Labour Party

“ The Labour Party as a Labour Party is no more inherently reconstructive than the Banking Interest or the Shipping Interest. Like them, it merely wants an excessive and inconsiderate share of present power and satisfactions. ”

“ The Labour Party, as it was understood ten years ago, was a pitiful conglomeration of selfish atoms without the faintest idea of coordination. It is for the souls of the people we stand, we Democrats, whether they belong to trades unions or not, whether they till the fields or sweat in the factories, whether they bend over a desk or go back and forth across the sea, whether they live in small houses or large, whether they belong to the respectable middle classes whom the after-the-war legislation did its best to break, or to the class of actual manual laborers. ”

“ But briefly, what all men were engaged in searching after—the Labour party, no more and no less than the Radicals and the Tories—was how we could raise the character and material conditions of our people; how by better organisation we could root out needless misery of mind and body; how we could improve the health and the intelligence, stimulate the sense of duty and fellowship, the efficiency and the patriotism of the whole community. ”

“ Is not self-interest the ruling passion in the human heart? Then how should any party be so true to Labour and so diligent in Labour's service as a Labour Party would be?
What is a Trade Union? It is a combination of workers to defend their own interests from the encroachments of the employers.
Well, a Labour Party is a combination of workers to defend their own interests from the encroachments of the employers, or their representatives in Parliament and on Municipal bodies. ”

“ If formulation on paper of ideals of humanitarianism, and quixotic Utopianism, without any consideration of cost or practicability, is statesmanship, the Labour Party’s policy is truly admirable. It outlines in glowing splendour a wonderful new mechanism of politics, society and industry, in which every exterior part falls into place with the smoothness and precision of a model engine constructed out of a box of parts—but, like the toy, with no works inside. ”

“ The rise of the Labour Party has been the most remarkable feature of the situation during the past three or four years, and the whole history of the Labour Party is the most conspicuous illustration of the general truth of what has just been said. ”

“ What is, however, much more crippling to the Labour Party than the scanty funds with which its constituent societies supply it, and this insufficiency in the staff of trained election organisers, is the scarcity of trained Parliamentary represent- atives. ”

“ The efforts of the past twenty-five years to establish a separate socialist party in parliament have not been directly successful, but the Labour Party has managed to return a group of some thirty workmen to the House of Commons, and these men are the responsible and trusted leaders of the trade-unions and the Independent Labour Party. ”

“ For nearly ten years past each of these Parliaments has been dominated by a small section of its members, known as the Labour Party, mostly men of the working class, elected for the sole purpose of advocating and enforcing their class interests. ”

“ LABOUR PARTY, in Great Britain, the name given to the party in parliament composed of working-class representatives. As the result of the Reform Act of 1884, extending the franchise to a larger new working-class electorate, the votes of “labour” became more and more a matter of importance for politicians; and the Liberal party, seeking for the support of organized labour in the trade unions, found room for a few working-class representatives, who, however, acted and voted as Liberals. ”

“ The surprising and encouraging result of such association is the announcement that the new Labour Party is today publicly thrown open to all workers, both by hand and by brain, with the object of securing for these the full fruits of their industry. ”

“ Every man and woman, therefore, may now join a Local Labour Party. It is intended to form a Labour Party in every parliamentary constituency, as a unit of organization to which Trade Union local branches and Local Trade Councils, Co-operative, Socialist, and other such societies will be affiliated, and to which each individual local supporter of the Labour Party will adhere. Every candidate for Parliament must be chosen or approved by the local organization and accepted by the National Executive. ”

“ The new Labour Party came into existence, and joined with the opponents of Tory Imperialism, the Nonconformists alienated by the Education Act, the people of all classes who had been offended by the Licensing Act, the Conservative Free Traders, and those who were anxious to resume the work of economic reconstruction, to overwhelm the Tory Party at the General Election. ”

“ Trade Union and Labour Party are both class defences against class aggression.
If you oppose a man as an employer, why do you vote for him as a Member of Parliament? His calling himself a Liberal or a Tory does not alter the fact that he is an employer. ”

“ At a recent conference of the Social-Democratic Federation the chairman declared, in his opening address: "There can be but one Independent Labour Party, and there ought to be a united Socialist party. ”

“ So then we have this curious paradox that the Labour Party, which knows that there exists, and is quite incapable of extinguishing, this spirit of industrial hostility amongst the various sections of its Trade Union membership, still professes its ability to instil and enforce the spirit of social brotherhood throughout the whole electorate. ”

“ The Socialist Labour Party is a political organisation seeking to establish political and social freedom for all, and seeing in the conquest by the Socialist Working Class of all the governmental and administrative powers of the nation the means to the attainment of that end. ”

“ It was needful to gather together into one great organisation – the Labour Party – all working-class organisations. To this end the I.L.P. fought elections challenging all capitalist candidates. Year by year they had increased in representation in the House of Commons. ”

“ The party is, however, formed on a broader basis than the state parties, the solidarity pledge extends only to votes upon which the fate of a government depends. Naturally, however, as the ideals of the members of the party are the same, the members of the Labour party will be generally found voting together on all important divisions, the chief exception being with regard to free trade or protection. The Labour party held power in the Commonwealth for a short period, and has had the balance of power in its hands ever since the formation of the Commonwealth. ”

“ The Labour Party in Parliament's disappointed all its supporters so far, but it's going to justify itself at last. One thing. They can't trample on us this time, the Fats canna. We're too well organised. ”

“ The Liberal Party had already crumbled before the rise of a nominally Socialist Labour Party, placed in office, though hardly in power, by a popular vote largely drawn from former Liberals. The payment of Members helped to bring into keen politics the trade unions whose leaders saw their way to an honourable career in the House of Commons. ”

“ The Independent Labour Party, indeed, has had a program of reform that is remarkably similar to that of Ministers Churchill and Lloyd George, and is indorsed in large part by capitalists—as for example, by Andrew Carnegie. ”

“ It is, so the Labour Party holds, just as much the function of Government, and just as necessary a part of the democratic regulation of industry, to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, and those of all grades and sections of private consumers, in the matter of prices, as it is by the Factory and Trade Boards Acts, to protect the rights of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of labour and sanitation. ”

“ Taken together with the intellectual bankruptcy of the Liberal Party and its apparent incapacity to formulate any positive policy, whether with regard to the redistribution of wealth within our own community or with regard to our attitude towards other races within or without the British Empire, the emergence of the Labour Party programme meant that the Party stood forth, in public opinion, as the inevitable alternative to the present Coalition Government when the time came for this to fall. ”

“ The Government in adhering to continuance of the established organization of industry—on which the greatness of England’s trade and commerce has been built up—or the Labour Party, which, without any clear idea of what it would put in its place, would destroy the existing organization in the complacent expectation that by some process of abiogenesis a better system will soar like the Phoenix from the ashes? ”

“ But when a party has gained strength, and can express its ideas in definite and practical proposals, it is surely a sign of strength and involves no risk to leave a certain freedom of thought and action to its Parliamentary representatives. The Labour Party in Parliament has already realized this need for greater freedom, but the organizations outside continue to insist upon the 'solidarity pledge,' although they have lessened its stringency and agreed upon a working arrangement for the next General Election with those Liberals who are in general sympathy with their immediate aims. ”

“ What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganization of the nation’s industry, no longer deflected by individual profiteering, on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production ”

“ A like failure to strike the imagination characterised The Daily Citizen—the organ which the Labour Party and the Trade Union Movement had established with such high hopes—and its inability to gain either intellectual influence or adequate circulation did not lighten the somewhat gloomy atmosphere of the Labour Party councils of 1913-14. ”

“ The Labour Party will function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted task, as its foundation—the Trade Union movement—becomes established and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. ”

“ Whatever the Labour Party may call itself, it is in fact a class party—that appears clearly from its history. Up to 1900, when the Labour Representation Committee was constituted, it was definitely Trade Unionist in its organization. In 1900, as has been shown, seven local Trades Councils were, for the first time, brought in along with three Socialist Societies, but they only accounted for 22,861 out of 375,931 affiliated membership. ”

“ Edwards said the Labour Party were going in for a wage which would enable parents to raise up healthy children. The first function of the party when it came into power was to see that a long neglected class was lifted up above the poverty line on which it had for so long existed. ”

“ To what extent they are destined, in their character of constituent members of the Labour Party, sometimes actually combined with Local Labour Parties (in the latter cases with the inclusion, since 1918, of a section of individual members, Trade Unionists or others, “workers by hand or by brain”) , to develop an effective political organisation, drawing together the whole of the supporters of the Labour Party in each Parliamentary constituency, remains yet to be demonstrated. ”

“ No political party is immune from intrigue or from cabals and conspiracies against its accepted leaders, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the Labour movement is more impregnated than any other movement in this country with those unlovely tendencies. You have only to follow the course of a branch committee or a district committee election, or the election of an executive committee-man or general secretary of a Trade Union, to realize the prevalence and power of personal jealousies. ”

“ The one hope of the workman is a strong Labour Party.... The Labour Member has nothing but his service to give in return for support. Perhaps he is dependent on his fellows for his maintenance until Payment of Members is secured. ”

“ To the Labour Party as to the Chartists democratic politics are but a stepping-stone to social reform, and as in the days of the Chartists the336 strength of the Labour Party is in the industrial districts of the North of England, and in South Wales. ”

“ Position of Parties at the Dissolution Party Gains Position of Parties in the New Parliament (The above returns do not include the Orkney and Shetland Islands.)
There is no need to trace the development of political events leading up to this position. It lends itself to summary. The Labour party had come into power by pointing out to voters of the working classes that its members were their brothers, and promising them a great deal of property belonging to other people and a good many privileges which they vehemently denounced in every other class. ”

“ In questions of foreign policy the Labour Party, inspired by its idealism, has shown itself at its best, instead of this department of politics being, as is often ignorantly assumed, altogether beyond its capacity. ”