Note 711 — Chapter XI

The movement for “Labour Representation” (which “at that time meant working-men members of Parliament and nothing else,” History of Labour Representation, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912) was first got under way by George Potter’s London Working Men’s Association in 1866, mentioned at the end of Chapter VI. At the second Trades Union Congress, at Birmingham in 1869, a paper had been read on “Direct Labour Representation in Parliament,” but Congress took no action. A separate “Labour Representation League” was then formed under the presidency of R. M. Lathom, a Chancery barrister, to which many leading Trade Unionists belonged, of which Henry Broadhurst was secretary from 1872 to about 1878, and which sought from the Liberal Party opportunities for the return of a few working-class members; but (as formerly in the cases of William Newton’s contest for the Tower Hamlets in 1852 and George Odger’s at Southwark in 1870) in vain. At the General Election of 1874, as we have already described, fourteen workmen went to the poll; but in ten of the constituencies they were fought by both parties, and only in the other four did the Liberals allow them to be fought by Conservatives alone, with the result that two only (out of the latter four) were elected, namely, Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt. At the General Election in 1880, again with Liberal acquiescence, Henry Broadhurst was added to their number; and in 1885 this was raised to eleven (of whom six were miners). All these, whilst pushing measures desired by the Trade Unions, acted habitually with the Liberal Party. In 1886—the Labour Representation League having faded away about 1881—the Congress appointed a “Labour Electoral Committee” to do the same work; but this was never able to free itself from subserviency to the Liberal Party, and it achieved no success, dying away in 1893. Some personal reminiscences are given in “Labour Representation Thirty Years Ago,” by Henry Broadhurst, M.P., in the Fourth Annual Report of General Federation of Trade Unions, 1903; see also History of Labour Representation, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912.