The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain’s First Labour Government
By David Torrance
Published by Bloomsbury, 2024, £20
Reviewed by Nick Chaffey
War and revolutions, mass strikes and demonstrations, economic and political crisis, four elections in six years. Sounds familiar? But this was 1924 – Labour in government for the first time faced with a deep economic and social crisis.
David Torrance’s book, The Wild Men, implies this was a government that pursued radical policies. But those policies, feared by the ruling capitalist class and hoped for by the working class, didn’t materialise. As a force for socialist change, Labour’s first government failed, opening up a stormy and revolutionary period in British history.
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