[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Labor Party
The setting up of the Labor Representation Committee in 1900 caused no great stir at the time, and there were few who regarded it as more than another pressure group aiming to strengthen the Labor cause. However, by 1931 the Labor Party had been in office on two occasions and had overtaken the Liberals as the second party in Britain. How did this situation arise? What factors, social, economic, and political played a part? What contribution did individuals make?What effect did circumstances such as the First World War and the decline of the Liberal party have on Labor's dramatic rise? And how did the party's own legislative record contribute to its increased popularity? In this essay I have paid particular attention to a factor inextricably linked to Labor's rise, the fortunes of Britain's 'second-party' in 1900 - the Liberal Party.
The interaction of these two parties over the first 30 years of the century go most of the way to explaining why in 1924 and 1929 Labor was able to win general elections.Certainly, during the decade before the First World War there seemed no inevitability about Labor's rise, at least to contemporaries. The basic fact about British politics then was the domination of the great Liberal Party. This meant, therefore, that far from expanding as an independent after 1900 there was a distinct possibility that the Labor Party would be absorbed by the Liberals, as the Liberal Unionists had been by the Conservatives after 1895, or become a small and dwindling left-wing group like the I.L.P. in the 1930s.
In the event, partly due to MacDonald's much-maligned leadership, this did not happen and Labor independence was maintained. But the ideal of Labor independence implied expansion based on capturing a larger section of the working-class vote: and this could only be done at the expense of liberalism.......
