Word: seaham
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Dates: during 1931-1931
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...Seaham--constituency of a British Cabinet Minister...
Defeat faced Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald at Seaham (see below) where the vote was cruelly close, and Opposition Leader Arthur Henderson lost his seat at Burnley. But neither could be irrevocably "defeated." When the leader of a British party fails to win, some henchman who has won a "safe seat" resigns, turns it over to the leader at a cut-and-dried by-election...
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...
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...
Once, fiercely booed for 15 minutes, Mr. MacDonald left a Seaham platform without speaking while hundreds chorused, "You're a liar!" But more often Mac-Donald "platform magic" worked. The dignified, silver-haired Prime Minister won votes and wrung hearts by solemn sob-stuff. He dragged in his long dead wife: "In the old days, the first days, my wife and I had to pay for the postage of the Labor Party! We bought out of our own pockets-my wife and I-the very notepaper on which Labor's work was done. . . . Labor is in my blood...