Independent Labour Party

Frustrated at their progress trying to win over Liberal MPs to their cause, they passed a motion calling for another conference to be set up which would look at going beyond this, forming a group of MPs and candidates to represent the interests of working people.

Members of a range of different organisations were invited, including the pre-existing Independent Labour Party, members of the trade unions and, last but not least, the Fabian Society.

During that second conference, which was held in London, they launched the Labour Representation Committee, which would later go on to change its name to the Labour Party.

See, the Labour Party from its very founding to today has always been a bit of a coalition between both working and middle class people who are members of trade unions and also middle class and even better off liberals.

Now, not surprisingly, his book appeared at a time when English socialism was becoming a political power, and Lecky devotes more than 140 pages to analyzing the new radicalism.

In 1893, the Independent Labour Party officially came into existence in the Yorkshire town of Bradford.

Since the elections of 1874, however, avowed socialists had sat in the British Parliament, and socialist labor unions had been around since the 1850s.

To the consternation of German liberals, German socialists, meeting in the Saxon town of Gotha, had d- drafted a program in 1876 calling for public ownership of the means of production.

So he made a decision that would change the course of his life and change the course of Canadian history.

He expressed his frustration in a letter to an old friend from Winnipeg, J.S. Woodsworth, who is now a member of parliament for the Independent Labour Party of Manitoba.

Woodsworth put him in contact with people in Saskatchewan, like M.J. Coldwell and George Williams, who were working to form a new social democratic political party called the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.

Douglass started working for the party and attended the historic convention in 1933 and where the Regina Manifesto was adopted as the official platform of the CCF.

That can be Giles.

[laughs] Or maybe you're a left-winger within the Independent Labour Party or a member of the Guild Socialists, of whom I must admit I hadn't heard until I did the research for this presentation.

You're all about to become foundation members of the brand new Communist Party of Great Britain, and in so doing, you're going to arm the working class of this country as never before in its historic battle for the end of wage slavery and the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism and then communism.

Having established that, let's be more comfortable and return to Safflower Bell Hall in 2011.

But I think in order to talk about Labour, rather than talking about 1920 and the Unity Convention, we need to go back a further six years to the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and the fact that sadly, the vast majority of what was then the Second International, rather than upholding the spirit and the politics of proletarian internationalism, caved in to the bourgeois governments of their own respective countries and supported an imperialist war.

So in 1914, on the eve of that First World War, which was to sweep millions of British workers into the armed forces to kill or be killed by their fellow workers of other lands, there was a profound contradiction, one which remains, in my opinion, within the British Labour movement.

On the one hand, there were great mass organizations, the trade unions, the TUC, the cooperative movement with all of its manifold societies, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party, which, uh, for those of you who don't know about it, was the left social democratic wing of the socialist-- of, of the Labour Party, and it maintained a, an autonomous existence within the Labour Party.

Together, these organizations embraced millions of working people, but without a socialist outlook.

And just as a little point of context, the Labour Representation Committee is the unions coming together and socialist societies coming together to seek the representation of Labour members of Parliament.

Before that, there was the Independent Labour Party, which was not coupled with the unions, this was independent socialists seeking representation.

So you already had had the election of people like Keir Hardie to parliament.

But here, the point of the Labour Representation Committee, and as I've argued on other podcasts, an absolutely central feature of the British socialist movement, unlike many of the European socialist movements, is the dominant role of the unions here.

So it's pretty close to home, but he is one of only two Labour MPs elected in 1900.

And

at that time, independent Labour Party MPs.

Yeah.

This increased the family's financial difficulties, and after a bout of ill health for Richard, the Pankhursts were forced to move back to Manchester.

It was on their return that all members of the family would be enveloped in the newly formed Independent Labour Party.

The Independent Labour Party emerged out of the desire and the agreement amongst a range of radical organisations that working people should aim for parliamentary representation.

I think the Independent Labour Party also really appeals to the Pankhurst family because this is a much more radical political party than the Liberal Party.

There was a whole culture around the Independent Labour Party.

You joined in, you could go cycling, walking, as well as going to meetings.

This social aspect of politics is what first appealed to the eldest Pankhurst sister.

And then you have a few moments of catalyzing.

Some tram drivers have abandoned their trams so they could be used in blockades as well.

At 3 p.m., Fenner Brockway from the Independent Labour Party became a close friend of George Orwell's.

he rings the Home Office and warns them what will happen if the fascists reach Cable Street.

And he says, "'There are a quarter of a million people here.