermines his position with everyone else in the UK.

David Cameron doesn’t have a hope of convincing new voters to put him in charge if he is incapable of maintaining the support of his own party members. We cannot afford to turn our leader into a similar joke figure, our party into a similar circus.

Labour’s poll lead was highest when our small, inconsequential divisions were not displayed in public, and when there were fewer barbed comments about Ed Miliband from Labour figures who should know better.

There is room for disagreement in the Labour party- we are a broad church, and our diversity makes us stronger. But if you don’t create space for measured disagreement, under the broad banner of party unity, then factionalism is inevitable.

Contrast the Tories’ auto-cannibalism with the Labour party under Tony Blair. Those on the left muted their criticism of New Labour’s liberal excesses, and all credit to them for not falling into the trap of destructive internal division.

It is time for the vocal minority today to follow suit, and be a bit less vocal in their criticism of our leadership. Such public, crowing defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Alex Shattock is a Labour activist, Co-op member and Young Fabian. He blogs here.

Putting aside the question of whether same sex marriage is a modest extension of equal rights for gay and lesbian couples or the handcart society will be pushed to hell in – and judged purely as an exercise in policy-making – this week has been a disaster.

The refrain that the measure was not in any party’s manifesto at the last election and didn’t even make it into the coalition’s programme for government is no less important given the frequency with which it’s cited as a grievance by opponents of the bill.

Neither, for that matter, was there a green paper to allow proper deliberation; just a rushed public consultation, which saw a significant majority of respondents strongly opposed to the idea.  And as it now stands, the legislation is lopsided with the failure to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.

Moreover, the law of unintended consequences means most religious communities who opposed the encroachment of the state into their affairs are left with threadbare assurances they will be unaffected by the change. Case law will in due course ensure that they are.

The church hall test will see priests and vicars forced to defend a policy of letting heterosexual couples use their premises while barring gays and lesbians. Meanwhile the charitable status of religious organisations who do not readily accept this new definition of equality will be endlessly challenged. The culture war will rage long after this week passes.

But behind this inexorable fallout lies the basic failure to quantify the need for legislation. Why has same sex marriage become such an urgent cause? After all, the numbers of gay and lesbian couples entering into a civil partnership – which accords all the main legal benefits of marriage – has been in decline pretty much since the measure was first put on the statute book.

There were 15,437 civil partnerships in 2006, the first full year that the measure was in place. This dropped to 8,728 in 2007 – a 44% fall in the first year – and the last available figures for 2011 shows it falling still further to just 6,795 – a 56% drop in just five years.

Of course this could be because gay and lesbian couples are boycotting civil partnerships as they don’t feel the measure offers them true equality, but this is not a point campaigners have made.

Same sex marriage is not, in the vernacular, evidence-based policy-making.

Upholding the principle that gay and lesbian relationships are fully equal is a fair enough cause, but is the main purpose of our parliamentary process satisfying the frustrations of campaigners with the existing law, regardless of the scale of the grievance?

If same sex marriage is an issue of general public importance then surely it should be discussed openly during an election campaign, put in a manifesto, voted on and then enacted (assuming majority consent), with the weight of public acceptance put behind it?

None of this has happened and whatever side of this particular issue you come from, it is clear there is a vocal and passionate lobby which holds a diametrically opposite view. There is little public consensus and we are left with one side of public opinion legislating over the heads of another.

This is never an ideal situation, but is usually managed by those who are seeking change, of whatever kind, obtaining a clear electoral mandate to do so (as was the case, for instance, with Labour’s fox-hunting ban).

Indeed, with coalition government possibly becoming the norm, how can voters make sense of who to support when parties not only break their commitments (the Lib Dems and tuition fees springs to mind) but embark on significant legislative change which seems to materialise out of the ether?

The left should be particularly concerned about the precedent set by this week’s manoeuvrings.

What if the next Queen’s speech contains measures to dramatically erode workplace rights, or to curtail environmental protection, or to scrap the minimum wage, none of which are in the Conservative or Lib Dem manifestos?

In such a scenario it is worth bearing in mind that Labour frontbenchers would automatically reach for exactly the same accusation that opponents of the SSM bill did this week: “You have no mandate from the electorate.”

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

Did you hear the one about the Welsh education system?

The Estyn Report of 2012 concluded that 40% of Welsh children entering secondary education are going to schools that are barely “adequate.”

Carwyn Jones, admitted that indeed “more work needs to be done”. His education minister, Leighton Andrews, followed this up with an insistence that Wales was not going to follow the English with a new ‘O’ Level type exam that is more rigorous and demanding than the present GCSE.

Can’t have that now can we?

Mustn’t upset the Welsh medium schools with some heinous British deliverance must we? Never mind the fact that Welsh children will be burdened with a third class education, as if their future isn’t grim enough.

Standards? They can go hang. No, the problem is all about money, we are told. It’s all Barnett’s fault. Westminster just isn’t dishing out enough money to Wales, you see.

It’s alright for 10 Welsh poets to enjoy a 10 day little jolly at the Smithsonian in Washington, all expenses paid plus a £100 a day pocket money.

It’s alright to give £4.4m to Welsh publishers to publish 10 books on Welsh place names and DIY manuals on how to fry a Welshcake (I jest not).

It’s alright to give millions of tax-payers’ money to a tiny number of people to write the 100^th learned tome on the fanciful Mabinogion, What the hell, there’s no such thing as an ebook in Wales? Stop the tax-payer gravy train? You must be joking!

You may like to know that in this age of austerity, the English arts council has already taken a 21.9% cut with more to come. Some English councils have cut arts funding altogether. What has Wales done? The arts council of Wales has been cut by 2.9%.

“Come on Westminster, Wales needs more money,” is the cry from our devolved government.

The idea of looking at what’s happening across the UK, with moves to raise standards and make exams worth something again, isn’t even on the agenda.

To hell with the future, to hell with Welsh youth, to hell with the fact that entries to Welsh universities are at an all- time low. Who cares that billions of European largesse has gone AWOL, without any kind of scrutiny and accountability?

That’s the sad tale of the Welsh education system: ignoring moves to raise standards and blaming all ills on London while the Welsh administration fritters away valuable public funds on flights of devolved fancy. A true Welsh tragedy.

Julian Ruck is a columnist and author of the Ragged Cliffs Trilogy and recently published legal thriller, the Bent Brief. He has never applied for a tax-payer handout, received a penny from the tax-payer for his novels and neither has his publisher

Yesterday a man appeared in court charged with murdering four soldiers in the IRA’s Hyde Park bombing three decades ago.

Hours later, in the same city, another British soldier met his death at the hands of those pursuing a markedly different political cause.

The comparison with the Provisional IRA is instructive in making sense of what happened in Woolwich yesterday afternoon.

The cause, (if not its modus operandi), of Irish republicans is a rational one, rooted in the Enlightenment and with a realisable end goal, namely a united Ireland. It can be negotiated with and is capable of compromise. It can, and largely has, rechanneled its efforts along peaceful, democratic lines.

What we saw yesterday afternoon in Woolwich was the opposite of this in almost every regard.

It is still early days, but it appears two young men, adhering to a radicalised version of Islam, were prepared to murder a random stranger by running him down in a car before decapitating him in broad daylight. Rather than flee the scene, they hung around, keen for some form of martyrdom, or at least notoriety, courtesy of YouTube.

It is now customary to say the perpetrators of these attacks have been ‘radicalised’. This is the nebulous term always used to describe the process of indoctrination that drives young muslims to these fanatical extremes.

But radicalised by what? By way of explanation, we are told that the actions of Israel, or US drone strikes, or the presence of foreign troops in muslim lands helps explain what motivates young men – and women – to waste their lives in its cause.

But Islamic jihadi extremism is lunacy; a cartoonish creed that demands a worldwide Caliphate and death to the non-believer. It is neither a liberation movement nor does it have realisable goals. It is a fascistic ideology that feeds on conspiracy theories and bloated grievances.

Just assuming for a second that we indulged its madness and that ‘The West’ was interested in suing for peace and acceding to its demands, who does the foreign office negotiate with? What are the terms of our surrender? Will there be a transition period? Will we still be allowed to have Coronation Street under the Caliphate?

Levity, we can safely assume, will be banned.

What makes yesterday’s barbaric murder so terrifying and sickening is that it was not just bad, it was, quite literally, mad.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

The terms of the debate are shifting within the Labour party. Since the underwhelming local elections, the question is no longer whether the poll lead is soft but why. Just this morning, one of Ed Miliband’s more doughty supporters in the media, Mary Riddell, penned her most pessimistic piece to date on Labour’s position.

This change has been partially obscured by the recent writhing of the Tory right over Europe and gay marriage but as the spending review approaches, it will come into sharp focus.

As ever, the answer to the question is to be found in voters’ views on the economy and specifically spending.

Labour’s case against the government has been clear: excessive Tory cuts killed off the flickering recovery of 2010 with the deficit rising as growth flatlines.

It is hard to disagree with the economics. But there’s a political problem.

More and more of the public back the cuts.

YouGov have asked a detailed series of questions on deficit reduction over the past three years and the shift in responses shines a light on why Labour’s poll lead isn’t so much soft as aqueous.

The public’s support for action on the deficit has been constant: at the start of March 2011, 57% felt that “the way the government is cutting spending” was necessary versus 32% who thought it unnecessary. Last week the figures were 57% and 29%, virtually no change over the past two years.

This should have been a warning that something wasn’t quite right with the poll lead: how could the public support Labour while also agreeing with the government’s approach to cuts.

But the YouGov surveys also had seemingly contradictory responses. The key question is on whether the public believe the depth of the cuts to be “too shallow,” “about right,” or “too deep.” The answers to this question initially suggested a consensus that the cuts were too deep. But that is changing.

Source: YouGov

Since April 2012 when 13% more felt the cuts to be “too deep” than either “about right” or “too shallow”, the position has shifted radically. This week, the poll had the pro-cuts camp 2% ahead.

As the graph shows, there is a good deal of volatility in the responses but applying a trend line demonstrates a very clear direction of travel. The public are more and more accepting of the scale of Tory cuts, and based on the past year’s trend, support for the depth of the cuts will consistently exceed opposition by the end of the year.

In answer to Labour’s central charge that the Tories are going “too far,” the public response is increasingly, “no they aren’t.”

The softening of Labour’s poll lead has occurred at the same time as the public have progressively made their peace with the government approach to spending cuts. The drop from an equivalent national vote share of 38% in last year’s local elections to 29% this year is impossible to pass off as tittle tattle or froth. The increased support for cuts too important to ignore as mere coincidence.

This shift will have  fundamental implications for Labour and the spending review at the end of June.

This will be the fork in the road for the parliament . Inevitably it will be an eye-wateringly tight spending round, littered with traps for Labour to portray the party as profligate. How Ed Miliband responds to this will define the next election.

The rhetoric from the left of the party, and Ed Miliband’s union backers, is clear. Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite, has been vociferous in his demands for the party to commit to a wholesale rejection of austerity.

The polling evidence suggests the public is moving in the polar opposite direction.

The standard Miliband response to this dilemma has been to equivocate and obfuscate. Warm words for both sides but no commitments. Rhetoric on “tough choices” without any sign of actual spending plans.

This won’t be possible in June.

The political pressure to produce some tangible spending proposals is mounting from all sides: the unions want clear commitments just as much as the more fiscally moderate sections of the party. The media are clamouring for some detail on spending.

But most importantly, the YouGov polling on the level of public backing for the  cuts suggests that if Ed Miliband opts to delay offering anything specific again, then public opinion will simply continue along its current trajectory of growing support for the Tories economic plans.

If Labour want’s to solidify it’s poll lead it needs to present a credible alternative on spending to an increasingly hawkish public. It will mean political conflict with the unions and a major fight within the Labour movement.

The alternative, to reject the cuts, will be politically a path of lesser resistance within Labour but confirmation that the party has decisively parted ways with the public on the economy.

The spending review is Ed Miliband’s last chance before the election to signal a change in approach, move the party towards the public and disrupt the drift towards support of the Tories’ economic policies.

Time for the leader to make one of those “tough choices.”

Atul Hatwal is editor at Uncut

It was October 8^th 1924 and Ramsay Macdonald was in high spirits. He noted in his diary,

“So the chapter ends after a great day when at the close we stood higher in the House of Commons than ever…We had knocked them all over the ring and they were ashamed of themselves”

Or to put it another way, “Good news everybody – our government has fallen,”

Parliament had voted for an inquiry into whether Labour pressure had caused the prosecution of the communist Workers Weekly editor, John Campbell, to be dropped. Macdonald had taken this to be a motion of censure, chucked himself out of office and called a new election for the 29^th October.

He needn’t have, but there had been an election in each of the previous 2 years, so there was a certain symmetry to it at least.

Readers began to suspect a little bias in Shoot! comic

After a brief government characterised by caution and a gradual approach to social reform, Labour got its reward – accusations of communism and a campaign dominated by a virulent red scare.

The Times declared Labour’s commitment to establish a national network of electricity generating stations “a project dear to Lenin.” So think about that next time you’re boiling a kettle, you commie.

Conservative leaflets warned parents to be on their guard against “plausible men and women who invite their children to join Sunday school and clubs.” This was because such activities were, needless to say, a cover for children “to be baptised into the communistic faith.” Presumably the implausible men and women were absolutely fine.

What’s more, women were warned that if the communists came to power their children would be taken from them and made the property of the state. What the state would do with them was not clear, put them on treadmills to power the national grid perhaps.

Punch! magazine was so called because that’s what their political cartoons were as subtle as

The centrepiece of Labour’s campaign in response to such even-handed reporting was a massive speaking tour by Ramsay Macdonald.

Macdonald himself was to be the message, visiting towns the length and breadth of Britain delivering punchy 5-10 minute addresses to inspire the people with his capability and vision, before quickly moving on.

Ramsay Macdonald attempts "blue steel"

That was what Labour HQ thought at least.

Macdonald had other ideas. And not good ones either. The new fangled approach to campaigning with short speeches and soundbites was not for him. Instead, every stop was an opportunity to orate grandly, his “five minute” speeches lasting up to an hour.

A boring, unhelpful hour.

Instead of using the extra time to rebut the Tories’ red scare and talk up Labour’s record and plans for the economy, for the first week Macdonald chose to witter on about the Campbell case and relations with Russia. Not exactly a vote-winner.

It was only on October 22^nd that he decided to bother mentioning the tax cuts he had enacted and the ambitious housebuilding plans Labour had set in train.

Finally, he was on-message. This lasted all of three days when the whole thing was derailed by the biggest election bombshell since “Keir Hardie ate my hamster.”

In Colne Valley, Jimmy Thomas, railwaymen union leader and secretary of state for the colonies, was having a sleepover with Labour’s first chancellor, Philip Snowden. On October 25^th, he woke up, donned his Winnie the Pooh slippers and took a look at the first edition of the Daily Mail.

“Get up you lazy devil!” shouted Thomas, hammering on Snowden’s door, “We’re bunkered!”

“CIVIL WAR PLOT BY SOCIALISTS’ MASTERS”

That was the headline of the day.

“Moscow order to our reds. Great plot disclosed yesterday” ran the sub-headline, followed by an article so full of anti-Labour hysteria, there wasn’t even space to blame immigrants.

The infamous Zinoviev article, complete with hand-crayoned illustration

The evidence for this plot was a letter supposedly written by the Soviet president of the communist international, Grigroy Zinoviev. It was sent to the British Communist party calling for agitation and revolution which, to be fair was the sort of thing they enjoyed.

Unfortunately for Labour, this letter had been in the possession of the government for almost a week. In that time, they hadn’t responded to the Russians, made it public or even scribbled “not known” on the envelope and stuck it back in the post.

It was only after learning that the Daily Mail was about to splash with the letter, that the government formally did anything, releasing the letter along with an official protest from the foreign office to Moscow.

This was all pretty disastrous. At best it looked like Macdonald and Labour were too easy on the commies, needing the spur of outing by the Daily Mail before they issued the protest. At worst they might even be conniving with Moscow. Either way, something wasn’t quite right and a cover-up was widely suspected.

Then Macdonald made it much, much worse. He refused to criticise the foreign office, question the authenticity of the letter or comment on the subject for the next two days.

The right wing media bayed for blood. The left wing papers requested, quite reasonably, some explanation. They got neither. Even in an age when the news wasn’t so much rolling as sporadically twitching, this was devastating to the Labour campaign.

Macdonald’s reasoning was that he wanted to establish the bona fides of the letter and calibrate his response. This would have been fine, if the foreign office hadn’t already protested to the Russians, giving every sign that that the government accepted the letter was real.

When Macdonald did finally address the subject on the afternoon of October 27^th, it was almost impossible to change the terrible situation. But Macdonald did achieve the almost impossible – he made things worse.

His explanation highlighted the foreign office’s belief in the letter’s authenticity interspersed with accusations that the letter had been concocted by Conservative headquarters. It was a mess.

The papers on the 28^th October were damning. The Daily Express wrote, “Mr Ramsay Macdonald made disclosures regarding the Zinoviev letter which are a staggering blow to himself and his party.”

Even the Guardian was forced to point out that Macdonald could not have the best of both worlds: either the letter was real or it was a Tory plot, it couldn’t be both.

And suddenly, it was polling day. On Thursday 29^th October, with the Zinoviev firestorm still raging, the nation voted.

Guess how that turned out.

Yes, the Tories swept unsurprisingly back to power gaining 154 seats to rise from 258 to 412 seats, a thumping majority.

Rather more surprising was that Labour actually gained votes in this election. The party lost 40 seats, shrinking from 191 MPs to 151 but Labour’s national vote increased from 4.4 million to 5.4 million.

As for Macdonald himself, he may have actually benefitted from the Zinoviev debacle. Despite the deficiencies of the campaign and his own risible contribution to it, Macdonald now had a handy scapegoat for Labour’s failure. Instead of taking a long hard look at themselves, everyone in Labour now had a splendid opportunity to feel victimised by a dark cabal of sinister establishment saboteurs and the evil Daily Mail.

In fact, the true loser after Labour’s campaign of horror was the Liberal party. Their representation crumbled with the loss of 118 seats, down from 158 to 40, and their national vote slipped from 4.3 million to under 3 million.

Yes, Macdonald had handled the Zinoviev affair disastrously. Yes, he was largely responsible for the early election in the first place. But despite all that, after the 1924 election, Labour had somehow achieved one of their primary objectives: the destruction of the Liberals as a main party of government.

Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?

Pete and Atul are not historians

In 1997, Tony Blair won an election by occupying the traditional home ground of the Tories. In 2010, Gordon Brown fought off the Tories by creating a clear dividing line between us and them. Today, Ed Miliband’s strategy is less easy to define, but I contend that it involves avoiding debate with the Tories. This is not good. This can be extremely damaging.

Miliband said at conference 2012: “The Labour party lost trust on the economy. And under my leadership, we will regain that trust.” I don’t think he has increased trust in the Labour brand. In some ways it has been damaged since he made this speech.

The Tories have a far more coherent economic policy than we do. Even though the whole world agrees that we were right and they were wrong, they have a clear offer and we have a confused one. Ed Balls and Rachel Reeves did a terrific job of explaining the difference between austerity and Keynesianism, but our commitment to a Keynesian offer has been vague and tentative. This is in contrast to Gordon Brown who confronted and contrasted Tory policy with our own Keynesian plan.

Most of the debate on the economy is over now, and people have a settled view of the parties. It’s likely that we are returning to positive growth, although few would attribute this to the government’s policies, so it is questionable as to whether they will benefit at the polls, even if the feel-good factor returns. Trust, in general, is likely a more important issue at the next election.

The problem with trust is that it is a two-way relationship. Would you trust someone who doesn’t trust you? Of course not. Would you trust a politician who won’t tell you his policy? Of course not.

How about a politician who won’t tell you his policy, because the other guys will attack it, and he thinks that you are incapable of sifting the arguments? No, you wouldn’t take kindly to that either.

Far too often, Miliband backs away from debate. Cameron has made a mess out of most things, but he isn’t scared of having a conversation with the British people. He makes a mockery of PMQs, but he gets his arguments across to the public. In the absence of a fierce debate, the electorate may choose to brush aside Labour for being too vague, and instead give Cameron a second chance.

I don’t think that our membership of the EU should be a major issue in the modern day, but the Tories are making it one, and Labour aren’t engaging. Labour are attacking the Tories for being divided, but that’s a cop-out. No one knows what Labour’s position is on the EU, and as long as only the Tories are having a discussion, then a negative view of the EU will persist and grow.

I can understand that Ed Miliband got his fingers burnt with the welfare debate. He let the genie out of the bottle when he spoke in favour of welfare. When he tried to put the lid back on by whipping a minor vote on workfare, he faced a rebellion. He should have confronted that rebellion. Being a consensus seeker doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to get pushed around.

I don’t think we should be in favour of a referendum. The only argument for a referendum is that we haven’t had one since the ‘70s. On that basis, maybe we should go back to farthings and shillings because modern coinage is not the same as the stuff we agreed to in 1971.

The only genuine reason for a referendum is to deal with an internal division in the Conservative Party. They are a mixture of Little Englanders and hard-core free marketers who want to get rid of employment rights. I say let them sort out their own mess, but in the meantime, let us take the opportunity to engage them in a debate about the issues.

Let’s have the British people considering the issues of the EU rather than considering whether the Labour Party are shifty. Let’s stop hiding and start debating. Let’s regain trust by having a good old fashioned political debate.

Dan McCurry is a Labour activist who blogs here

“Are our problems so deep nobody can actually make a difference to them? My emphatic answer to that is yes.” The state of the nation was revealed in Ed Miliband’s slip of the tongue in the run-up to the local elections. Only one in three of those eligible to vote in these elections bothered to do so, down 10 points from when these seats were last contested in the halcyon days of 2009. Where given the opportunity, one in four voters gave their support to Ukip, which is as near as it gets to voting ‘none of the above’.

This is no glad, confident morning. It is a nervous twilight. “When Cameron talks”, as Rick Nye notes, “about the global race – the opportunities that lie ahead for Britain and the risks of being left behind” – those that voted Ukip “look at their very personal race, and fear it has already been run. They feel they have been abandoned by all political parties. It is no accident that Ukip does disproportionately well among older, non-graduate, white men.”

One Nation Labour is yet to convince that it can build hope in this cold climate. Politicians make, as well as experience, the weather, however. Perhaps voters would be more confident about the future if Ed Miliband seemed to them more of a prime minister in the waiting with answers to their problems.

Conservatives have long insisted that Cameron looks more prime ministerial than Miliband. Given that Cameron is presently the prime minister, this is to be expected. Yet Miliband is behind where Cameron and Tony Blair were at the same stages in their leaderships in terms of being perceived ready to be prime minister.

While 19 percent more voters thought Jim Callaghan “the best PM” than thought Margaret Thatcher in the last poll before the 1979 election, the sea change that was that election still swept Callaghan from office. His current polling may not be a barrier to Miliband being a similar sea change prime minister.

But Miliband should not assume such a sea change or that he would be its beneficiary. It’s hard to look at the rise of Ukip and feel we are living in a country moving to the left. This rise has contributed to Cameron finally abandoning his modernisation project and adopting policies reminiscent of their 2001 and 2005 general election campaigns: tough on welfare, strident on immigration and offering a referendum on the EU.

These campaigns were not great successes for the Conservatives and it may require the opposite of what Miliband seems to anticipate for these policies to lead to a more successful outcome in 2015: a rightward shift in the electorate. Equally, reality may be more nuanced. The public may be moving right on some issues and left on others, desperately seeking solutions wherever they can find them and convinced that the three main parties provide few.

Now that the barnacles have been stripped off the Conservative boat, a craft closer to the 2001 and 2005 vintages has been revealed. The seaworthiness of this vessel does not wholly depend on a rightward drift in the political undercurrents. Its sharpness is a virtue in itself. Cameron’s retail offer is much crisper than when he was proclaiming the big society.

Miliband’s retail offer is not as well defined. In January, I reported on his speech to the Fabian Society and concluded that by inches Miliband’s rhetoric transitions from the think-tank seminar to being pub-ready. Yet Ben Mitchell observes that his recent speech to Progress was virtually ignored. If Miliband is in the same pub as everyone else, he is sat at a different table.

The chatter from Nigel Farage’s table is louder – symbolising not only a rejection of all three main parties but a rift on the right that Nadine Dorries now proposes to heal by running as a joint Tory-Ukip candidate. Len McCluskey’s declaration of war on shadow cabinet “Blairites” suggests that Labour is not without its rifts either. And disunited parties tend not to win elections.

Miliband must make himself appear more prime ministerial and sharpen his retail offer, while keeping his party united. These tasks are daunting and would be made more so if events move against him: the economic recovery that Mervyn King proclaims putting wind into Tory sails, as the perception that Labour is the party of the Euro elite takes it out of ours, which it certainly would if it is conflated in the public mind with the view that Labour is also the party most responsible for the immigration that has dramatically changed the country without giving anyone a say over this either.

Such weather would be inclement for Miliband and much to the taste of Cameron, so Miliband should get on with making different weather: embrace an EU referendum, alongside a compelling case for the advantages of the UK remaining in a reformed EU and out of the Euro, as part of an economic argument that spends less time bemoaning too far, too fast and more on articulating a fully-costed, alternative future under Labour.

Jonathan Todd is Labour Uncut’s economic columnist

As a local and national campaigner, living and working in south Bristol, I know the charities I help – and the people they support – do best with Labour. That’s one of the reasons I’m standing to be a Labour candidate and why I want to devote my working life to making a real difference in Bristol South.

An active trade unionist, I believe we achieve more when we work together; representing workers from across the South West on the regional and national sector committee for Unite, I’m an equalities officer for my branch of Community, Youth Workers and Not for Profit sectors, rep and member of the Bristol District Area Activist Committee.

I’ve had a wide range of jobs, from cleaning and shop work to many years in the travel industry, working mainly between the voluntary and private sectors for many years; for huge companies like Granada, for example, but also loved being a part-time teacher and tutor, to supplement my income and share my love of politics and working with young people, teaching advanced level government and politics. Getting a student through her A-levels and into university, someone everyone else had written off, is still one of my biggest achievements to date.

What matters to me most is using my experience on the local and national stage to lessen the disadvantages of poverty and inequality in our society, by negotiating the best deal for Bristol South, securing investment for jobs and regeneration, fighting for fair pay and a Living Wage, employment rights and defending the welfare state.

Educational opportunities changed my life and I want to see such chances for everyone, regardless of where they are born or grow-up. School children from all social backgrounds excel at Knowle Park Primary, where I am a governor. I want to take the fight to the coalition, who seem to have created a lost generation, with little on offer for young people leaving school this summer.

I will always reach out and encourage youngsters to be part of political or community work, to try to engage them in politics or at the very least to vote. We all rely on the youth of today for our future, after all.

Working for children’s charities Kids Company – new to Bristol – and ERIC, running campaigns to improve facilities for children in schools, I also focus on the welfare of children through my campaign work for HAWKS, the Hartcliffe and Withywood Kick Start, supporting parents and young people in south Bristol who are affected by drug or alcohol misuse.

Public services like the NHS, policing and the probation service, should be run for the benefit of the community and the good of society, not used to profit an elite few. I’ll always campaign against privatising key services and have been campaigning for years to Keep the NHS Public and support the Save Our Royal Mail campaign.

As well as local labour, trade union members and business people, what is heart-warming is how supportive my family and friends are; how proud they are to see my conviction and passion for the labour movement. They know I want to bring advantages for working people made in Parliament back to Bristol South and take our message to the government in Westminster and Whitehall.

That’s what drives me, that’s what makes me get up in the morning and that’s why I want to be the Labour MP for Bristol South.

Amanda Ramsay is a member of Bristol South Labour party and is nominated by local party members, the Co-op party and the Communication Workers Union (CWU); also endorsed by the GMB, TSSA, Usdaw and Unite

If any other short-listed candidates would like their personal statements published, send them through to editorial@labour-uncut.co.uk