[1][3] In 1893, MacDonald began to take an active part in the anarchist movement in London, becoming a financial backer and for a time an unofficial editor of the Socialist League's newspaper Commonweal.

[2] Former Commonweal editor David Nicoll publicly accused MacDonald of being a police spy and of supplying the sulphuric acid used to build the bomb which had killed Martial Bourdin in February 1894.

He was back in Scotland by 1908, spending the summer at St Abb's, a small seaside village just north of Berwick, as a locum tenens.

The life of the fisher-folk there and their struggle with the elements inspired him to write a book of verse which was published in 1909, titled North Sea Lyrics.

[2] In 1910 he was offered the position of Principal Medical Officer of the Companie de Kong and moved to San Pedro, Ivory Coast of West Africa.