Labour Party (UK)

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries.

About Labour Party (UK) in brief

Summary Labour Party (UK)The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. As of November 2020, Labour had nearly 500,000 registered members, one of the largest memberships of any party in Europe. It is the largest party in Welsh Parliament, being the main party in current Welsh government. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, and holds observer status in the Socialist International. It includes semi-autonomous Scottish and Welsh branches, and supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland, although it still organises there. It has won the second-largest number of seats in the 2019 general election. The leader of the party and leader of opposition is Keir Starmer. The Labour Party currently forms the Official opposition in the Parliament of the United States of America, having won the third-largest seat in the 2014 US election. It also holds observerstatus in the International Socialist International, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as the Social Democrat Party of Scotland and the Scottish Labour Party. It was founded by social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists in 1900 to represent the interests of the urban working class.

It had no single leader, and in the absence of one, it had no one to co-ordinate the working-class population. In the 1990s, Tony Blair took Labour to the centre as part of his New Labour project which governed under Blair and then Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940–1945, after which Clement Attlee’s Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfare state from 1945 to 1951. At the 1895 general election, the ILP put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. The first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and largely middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and theScottish Labour Party, among other left-wing groups. In 1899, Keir Hardie proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored, but two were successful: Tydfil Bell and Richard Bell. The 1900 general election was also referred to as the LRC united election, which came too soon for the new party to campaign to effectively campaign for the total expenses for the election. In 1900, Hardie’s motion to establish a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party.