The Wild Men

The incredible story of the first Labour administration and the 'wild men' who shook up the British establishment.

Writing to The Times from the Carlton Club in early 1924, the Conservative MP George Terrell railed against the 'Communists, the wild men, the work-shy, the ignorant and the illiterate' - in other words the people who, in the first election since all adult men had gained the vote, had voted for a radically different sort of government. It was a revolution against the top-hatted landed gentry who had run Britain for centuries.

But just who were these 'wild men'? Ramsay MacDonald, their leader and Labour's first Prime Minster, was the illegitimate son of a Scottish farm labourer; Arthur Henderson was a Scottish iron moulder; J. H. Thomas, a Welsh railwayman; John Wheatley, an Irish-born miner and publican; and William Adamson, a Fife coal miner. Never before had men from such backgrounds occupied the corridors of power in Westminster.

Wild Men tells the story of that first Labour administration - its unexpected birth, fraught existence, and controversial downfall - through the eyes of those who found themselves in the Houses of Commons, running the country for the people. Blending biography and history into a compelling narrative, David Torrance reassesses the UK's first Labour government a century after it shook up a British establishment still reeling from the First World War.

Full of fascinating insight, The Wild Men shines a light on an amazing period in British political history, when the establishment fought back and won.