Note 718 — Chapter XI

This was adopted in preference to what was considered a more extreme proposal (moved by P. Vogel of the Waiters’ Union, a Socialist), appointing the Trades Union Congress itself the organisation for independent Labour representation in Parliament; requiring every Union to contribute a halfpenny per member per annum, and making the Parliamentary Committee disburse the election expenses and the salaries of the members returned to the House of Commons (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899).

It was afterwards stated that the leaders of the Trades Union Congress had had in contemplation the subordination of the Labour Representation Committee to the Congress. But with a different constituency the new body had necessarily to be an independent organisation; and in 1904 the General Purposes Committee reported to the Trades Union Congress, which endorsed the report, that any resolution to endorse or amend the constitution of the Labour Representation Committee would not be in order at the Trades Union Congress (ibid., 1904).