Liam Payne looks at the developments that led to the emergence of the modern Labour Party and draws some important lessons for socialists today.

In articles for the left-wing newspaper Labour Standard in 1881, Friedrich Engels called on the nascent socialist movement in Britain to turn its efforts to organising a party of labour. While created initially to represent the interests of the working class in the expanding franchise of capitalist representative democracy, Engels believed that if this party started off as a separate entity to the existing bourgeois political parties, it would gradually shift towards a more explicitly anti-capitalist, socialist position. Engels stated to Karl Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, that it was “an immediate question of forming an English Labour Party with an independent class programme.”

Six years later, at the Trades Union Congress in Swansea, James Keir Hardie rose to give a speech which excoriated the political leadership of the trade union movement and their slavish devotion to the Liberal Party, with its bourgeois agenda. Hardie had formed the Scottish Labour Party the year before, and his speech presaged the uptick in union militancy and broadening of trade union organisation and representation initiated by the ‘New Unionism’ movement. This ruptured the conservative, ‘craft’ nature of the trade unions and opened them up to the majority of the working class, attempting to guide them in more radical directions. As labour historian Henry Pelling noted:

“Hardie’s lone protest at the 1887 congress was the beginning of a movement which in due course transformed not only the Congress itself, but the whole political structure of the country. It was the prelude to the New Unionism and to the changes to political outlook to which New Unionism gave rise.”

Enter the Fabians

The trade union movement had tried for some time to ride the tiger of liberalism in the hope of gaining some much-needed legislation for the movement and the working class in general. The theory behind this strategy came from an understanding of British parliamentary political tradition. Then as now, this dictates that political parties do not necessarily need to be held to any specific programme or manifesto which they have put their names to. Their position on any issue would largely be based on the prevailing context in which it arose, and the balance of forces within the party’s orbit and society in general. In terms of the Liberal Party, this meant the emerging power of the organised working class pitted against the more entrenched interests of the hegemonic capitalists. This strategy had proven largely ineffective.

To add to the political flux, the trade unions weren’t the only organisations interested in this question of political representation. Billing itself as ‘Britain’s oldest political think tank’, the Fabian Society was formed in 1884; taking its name from the Roman general Fabius, who defeated an invasion of the Italian peninsula by biding his time, building and conserving his forces, and striking the enemy when the opportune moment for victory presented itself. The Fabians are an elitist organisation, interested in using their privileged positions to influence those with power to follow a supposedly left-wing agenda – they called this strategy ‘permeation’.

Despite claiming a left-wing political stance, the Fabians were mostly interested in applying the empiricism of their analysis to British society in the aim of making it more efficient and technically rational. For a period at the beginning of their existence, this took the form of an antagonistic attitude towards the prevailing capitalism of the times, which they felt was incapable of such rationality. The Fabian Society claimed this made their analysis and proscriptions ‘socialist’. Capitalism has modified in many ways since 1884, and so has the attitude of the Fabian Society towards it – not in a progressive manner. Since their inception, the Fabians had been interested in the question of the best political organisation for them to attach themselves to and begin their shady work.

At the time of Hardie’s efforts at the TUC, the Fabians were establishing links in an effort to ‘permeate’ their ideas into the upper echelons of the liberal establishment. They aimed to assume prominent positions within Liberal Party organisations and through these influence the party’s political programme – utilising the twin intellectual tools of fact-based research and the new discipline of political science to argue their case based on expediency instead of ideology, in the tradition of staid British empiricism. To give them some organisational weight, they sought to enlist the various working-class and Liberal-aligned Radical societies in their native London to this cause.

Formation of the ILP

After failing to gain much support at the 1887 TUC conference, Keir Hardie attempted to begin the formation of a national party of labour himself. In 1891 he tried to arrange the coordination of the numerous ‘independent labour’ election candidates that had begun to emerge from the ‘New Unionist’ moment. Hardie reiterated his reasons for this attempt in the following manner:

“Should the Liberals get into power at the next election their neglect of the Labour question will compel some plain talking… I believe we have more to hope for from that party than from the other, but this applies to the rank and file only, and not to the leaders.”

In early 1893, Hardie finally got his wish. A conference of the various socialist groups and interested trade unionists convened in Bradford and formed the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The Fabians – the ‘future of the left since 1884’ – poured scorn on this seminal development. Famous author and leading Fabian, George Bernard Shaw wrote in an article on the conference “what can we do but laugh at your folly?”

The Fabians sent two delegates to the conference, one being Shaw. Their credentials for involvement in the conference were only approved by two votes by the other delegates. The Fabian strategy of ‘permeation’ was by this time well known amongst the nascent socialist movement in Britain and was unpopular. The elitist Fabians were understood to have no intention of relinquishing their privileged positions of influence within the liberal establishment and so were seen as bad faith actors by a large section of the Bradford conference.

In the midst of the conference procedures, an interesting and far-reaching debate took place around the naming of the new party. The Scottish Labour Party delegates agitated for the party to be called the ‘Socialist Labour Party’. This was rejected by other delegates as they felt it would limit the reach of the party, isolating it from working-class voters who were not yet aware of socialism, either theoretically or practically. Prophetically, ‘New Unionist’ leader Ben Tillett railed against any title associating the new party with “hare-brained chatterers and magpies of Continental revolutionists” – the new party would be wedded totally to representative democracy and pursue solely the parliamentary road to change.

Nevertheless, the ILP was largely made up of socialists. These were the dedicated men and women who undertook the novel strategy of creating a political party of the working-class which would work in lockstep with the country’s growing trade union movement. Their socialism was of a practical kind, however, as Tillett had alluded to. The aim of the Bradford conference was to create a vehicle of independent political representation for the working class, which could adopt its own programme of radical reforms for British society in the interest of this social layer. Engels thoroughly approved of the whole endeavour:

“The rush to Socialism, especially in the Industrial centres of the North, has become so great that this new party right at this first congress has appeared stronger than [the] Fabians… since the masses of the members make good decisions, since the weight lies in the provinces and not in London, the centre of cliques, since the programme in its main points is ours.”

Unions rethink

By the 1890s, the trade unions were beginning to reassess their relationship with liberalism. Driven by the vision of the ‘New Union’ upstarts and punitive government intervention in industrial disputes, there was a growing receptiveness to Hardie and the socialists’ ideas around independent working class political representation.

The unions were learning a harsh lesson in the prerogatives of state power in a capitalist society – with their advance threatened by government legislation favouring the bosses over them. Anti-trade union legislation, such as the legal creation in 1893 of a ‘free labour’ association to supply blackleg labour to break strikes, had begun to seriously erode the position of the trade unions.

Initially, they sought to counter this legislative attack through recourse to the law courts. Here, again, they learnt a salutary lesson about the objectives of the law in a capitalist society – with the employers’ ‘property rights’ nearly always trumping the right of working people to defend themselves and their class in any way. A general economic upturn in Britain at the end of the 19^th century had also increased the trade union movements financial strength. These factors led to new thinking amongst the movement and its leaders.

Growth of the LRC

In 1900, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) was established to create an electoral alliance between the ILP and other political parties of the left in Britain. Attempts were made to have the trade unions affiliate to the new body, but these were initially met with a lukewarm response. An increase in the severity of the legislative and legal attacks on trade union rights would soon change this.

The Taff Vale judgement of 1901 saw the High Court decide that the funds of a trade union were liable for the loss of company profits caused by strike action. The case was brought by the Taff Vale Railway Company against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The union won a reversal of this decision at the Court of Appeal but was then defeated again when the case was brought before the House of Lords. The judgement essentially removed strike action as a method of trade union agitation due to the drastic financial consequences a strike could now cause.

A further House of Lords judgement later in 1901 also found trade unions liable for company profit loss caused by organised boycotts. These had the catalytic effect on trade union attitudes towards independent political representation for the working class that the socialist movement had been agitating for since Hardie’s TUC speech in 1887.

The affiliated membership of the LRC rose from 375,000 in February 1901, to 469,000 one year later, then on to 861,000 in 1903. Large unions such as those representing engineers and Lancashire textile workers finally affiliated and brought their large financial power behind the new political movement.

The LRC used this newfound support to arrange for the creation of a central fund for the organisation, which would provide the financial backing for them to stand candidates in elections across the country and support elected representatives in the days before these roles were salaried. By-election successes in disparate areas of the country throughout these years started to prove Hardie’s point that the political ground was fertile for such a new working class political organisation.

Keir Hardie’s role

After achieving his aim of creating an independent working-class political party, backed by the growing power of the trade union movement, Keir Hardie stood down as the chairman of the ILP. This did not mean that he was completely relinquishing his position in the movement, however. In his excellent study, Origins of the Labour Party, labour movement historian Henry Pelling paints a rather unflattering picture of Hardie from a democratic socialist and Labour left perspective:

“He believed, with Carlyle, that history is made by great men, who can provide leadership for others. He was conscious that no one could guide the I.L.P as well as himself, and in spite of all the principles of ‘democracy’ he was determined to continue giving it that guidance in the pages of the Labour Leader, which remained in his personal control. It was significant that whenever conference time came round he was careful to insert a note in the paper urging the branches not to follow the practice of binding their delegates to strict instructions, but to leave them free to be influenced by the debate, which would of course be dominated by himself and his colleagues.”

The ILP though, was only one constituent part of the larger and more amorphous Labour Representation Committee. Despite the socialist fire of the ILP and its members, the LRC was mostly made up of people yet to be converted to the cause, and dominated by trade union leaders who would have been much more comfortable sticking with liberalism if it could only be slightly more accommodating to their interests. Pelling attests that the main reason this accommodation was not forthcoming from the Liberal Party was due to the domination of its new constituency caucus system (a forerunner to today’s constituency parties, such as Constituency Labour Parties) by the domineering middle classes: unwilling to share power and representation with the upstart working-class movement, and openly hostile to any ideas of socialism and even Fabian ‘permeation’.

But old habits were hard to break. The LRC, and even the ILP, found it very difficult to articulate a clear, concise and separate ideological position to the mainstream Liberal Party in most issues of the time. Reporting on the ILP conference of 1901, the then Manchester Guardian stated: “What must strike a Liberal… is, one would say, how much of the proceedings is devoted to the advocacy of traditional Liberal principles.”

After the LRC shed the Marxist element that had helped create it, it was dominated by ex-Liberals at the executive level. One Ramsay MacDonald, who was dubbed by the venerable Hardie as Labour’s “greatest intellectual asset”, sided with his old Liberal comrades on most issues at the time. In the words of Pelling again:

“Hardie, who had been much more friendly to the Radicals since the outbreak of the South African War, in October 1901 publicly advocated a ‘frank, open and above-board agreement… for well-defined purposes’ with the anti-war Liberals. There was little enthusiasm for this among the Socialist rank-and-file; yet eighteen months later Hardie was apparently prepared to connive at MacDonald’s secret electoral understanding with the Liberal whips. With the leaders of the Socialist wing acting in this fashion, how could the non-Socialist elements be expected to keep clear of Liberalism?”

Lessons for today

Today, once again, there is a major political party claiming to represent the interests of the British working-class. The organised working-class, in the form of the trade union movement, have once more allied themselves to this electoral vehicle in the hope of gaining some legislative succour, with ever diminishing and depressing returns. Elitist, anti-democratic and non-socialist organisations have again aimed to control the direction of this political party by ideologically infusing its leadership with their ideas and prejudices – using the working class rank-and-file as their foot soldiers. The party establishment are still thoroughly ashamed of the socialism which is supposed to be their self-appointed intellectual backbone.

Decades of anti-trade union legislation and legal precedent have once more been allowed to pass almost unchallenged by this political wing of the labour movement. The leadership is still in the hands of those much more at home in the liberal political tradition, and the few leading lights of the socialist left again fail to adequately challenge this aberration, and even at times give it enthusiastic support. The party has long struggled to define what it believes socialism to be, which has led to much regurgitation of liberal talking-points in place of class politics. Rank-and-file party democracy has almost always been largely scorned, and the constituency parties have mostly become a moribund bastion of the privileged and conservative middle-class and are used, if at all, to bend the party to their interests. Despite a few noble attempts, this political representative of the working class has failed to properly evolve as Friedrich Engels hoped it would back in 1881.

Today, once again, if this party were to win the next general election, while perhaps slightly better than the alternative, their neglect of labour issues should be the cause of some ‘plain talking’.

Today, once again, the task of forging a path ahead and out of this morass falls to the socialist left.

Liam Payne is a Labour Party and Campaign for Socialism member based in Edinburgh.

Image: https://picryl.com/media/portrait-of-keir-hardie-8e5dfb. Creator: Wikimedia Commons  Credit: Wikimedia Commons via Picryl.com. Licence: PDM 1.0 DEED Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal