A head of steam was now building up in the Labour movement for a political voice. Then, at the 1899 Plymouth TUC Congress an historic resolution was submitted from the moderate Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants – the union that was soon to be sued by the rail company at Taff Vale – calling on the Parliamentary Committee to join with the socialist and co-operative societies in summoning a special conference to discuss independent Labour representation. After a heated debate, the card vote in favour of the resolution was narrowly won by 546,000 to 434,000, with the miners and cotton unions abstaining. It marked a decisive change, which served to bring the idea of an independent party of Labour into fruition.
Within a matter of a few months, on 27 February 1900, 129 delegates assembled at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon from 69 organisations, representing 568,177 members of the Parliamentary Committee, to found a Labour Party. The organisations in attendance were made up of the trade unions, ILP, SDF and Fabians, with the aim of promoting labour’s interests in Parliament. This historic conference, in a giant step forward for the working class, resolved to establish the Labour Representation Committee, later known simply as the Labour Party:
That this Conference is in favour of establishing a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any party in opposing measures having an opposite tendency.
Three tendencies were represented at this founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee. Firstly, that represented by John Burns, who would end up in the Liberal Cabinet, and which defended class collaboration with the Liberal/Radicals. “I am getting tired”, he said, “of working class boots, working class brains, working class houses and working class margarine.” He continued, “I believe the time has arrived when we should not be prisoners to class prejudice.” This essentially was the middle class Fabian viewpoint, epitomised by the Lib-Lab politics of later years.
Secondly, the tendency epitomised by Keir Hardie and others, who expressed the views of the ILP. They opposed an alliance with the Liberals, and advocated a formal trade union–socialist federation, where, in effect, the unions put up the money and the socialists would promote the cause. But, in a typical opportunist gesture, to placate the right wing of the trade unions, the party would not officially be committed to socialism in any public form.
The third tendency was represented by Harry Quelch and the SDF, who opposed these options and argued for the establishment of a fully class conscious Socialist Party, with no truck of any kind with Liberalism or capitalism. Such a party would not only recognise the class struggle, but would also preach and practise it.
In the end, the ILP’s centrist viewpoint prevailed, and the SDF, having failed to get its socialist resolution on common ownership adopted, withdrew the following year, leaving the field clear for the opportunist ILP and especially the middle-class Fabians. If the SDF had remained and fought for its socialist position, in time, they would have been successful. But given their sectarian nature, they decided to split away – only nobody noticed this gesture. James Ramsay MacDonald, who had exchanged his Liberal clothes for those of the ILP, was appointed national secretary of the Committee. Interestingly, a resolution was passed which obliged the LRC to make annual reports to the TUC, demonstrating the need for democratic accountability over its parliamentary representatives. Yet in practice, the resolution was shelved, granting the Labour MPs a free hand in its parliamentary dealings. The gulf between the Parliamentary Labour Party, which tail-ended the Liberals, and its working-class base was soon to become an established fact. However, the essential point was that the party of Labour, despite all its inadequacies, was finally born. The British working class had at last, however hesitantly, however half-heartedly, broken with the two party system of big business.
In the prophetic words of the socialist weekly, The Clarion, it was “a little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, which may grow into a United Labour Party.” Lenin, who was well acquainted with the British Labour movement, writing a few years later, believed the formation of the Labour Party represented “the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist workers’ party.”[4]
Referring to Engels’ letters on Britain, Lenin again stated,
These lessons of Engels’ have been corroborated by the subsequent development of events, when the British trade unions, insular, aristocratic, philistinely selfish, and hostile to socialism, which have produced a number of outright traitors to the working class who have sold themselves to the bourgeoisie for ministerial posts (like the scoundrel John Burns), have nevertheless begun to move towards socialism, awkwardly, inconsistently, in zigzag fashion, but are still moving towards socialism.[5]
In the period following the founding of the LRC, many trade unions remained reluctant to affiliate to the new party. They were not totally convinced by this radical initiative and preferred to bide their time. At the general election of 1900, the LRC fielded just 15 candidates, two of whom were successful: Keir Hardie (Merthyr) and Richard Bell (Derby).
After his victory, Keir Hardie was famous for arriving to Parliament in his working clothes and cloth cap, accompanied by a brass band from his constituency. Soon afterwards, to the horror of the other parties, he submitted the following resolution to the Commons:
That considering the increasing burden of which the private ownership of land and capital is imposing upon the industrious and useful classes of the community, the poverty and destitution and general moral and physical deterioration resulting from a competitive system of wealth production which aims primarily at profit-making, the alarming growth of trusts and syndicates, able by reason of their great wealth to influence governments and plunge peaceful nations into war to serve their own interests, this House is of the opinion that such a state of matters is a menace to the well-being of the Realm and calls for legislation designed to remedy the same by inaugurating a Socialist Commonwealth founded upon the common ownership of land and capital, production for use and not for profit, and equality of opportunity for every citizen.
In the election, the Tories managed to secure a large majority at the expense of the Liberals and the “Lib-Labs” candidates. However, a dramatic change in the situation, unforeseen by anyone, was to occur that was to prove decisive for Labour’s fortunes.
In August 1900, some five months after the formation of the LRC, an unofficial strike broke out over victimisation on the Taff Vale railway in South Wales, which later secured the official backing of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. Richard Bell, ASRS general secretary, travelled to Cardiff to organise the picketing against scab labour. In the course of the struggle, tracks were greased, trucks uncoupled and locomotive engines put out of action. Furious employers plotted with the strikebreaking National Free Labour Association and the Employers Parliamentary Council to smash the strike with an injunction, which was duly granted. Although the strike was settled by mediation after only eleven days, the employers carried their legal case for compensation to the Lords and successfully sued for damages against the union to the tune of £23,000, with additional costs of £27,000 – a formidable sum at the time.
This infamous Taff Vale judgement of July 1901 represented a “judicial coup d’état” on behalf of the ruling class. In effect, the decision cut the ground from underneath the entire legal basis for trade union rights as established by the Acts of 1871 and 1876, and made strikes to all intents and purposes illegal. This attack on the unions was no accident. The capitalists needed to respond to the growing strength of the Labour movement. Dissatisfaction among the working class with the fall of real wages posed a serious threat to big business. To counter this threat, the courts were used to hamstring the unions. Yet this legal challenge caused consternation throughout the Labour movement. At the Swansea TUC Congress in August, John Hodge, secretary of the Steel Smelters, announced that he had “made over his little possessions to his wife by deed of gift” to avoid any financial penalties from changes to the law.
The result of the Taff Vale judgement resounded like an earthquake throughout the movement. As a direct consequence, affiliations to the LRC rocketed by 100,000 members within a single year, and were to more or less double again in 1902-3. The unions were determined now to make a success of the party. “We shall no longer allow the tail to wag the dog,” a carpenters’ delegate warned the TUC Congress in 1902, “we shall wag our own tails.” Ironically, this was the moment chosen by the SDF sectarians to leave the LRC! They were like the Russian fool who sang wedding songs at funerals, and funeral dirges at weddings – and got a sound thrashing at both occasions. In turning its back on the mass of organised workers in order to preserve an abstract doctrinal purity, the SDF gave a clear run to the opportunists, Labour aristocrats and muddlers of the ILP. Having lost a golden opportunity to influence events, the SDF went through a series of splits and, to all intents and purposes, disappeared from the scene.