In Seaham

Tall, tired Ramsay MacDonald finished his bitter campaign last week with four final days in his own Seaham constituency. His opponent was a plump 47-year-old schoolmaster, William Coxon, who until last month was Scot MacDonald's campaign manager. It was hard going. Everywhere along the line he was faced by snarling, short-tempered crowds. At Shotton he faced a booing crowd of miners:

"I've said popular things to you and unpopular things, but as long as I'm your representative here--"

"You're not!" roared the crowd. Booing and stamping increased. Scot MacDonald threw wide his arms.

"My friends,--" he cried.

"We're not your friends!" came the answer, "Vote for Coxon! Vote for Coxon!"

At Worksop in Nottinghamshire he took a day off from his own troubles to plead for the re-election of his son Malcolm. Again the MacDonald temper wore thin.

"If I were that man there," he roared, pointing to a heckler, "I would be ashamed of the silly expression on my face. . . . Now you just listen to me and you'll improve. If you'll only listen to yourselves you'll deteriorate."

"You've been very well looked after at any rate," piped a coal miner.

"No, I haven't been very well looked after," snapped the Prime Minister, "so don't be personal, nasty and impertinent.

The life some of you lead is not theory to me, it is reality. I have known what it is to have only one meal a day, which I could afford to pay only tuppence ha'penny for."

"Not lately!"

"Certainly not lately. And who wishes you to remain all your lives on ten shillings a week."

The meeting broke up in cheers.

Stupidest move of the MacDonald campaign were the arrangements for his speech at Seaham colliery. If Schoolmaster Coxon had still been the Prime Minister's campaign manager instead of his opponent he never would have allowed Scot MacDonald to make a speech the very day that unemployed miners were drawing their reduced dole. He never would have chosen as a meeting place the same hall that had just been used as a dole pay office. Black-faced miners drew their pittances and cursed while unconscious campaign workers tacked MacDonald posters up under their noses. Fortunately there was no rioting. Seaham women, always his followers, shrilled for their Ramsay.

French correspondents, unimpressed by British newspaper reports, marvelled at the orderliness of Labor crowds. Wrote one Henri de Kerillis :

"If I should campaign like this in Puteaux or Clichy [suburban slums] I would not like to say what receptacles would be emptied on my head."

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