Does historic data support a familiar claim about Labour’s record on unemployment?

On BBC 4’s Westminster Hour last night, we heard a repeat of a claim we’d looked into previously. In a discussion about the UK’s economy and the possible timing of the next general election, Conservative MP Damian Green said “every Labour government has left unemployment higher than when it started”.

As we’ve written before, this is true of most Labour governments, including the two most recent examples which both saw unemployment increase. 

But historic unemployment data, while not directly comparable with current data, suggests there’s at least one exception, with unemployment falling during the Labour minority government of 1924.