Young Labour League
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At least three organizations have used the name Young Labour League.
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[edit] Australia
The first Young Labor League (the spelling of "Labor" conforming to Australian usage) appears to have been founded in Australia in the last years of the nineteenth century, and became associated with the Australian Labor Party.
[edit] United Kingdom
The second Young Labour League was founded in Clapham, England, in 1920, and became the youth wing of the Labour Party [1] in the United Kingdom in 1924.
[edit] Republic of Ireland
The third Young Labour League was founded in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland in about 1965 or 1966 under the auspices of Brendan Corish, and with the encouragement of Proinsias Mac Aonghusa. Its Chairman was Brian O'Higgins, a secondary school student and son of an Irish actor. Its Executive Committee included Des Derwin, who later became an active labor unionist in the SIPTU, a major Irish labor union.
Its campaigns included supporting Radio Caroline, a pirate radio station, selling the Labour Party newspaper in Dublin pubs, and it produced a regular newsletter written by Brian O'Higgins, including articles on the June 1967 war in the Middle East.
It had the only stall at Liberty Hall, Dublin, at the Party's annual conference at which Brendan Corish announced that: "The Seventies will be Socialist". The stall, at the entrance to the conference, sold Corish Speaks (a collection of the principal speeches of the Leader), pamphlets by James Connolly, and other publications.
Its members assisted the Party during elections.
The League carried on a campaign against the Labour Teachta Dála James Tully, but it was intensely loyal to Brendan Corish. It criticised Tully (a former Fianna Fáil member) as a numbers man and an opportunist. Those fears were later to be justified, as Tully, when he later became the Minister for Local Government, was alleged to have attempted a gerrymander, which resulted in a large voter backlash against the Irish Labour Party at the next election.
It had ceased to exist by the early 1970s. It was succeeded by Labour Youth.
