Britain's Labour Party began with a court case that outlawed most strikes
In 1901 a legal ruling known as Taff Vale made most strikes unlawful, and British unions decided they needed their own voice in Parliament. The committee they had formed a year earlier cut a quiet electoral pact with the Liberals, won 29 seats in 1906 and renamed itself the Labour Party.
The groundwork was laid in the late 19th century, after reforms in 1867 and 1884 gave the vote to hundreds of thousands of working men. Unions thrived in industrial districts, and their leaders borrowed the rallying style of Methodist revivals. Small socialist groups multiplied, the most influential being the Fabian Society of middle-class reformers, while Keir Hardie tried to bind unions and left-wing bodies such as his Independent Labour Party together.
In 1900 the Trades Union Congress called a conference that created the Labour Representation Committee, a coalition with Ramsay MacDonald as secretary. After its 1906 breakthrough Hardie narrowly became leader in the Commons. The first national conference, in Belfast in 1907, adopted a conscience clause tolerating differing views, and the party soon withdrew from Irish politics to organise only in Britain. It backed the Liberals' welfare reforms and their fight against the House of Lords veto, reaching 42 MPs in December 1910. During the First World War it split over the war effort even as Arthur Henderson sat in the war cabinet.
In 1918 the party committed itself to socialism and common ownership through nationalisation. By the early 1920s it had overtaken the Liberals as the main opposition, and MacDonald led a brief minority government in 1924. In 1929 Labour became the largest party for the first time with 287 seats, still short of a majority. Two years later, facing the Depression, MacDonald formed a government with Conservative and Liberal backing and was expelled; Labour crashed to 52 seats in 1931 before recovering to 154 in 1935.
After serving in the wartime coalition, Clement Attlee's party won a majority in 1945 and built the modern welfare state and the National Health Service while nationalising large parts of the economy, before losing in 1951. Later governments came under Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and, after the New Labour rebrand, Tony Blair from 1997. The party is centre-left and holds an annual autumn conference where local parties and unions vote on policy.
Source: Labour Party (UK)
