AS LENIN left the world, Ramsay MacDonald entered Downing Street. The first workers’ state lost its leader, and Britain gained its first Labour government on the same day, a century gone Sunday last.

One could write the story of the 20th-century workers’ movement through that moment. A comrade sent me a picture of hundreds of workers standing in silent homage at the news of Lenin’s passing. In Poplar.

Ramsay MacDonald’s memorial was the ruin of the movement he had built, its dreams traded in for the friendship of Lady Londonderry and the applause of the bankers — the “greatest betrayal in the political history of the country,” in Clem Attlee’s words.