When we look back at the origins of the Labour Party and the struggles of its founders, we can see how in many ways it was Britain’s very own way of enfranchising the working class, ensuring that there was a peaceful transition of power away from the upper-class elites, who had held power and sway in Britain for generations, to all of the country’s citizens, lest a bloody revolution like the kind which had broken out in 18th century France should ensue.

Hardie and the Labour Representation Committee
The Labour Party was the brainchild of (James) Keir Hardie (1846-1915). Hardie, a former miner and later a trade unionist from Legbrannock, Lanarkshire, had initially been a Liberal but he soon became disenchanted. He felt particularly perturbed when in an 1888 by-election he was passed over as the candidate for his local seat, with the Liberal Party instead choosing a rich barrister from London who knew relatively little about the local area.

Hardie was from a working-class background and had educated himself and felt this worked against him in the minds of the Liberal Party hierarchy. But he decided to run for the seat anyway as an ‘Independent Labour’ candidate. Although he was ultimately defeated, Hardie stood again in 1892 for the seat of West Ham South and was this time successful, though the Tory candidate, Major George Banes, soon ousted him in the general election of 1895.

Hardie had been popular because the constituency he represented was home to a lot of working-class people and he had vowed to represent their interests. After his historic victory, he was driven to Parliament by his working-class supporters and was dubbed ‘the man in the cloth cap’. Many describe him as a pragmatic socialist, rather than an ideologue of the kind supposedly found on the continent.

The Labour Party officially came into being on 27 February 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee when a meeting was organised by the Trade Union Congress at Memorial Hall, Farringdon Road in London, to agree a way forward for the labour movement. The three major socialist organisations sent delegations: the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party. Hardie and a new figure, (James) Ramsay MacDonald, who would one day become the first Labour Prime Minister, were in attendance. It was agreed that this new Labour Representation Committee should affiliate with and maintain a close link with the trade unions to ensure that the party properly represented the workers. Hardie was to be chairman of the new party.

In 1903 Labour achieved a major breakthrough when the party entered into an agreement with the Liberal Party, which had been out of office for sometime, to allow them free run at 50 seats in return for parliamentary support. As a result in the general election of 1906, Labour managed to secure 29 seats. It was now a significant parliamentary force. This is an astonishing victory when we consider how long it has taken other new parties to break into the UK parliamentary system. The Scottish National Party was first formed in 1934 but it took until 1945 for it to secure its first seat and until 1974 for it to make any significant breakthrough, securing 11 seats; and it was only in the 2010s that the party begin to make any real progress toward its raison d’être of seeing Scotland become an independent nation.

Trade unionists
It is clear that one of the reasons for the Labour Party’s early success is due to its large membership. So just how would have our ancestors become members and what might being a Labour Party member have initially entailed?

Following the formation of the Labour Representation Committee, the easiest way to become a Labour Party member was through a trade union. As Labour had affiliated with the unions, members of a union could automatically become a member of the party if they wished. According to the Socialist History Society, in 1901 such members stood at 339,570; by 1903 affiliate membership was 847,315; and by 1904 this number was nearly one million. This was in part because more and more trade unions affiliated with Labour – it seemed, for a while, as if the entire working-class movement was slowly being consolidated behind one party.

The trade union movement had begun at the start of the 19th century to push for better working rights as the Industrial Revolution took hold. With no political representation in Parliament, unions had fought hard for their very legal existence and for the right to even hold a strike. Picketing was legalised in 1859 and some small key reforms throughout the century did improve the lives of the working class. The Third Reform Act of 1884 now gave roughly 60% of working class men the right to vote and Acts were passed which curbed employers’ exploitative use of children and made education compulsory for the first time. There was, however, still a long way to go.

The dilemma for the Labour Party at its creation is, arguably, the same one which plagued it during the 1980s and which faces it today: it was composed of many different groups in order to increase its chances of electability but each of these groups wanted different things.

A broad church
Most unions were interested in practical policies which could transform the lives of their members but other groups within Labour – such as the Fabian Society, a largely middle-class organisation which promoted public ownership of utilities and a more equal society through non-violent means, and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) which advocated ‘class warfare’ and aligned itself with the ideas of Marx and Engels – wanted a more ideological, dogmatically socialist agenda. A key work that influenced the thinking of socialists who would come to affiliate with the Labour Party was Henry George’s Progress and Poverty.

Of course the very existence of such a book highlighted a class divide within the party. By its very nature, George’s work and others like it were verbose and intensely academic: the ideas contained within them were off limits to the members represented by trade unionists, many of whom would have lacked a basic education.

Yet the more the academic socialist faction of the party was allowed to dominate, the more the Conservatives could begin to scaremonger about ‘class warfare’ and how increasing tensions might lead to civil unrest or, worse, a revolution of the kind beginning to brew in Russia.

1906: real change
In 1906 when the Liberals won a landslide, supported by the new 29 Labour Party MPs, there was a real feeling that for the first time the rights of the working class might have a voice in Parliament and be able to enact real change. Poverty, social deprivation and widening inequality in Britain were out of control. Both the Liberals and Labour were determined to address it. One of the biggest and first pieces of legislation the new government passed was the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. This gave unions legal immunity from damages relating to strike action. The Taff Vale Railway Incident in 1900 (see box) had brought home the injustice of current laws and had made the Labour Party determined to change them as a matter of urgency, something they felt they could only do through Parliament.

Other landmark pieces of legislation introduced by the Liberal government included the 1908 Children and Young Persons Act which enforced harsh penalties for the abuse and neglect of children, legislated for minors to be tried in juvenile courts and, if convicted, sent to a ‘borstal’ prison rather than an adult prison. Also in 1908, pensions were introduced for the first time and an eight-hour working day was introduced for miners. Then 1909 saw the opening of labour exchanges to help the unemployed find work. By 1911, Britain even had unemployment pay, sick pay and free medical treatment, paid for by a new National Insurance payment – and a significant increase in taxes.

The path to power
In the two general elections of 1910, Labour gained around 40 seats. With the Liberals now needing the support of both the Irish nationalists and the Labour Party, it seemed Labour was in a position to demand more and more for its members. Despite disputes with the socialist faction of the party over issues such as National Insurance, which was perceived by some as taxation on the poor – the ideological view being any poor relief should be paid for exclusively through taxation of the rich – the leadership of the party, now under Ramsay MacDonald, ploughed on, taking more and more seats from the Liberals.

Ramsay MacDonald was branded a national traitor for opposing the First World War – he abhorred violence – and for arguing that Britain and Germany were equally to blame. In the 1918 election, he lost his seat of Leicester West.

However, what happened next was described by historian and former Labour MP David Marquand as: “One of the most remarkable political recoveries in 20th century British history. It was made possible by a seismic shift of political allegiances, reflecting the split in the Liberal Party, the growth in trade union membership, and the upsurge of class-consciousness which the [First World War] had brought in its train.”

In his diary, writing in Leicester, MacDonald famously said he detected a revolutionary spirit. The apparently successful revolution in Russia was leading some in his party and on the streets to now believe that launching a coup and taking power by non-democratic means was a viable option. Yet MacDonald was not only completely against such methods but he realised that if he allowed such ‘rot’ to set in, the Conservatives could end the political prospects of Labour by comparing them to Russian revolutionaries. Convincing the public of his agenda proved more difficult than one might imagine: while on some level his anti-war stance helped cement his position as a pacifist, it also painted him as a traitor and somebody who would not rise to the challenge if revolutionaries – perhaps the extremes in his own party – decided to stage a coup or a foreign power decided to invade. But MacDonald rose to the challenge.

The mood in the country and the circumstances of the 1923 election were strange. Comparisons can certainly be drawn with the political situation in 2016: the incumbent Conservative government, having just won a general election, decided to hold a general election over its policy of introducing trade tariffs, a policy championed by new leader Stanley Baldwin but deeply unpopular with many Conservatives and Liberals. Baldwin went to the country and the result was a hung parliament. The Conservatives had the largest number of seats, 259, but Labour came second for the first time, securing 191 seats, while the Liberals were booted into third place with just 159. It was widely thought that the Conservatives and Liberals would form a coalition to lock Labour out of power but the Liberals instead decided to allow Labour to form its first government, hoping that, with little experience, it would shortly collapse giving them another shot at getting back into power.

On 22 January 1924, King George V appointed Ramsay MacDonald Prime Minister. According to David Marquand, in his first meeting, MacDonald said it “had required all his influence to prevent his followers from singing the ‘Red Flag’ [a traditional socialist anthem] in the House of Commons itself when Baldwin fell”.

Just 24 years after the Labour Party’s creation, the working class not only had representation in Parliament, they were able to set the agenda of the whole country for the first time.

Sources
AM McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884 – 1918 (CUP Archive, 1962)
Mark Crail, Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians (Pen & Sword, 2009)
James C Docherty & Sjaak van der Velden, Historical Dictionary of Organised Labor (Third Edition, Scarecrow Press, 2012)
Lawrence Goldman, ‘The general election of 1906’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/95348]
David Marquand, ‘MacDonald, (James) Ramsay (1866–1937)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2015 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34704]
Kenneth O Morgan, ‘Hardie, (James) Keir (1856–1915)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33696]
Martin Pugh, Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party (Vintage, 2011)
Andrew Thrope, A History of the British Labour Party, Third Edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Tony Van Den Bergh, The Trade Unions – What Are They? (Pergamon Press, 1970)