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Margaret MacDonald’s forgotten socialist legacy
MAT COWARD resurrects the radical spirit of early Labour’s overlooked matriarch, whose tireless activism and financial support laid the foundations for the party’s early success

“IMPOSSIBLE you say? If it is impossible we must start at once,” was Margaret MacDonald’s response to naysayers, doubting her latest scheme for the advancement of socialism.

Impossible wasn’t really a concept she had much time for. It’s a dull inevitability that today she is remembered mainly as the wife of prime minister Ramsay McDonald; there was a bit more to her than just that.

Margaret Gladstone was born in London in 1870, the daughter of a chemistry professor who was one of the founders of the YMCA.

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