X-Nico

6 unusual facts about Independent Labour Party


Centrist Marxism

For instance, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and Independent Labour Party (ILP) were both seen as centrist because they oscillated between advocating reaching a socialist economy through reforms and advocating revolution.

Little Germany, Bradford

Little Germany is also the home of the Bradford Playhouse which has a mural on the back of the building that commemorates the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford in 1893.

Merthyr Tydfil by-election, 1915

The selection procedure quickly became a battle between competing factions of the Independent Labour Party, played out within the administrative structures of the SWMF.

Opposition to World War II

There was a strong element of pacifism in the socialist movement, for example in Britain's Independent Labour Party.

Winnipeg Labour Party

Founded in 1896, it was based on an earlier Winnipeg organization known as the Independent Labour Party (which was influenced by the British party of the same name, but was not formally connected to any other group).

In 1906, his organization was absorbed into another group calling itself the Independent Labour Party.


Acton by-election, 1943

Initially there were six candidates but the independent labour and liberal candidates withdrew leaving Walter Padley for the Independent Labour Party (ILP), Edward Godfrey who sought election as an 'English Nationalist' candidate, Independent Dorothy Crisp who wrote for the Sunday Dispatch and the official Conservative candidate Henry Longhurst.

Francis Beckett

He has written a biography of his own father, John Beckett, a Labour MP from 1925 to 1931 and whip of the Independent Labour Party group of MPs; later chief propagandist for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and co-founder (with William Joyce) of the National Socialist League, who was interned during the second world war for his fascist activities.

George Nicoll Barnes

At the 1895 general election he stood unsuccessfully for the Independent Labour Party in Rochdale.

Industrial Syndicalist Education League

He went on to establish contacts with leading British syndicalists like Peter and James Larkin, and other dissidents in the Independent Labour Party, the SDF, and the Clarion movement.

Marjory Allen, Lady Allen of Hurtwood

In 1921 she married Clifford Allen, a leading member of the Independent Labour Party who had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector in World War I.

United Kingdom general election, 1935

The Independent Labour Party stood separately from Labour for the first time since 1895, while the Scottish National Party contested their first election, and the Communist Party gained their first parliamentary seat in almost ten years, West Fife.


see also

Frederick William Jowett

In the 1900 general election Jowett was the Independent Labour Party candidate in Bradford West.

Joseph McNamara

However, McNamara remained independent and, in 1921, made an alliance with M.M. MacBride, a dissenting member of the Independent Labour Party who had left the governing caucus, to move a Bill which would have introduced an eight-hour day.

William Drew

William Henry Drew (1854-1933), British trade unionist and a founder of the Independent Labour Party