Northern Ireland Labour Party

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See also the Labour Party of Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Labour Party was a political party which operated from 1924 until 1987.

In 1913 the British Labour Party resolved to give the recently formed Irish Labour Party exclusive organising rights in Ireland (the 1911 conference of the British party had been held in Belfast). This decision was not popular with the trade unions in Belfast, where skilled and organised workers tended to be Protestant and broadly Unionist (or at least anti-Nationalist) in outlook.

After partition the NILP was founded as a socialist political party by groups including the Belfast Labour Party and found its main bed of support amongst working class voters in Belfast. It initially declined to take a position on the "Border Question" and instead sought to offer itself as an alternative to both nationalism and unionism. It maintained relations with the British Labour Party who did not allow membership or organisation in Northern Ireland until 2004.

The party had a Member of Parliament on only one occasion, when Jack Beattie won the Belfast West by-election, 1943.

In 1949, after Ireland (Éire) had become the Republic of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Labour Party's conference voted in favour of the Union with Great Britain. The result was a sharp decline in the party's already limited electoral success as Catholic voters deserted it and the Irish Labour Party attempted to organise in Northern Ireland.

Later in the 1950s the party began to gain ground amongst unionist voters, and after the break up of the Irish Labour Party's new attempts to organise in the North, amongst some nationalists, and saw its greatest period of success between 1958 and 1965. As late as 1969 the party and its associates could poll over 100,000 votes on the basis of its cross community pull.

However with the onset of the Troubles, new parties emerged that appealed to the party's support base, including the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and the Democratic Unionist Party. Once again the polarisation of politics around partition deprived the party of a critical mass.

In 1971 the new Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner appointed the Northern Ireland Labour Party Stormont MP David Bleakley to his Cabinet as Minister of Community Relations, in an attempt to bring reforms to the province. However, the following year the Stormont Parliament was suspended when it resisted the London government request to take over responsibility for public order. In the 1973 referendum on the province's future, the Northern Ireland Labour Party campaigned for the province to remain in the United Kingdom.

The Northern Ireland Labour Party continued to contest elections but with a dwindling support base. In 1987 the remains of the party formed the Labour '87 group in the campaign for the British Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland.

[edit] Leaders of the Northern Ireland Labour Party

  • 1958 - 69: Tom Boyd
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