Scottish Labour Party founded

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.3: Scottish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), J. Derrick McClure (University of Aberdeen), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Domains

Political Parties

Dates

Date of occurrence 1888-05-19

Places

Scotland (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The impetus for the Scottish Labour Party was initiated after Keir Hardie stood for election as an MP in the Mid-Lanarkshire by-election of April 1888. Although he had tried to stand as a Liberal candidate, the Liberal Party refused to support him, and so he had been forced to offer himself as an independent candidate, and won only 617 votes. This led him, and others including Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, to realise that perhaps the labouring classes in Scotland would be better served by having their own party to represent them. An initial meeting was held on 19 May in Glasgow, and was followed up by a founding conference in August. Although the Socialist organisations (the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League) both boycotted the event, as they saw a parliamentary…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

151 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Scottish Labour Party founded". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5335, accessed 23 April 2024.]

Save this article