| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Contents | ||
The Labour Party is a membership organization consisting of Constituency Labour Parties, affiliated trade unions. Members who are elected to parliamentary positions take part in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP). The party's decision-making bodies, on a national level, formally include the National Executive Committee (NEC), Labour Party Conference, and National Policy Forum - although in practice the Parliamentary leadership has the final say. Questions of internal party democracy have frequently provoked disputes in the party.
For many years, Labour had a policy of Irish unity by consent, and did not allow residents of Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is the smallest of the Home Nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland lies in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It covers 14,139 square kilometres (5,459 square miles), and has a populati to apply for membership, instead supporting the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour PartyThe Social Democratic and Labour Party SDLP — Irish: Pairti Soisialta Daonlathach an Lucht Oibre is the smaller of the two major nationalist parties in Northern Ireland. The SDLP is also a social democratic party, and is affiliated to the Socialist Intern (SDLP). The 2003 Labour Party Conference accepted legal advice that the party could not continue to prohibit residents of the province joining, but the National Executive has decided not to organise or contest elections there.
The Labour Party was established at a special conference of the Trade Union Congress at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri on February 27February 27 is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 307 days remaining, 308 in leap years. Events 1560 The Treaty of Berhick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Congregation of Scotland 1594 H, 19001900 is the common year starting on Monday. see link for calendar) For the film, see 1900 (film). Events January January 1 Nigeria becomes British protectorate January 2 John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China. January 2 Chicag. Its initial name was the Labour Representation CommitteeThe Labour Representation Committee (LRC) was formed on February 27, 1900, at a conference at which representatives of the main socialist groupings in the United Kingdom were present. The LRC is the direct predecessor of the modern British Labour Party., and it was to have acted as a body coordinating attempts to elect to Parliament members who had been sponsored by trade unions as representing the working population.
The LRC won 29 seats in the 1906 election, helped by a secret pact between Ramsay Macdonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone which aimed at avoiding Labour/Liberal contests. In their first meeting after the election, the group's Members of Parliament decided to take the name "The Labour Party" ( February 15, 1906). James Keir Hardie, who had taken a leading role in getting the party established, was elected as Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (in effect, the Leader), although only by one vote over David Shackleton after several ballots. In the party's early years, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) provided much of its activist base as the party did not have an individual membership until 1918 and operated as a conglomerate of affiliated bodies until that date. The Fabian Society provided much of the intellectual stimulus for the party.
British politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was divided between the perceived 'establishment', represented by the Conservative Party (nicknamed the Tories), and a more radical 'non-conformist' tradition, based around Welsh Methodism. The latter tradition was embodied by the Liberal Party under leaders like William Ewart Gladstone and David Lloyd George. However the Liberal Party split between factions supporting leader David Lloyd George and former leader Herbert Asquith. Its split allowed the radical left of centre vote to be picked up by the Labour Party, which had its own Welsh methodist base and associations with 'non-conformism'. It was this non-conformist appeal, rather than its socialism, that led it to supplant the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives at the 1922 general election. Labour formed its first minority government with Liberal support in January 1924, with Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister, with the main issue in the election being free trade. The Conservatives returned to power nine months later following a hoax "Red scare" over the Zinoviev Letter.