Belfast Labour Party
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Belfast Labour Party
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|---|---|
| Leader | David Robb Campbell (1920 – 1924) |
| Founded | 1892 |
| Dissolved | 1924 |
| Merged into | Northern Ireland Labour Party |
| Ideology |
Socialism Social Democracy Trade Unionism |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| National affiliation | British Labour Party (until 1913) |
The Belfast Labour Party was a political party in Belfast, Ireland from 1892 until 1924.
The first socialist party in Ireland, it was founded in 1892 by a conference of Belfast Independent Labour activists and trade unionists. The party affiliated itself to the British Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and remained attached to its successor; the UK Labour Party.
Labour ran the Unionist Party close in Belfast North in a by-election in 1905 and in the general election of 1906 with William Walker as its candidate.
In 1913, the Labour National Executive Committee agreed that the Irish Labour Party should have organising rights over the entirety of Ireland. The Belfast Labour Party disagreed with this and, faced with the British party's refusal to reconsider, formed the independent Belfast Labour Representation Committee, which declared itself a party in 1917.
The party won ten seats on Belfast Corporation in 1919, but soon lost these. Suffragette, Independent Labour and Co-operative activist Margaret McCoubrey in 1920 was elected a Labour councillor for the Dock ward of Belfast. Nonetheless, the party came a very close second in Belfast West in the 1923 UK general election before forming with others the Northern Ireland Labour Party.
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