Progressive Party (UK)

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The Progressive Party or Progressives is a name of two defunct municipal political organisations that operated in the UK, one centre-left based in London in the late 19th century and early 20th century that allied trade unionists and Liberals, and the other centre-right operating in several Scottish cities and town in the 20th century but based around Scottish Unionist Party|Unionists, Scottish Liberals and Independents.

[edit] Progressive Party (London)

The Progressive Party was a municipal party for the London County Council based around the Liberal Party. It was founded in 1888 by a group of Liberals and leaders of the Trade Union movement. In the first elections of the London County Council (LCC) in January 1889 the Progressive Party won 70 of the 118 seats. It lost power in 1907 to the Municipal Reform Party (a Conservative organization) under Richard Robinson.

[edit] Progressives (Scotland)

National political parties were rarely active in local politics but the rise of Labour Party led to a process of party politicisation of local government. However, at first Labour were opposed by the Progressives before other national political parties entered local government elections on a significant scale.

The Progressives formed as a loose alliance of unofficial Liberals, Unionists and independents. Apart from a distinct focus on their urban localities the other essence of the Progressive groupings was opposition to Labour policies and control, plus a desire to avoid splitting the anti-Labour vote.

Progressive groupings formed in Edinburgh in 1928 and Glasgow in 1936 before spreading to other cities and towns. Their members were mainly drawn from small businessmen opposed to the introduction of what they saw as municipal socialism and Labour control. They dominated Scottish local politics for almost 50 years and as late as 1972 Edinburgh council was made up of 21 Progressives, 9 Conservatives, 33 Labour and 5 Liberals.

However by the end of the 1970s they had completely disappeared as the entry of SNP, Liberal and Conservative candidates into local politics supplanted their role of opposing Labour.