Formation Of The Independent Labour Party example essay topic

Account For The Emergence Of The Labour Party And Discuss Its Fluctuating Fortunes Upto 1914 It is an oversimplification to talk about the rise of the Labour Party as if it were a single homogeneous body. In fact it was an amalgamation of three different socialist groups - the Social Democrat Federation, the Fabian Society, and the Independent Labour Party - with some trade unions. Although these groups were all described as socialist, their aims and methods were not always the same; the word 'socialist' meant different things to different people. 'Basically the origins of the party lay in the poor social conditions and the poverty of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At least 30 per cent of the working class were living close to starvation level, the agricultural and industrial depressions worsened the situation, bringing unemployment and irregular employment. Often wages were so low that families were living in dire poverty even when the breadwinner was in full-time employment.

Many people were becoming disturbed at the striking contrast between this poverty and the comfortable existence enjoyed by the upper and middle classes. ' "Progress and Poverty", a book by an American economist, Henry George (published in Britain in 1881) focused attention on the tremendous contrasts of wealth and poverty. George blamed the problems on the greed of the landowners, and advocated a massive land tax as the cure for all ills. In a time of severe agricultural depression, the book was bound to have an impact both on middle-class intellectuals and on the working classes. Thanks to the spread of education following Forster's Education Act (1870), working people could read George's book and socialist propaganda, such as Robert Blatchford's influential newspaper, "The Clarion". 'There was growing impatience among Radicals with Gladstone's Second Ministry (1880-5) which virtually ignored their suggestions for social reform This was, to say the least, ill-advised, since many workers had received the vote thanks to the 1867 Reform Act, and Gladstone himself had extended the franchise to include many more in 1884.

'Also in 1884, two important socialist groups were formed: the Social Democratic Federation was set up by an old-Estonian, H.M. Hyndman, and also included John Burns and Tom Mann. Advocating violent revolution to overthrow the capitalist system, they achieved 'publicity by organising protest marches and demonstrations. The most famous one, held in Trafalgar Square in 1887, was broken up by police and is remembered as Bloody Sunday because of the violence on both sides. 'The Fabian Society was a group of middle-class intellectuals which included Sydney and Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw.

They believed that land and industrial capital should be owned by the community, but unlike the SDF thay did not believe in violence. They took their name from Fabius, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal by waiting patiently and avoiding battle, knowing that time was on his side. The Fabians believed that society would gradually change from capitalism to socialism and their function was to persuade the political parties to accept socialism. At first they preferred this policy of 'gradual permeation' to creating a separate Labour party, but they changed their minds when it became clear that the Liberals and Conservatives were not impressed by their ideas. 'In 1888 James Keir Hardie, secretary of the Scottish Miners' Federation, formed the Scottish Labour Party, because he was disgusted with the complacency and ineffectiveness of the Liberal Party. He became the first Labour MP in 1892 for West Ham South and 'soon played a crucial role in the formation of the Labour Party.

He was convinced that the needs of working people could only be attended to by a Labour group completely independent of other parties. A slump in the Yorkshire woollen industry in the early 1890's gave Hardie and his associate John Burgess, who ran a newspaper called " The Workman's Times" , a chance to form a new party. The whole woollen area, racked by unemployment and wage reductions, was bristling with Labour clus - 23 of them in Bradford alone. Hardie organised a conference in Bradford in 1893 which resulted in the formation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

Its ultimate aim was the collective ownership of the means of production, but its priorities were vital social reforms. The ILP was a working class and very much a northern organisation; Hardie wanted the Labour Party to be a national body with middle-class support, and the final step towards this goal came in 1900. 'The trade unions gradually moved towards the idea of a Labour Party, following incidents such as the great engineering lock-out of 1897-8 and the Lyons 'V 'Wilkins case of 1899, whereby the Appeal Court decided to limit the right of a union to picket. It was a vague judgement, but it could be interpreted as reversing the 1876 Trade Union Act. Events like these prompted the TUC to propose a meeting with the socialist groups; representatives of some unions, SDF, Fabians and ILP attended the meeting at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London in February 1900 and decided to form a distinct Labour group in parliament. The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) was appointed to organise their election campaign, and James Ramsay Macdonald, later to become the first Labour Prime Minister, was its unpaid secretary.

This is usually taken as the beginning of the Labour Party. Its aim was simply to represent working class interests in parliament; about socialism it was very vague. 'The setting up of the LRC in 1900 caused no great stir at the time, and there were few who regarded it as more than another pressure group aiming to strengthen the labour cause. Keir Hardie himself thought of it in this way, and as late as 1905 he hoped that in time it might become an 'influence second in importance only to that of the Irish National Party'.

At the time when it was founded, the socialist journal " the Clarion.