CHAPTER I
THE LABOUR PARTY’S CONSTITUTION AND ITS DEFECTS
Origin of the Labour Party—Reconstitution in 1918—The Trades Union Congress—The National Joint Council—The Parliamentary Labour Party—The Labour Party a Class Party—The Party’s Want of Leadership.
There are two great Labour organizations: the Trades Union Congress, with its Executive, the General Council, which represents the industrial wing; and the Labour Party, with its National Executive or Executive Committee, representing the political wing. The distinction between industry and politics—at no time kept clear—is fast disappearing.
Origin of the Labour Party
The Labour Party dates from 1900—when the Labour Representation Committee was formed on the initiative of the Trades Union Congress, the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society. Of 15 Committee candidates who ran at the subsequent General Election of 1900, 2 were returned—the late Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Richard Bell—9 Trade Unionist members being also returned, but not under the auspices of the Committee. Before 1900 prominent Trade Unionists had stood individually for Parliament, and had, from time to time, been elected. The first effective steps had been taken in that direction by the Labour Representation League established in 1869, after the Reform Act of 1868. In 1874, 13 candidates went to election, and the first two “Labour members” were elected, one being the late Right Hon. Thomas Burt. In 1880, 3 were returned; in 1885,11; in 1892,14; in 1895,12. The successful Labour candidates stood on an industrial and not a “Socialist ticket”; where Socialists did stand they received scanty support. At the election of 1885, the Social Democratic Federation ran a candidate in Kennington and one in Hampstead: the former polled only 32 votes, the latter 29.
In 1886, the Labour Representation League having been dissolved, the Electoral Labour Committee was constituted by the Trades Union Congress. It soon fell under the influence of the Liberal Party, and this led to Mr. Keir Hardie’s campaign, opened at the Swansea Trades Union Congress in 1887, for an independent Parliamentary Party representing Labour. Mr. Keir Hardie himself fought Mid-Lanark as an Independent Labour candidate in 1888 unsuccessfully, but was returned for South-West Ham in 1892. At his instance the Independent Labour Party was founded in 1893; it sent 28 candidates to the poll in 1895, with no success. But the political activity of the Independent Labour Party soon roused the Trades Union Congress. In 1899, at the Plymouth Conference, the Congress passed a resolution directing its Parliamentary Committee to arrange a conference of Trade Unions, Co-operative and Socialist Societies, to secure the return of an increased number of Labour members to Parliament. As part of the machinery the Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1900.
The constitution of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 was as follows: 41 Trade Unions, with a membership of 353,070 members; 7 Trades Councils; 3 Socialist Societies, adding a further membership of 22,861, making a total of 375,931. At bye-elections between the General Elections of 1900 and 1906, three prominent candidates of the Labour Representation Committee were elected: Mr. (now Sir) David Shackleton for Clitheroe, the late Mr. Will Crooks for Woolwich, and Mr. (now the Right Hon.) Arthur Henderson for Barnard Castle. The Newcastle Trades Union Congress of 1903 passed a strong resolution enjoining political independence, and instituted a parliamentary fund. At the General Election in 1906, out of 50 candidates sponsored by the Labour Representation Committee, which in that year re-christened itself “the Labour Party,” 29 were elected. Under the chairmanship of Mr. Keir Hardie, the Parliamentary Labour Party was immediately established with all the paraphernalia of a separate political party in the House of Commons. At the General Election of January 1910, out of 78 candidates, 40 were elected; at that of December 1910, out of 56 candidates, 42 were elected; at that of December 1918, out of 392 candidates, 59 were elected. At the last election in 1918, with a total vote in Great Britain of 9,690,109, 2,375,202 were polled by Labour.
Reconstitution in 1918
At the Labour Party Conference at Nottingham in January 1918, a revised constitution was proposed, which was ultimately adopted in London at the Party Conference on February 26 of the same year. The case for the new constitution was put before the Nottingham Conference by the Secretary to the Executive Committee, the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson, in these words: “It was no use the Executive using anything in the nature of a social programme or talking about building up a new social order and reconstructing society until they had taken into very careful consideration their present position as an organized political force. They had done so, and came to the unanimous conclusion that Labour, as politically organized in the existing circumstances, was altogether inadequate to the great task that lay immediately before it. They had never in the proper sense claimed to be a national political party. This limitation was inherited from the resolution carried at the Trades Union Congress in Plymouth in 1899. They were a political federation consisting of Trade Unions, Socialist bodies and Co-operative Societies, but in recent years they had developed what were called Local Labour Parties.” Mr. Henderson said the real question to be decided was whether, for the purposes of best attaining political power and of so advancing its party programme, the Labour Party should scrap the whole of its existing political machinery and build up a political organization from a new foundation depending only upon individual membership. “Speaking as an old electioneerer,” he continued, “he did not mind saying that if they had to begin afresh that would be the ideal at which he would aim, but in view of the close proximity of a general election he could imagine no greater mistake than to attempt to create a new organization based solely upon individual membership.” The Party ultimately decided to adhere to the existing scheme of a central industrial federation, but to graft on to it such a form of electoral constituency organization, linked up with the Local Labour Parties or Trades Councils, as would bring the federation and the constituencies into close contact with the Annual Conference and the National Executive of the Labour Party.
In the new constitution the Party thus expressed its intention: