The Formation and the Evolution of the British Labour Party

Abstract

The article examines the processes of organizational development of the British Labour Party in the early XXth century, the evolution of the party structure and political programme in the twentieths of the XXth century. Special attention is paid to researching the formation of the Social Democratic Federation, Fabian Society and Independent Labour Party till the time of its joining to the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and adopting the “Labour Party” name in 1906. The author’s aim was to comprehensively investigate the political manifests and activities of those organizations on the way of transformation from separate trade-unions and socialist groups to apparent union of labour, and then to the mass and wide represented parliamentary party. However, the variety of social base of those societies is distinguished, and difference of socialist views and tactics of achieving the final purpose are emphasized. Considerable attention is paid to the system of the individual membership and results thereof in the process of the evolution of the Labour Party’s organization. The reorganization of the Labour party in 1918, Representation of the People Act, 1918 and the crisis in the Liberal party were favourable for the further evolution of the Labour Party. It is summarized that the social base, the history of party’s birth, the conditions of formation and the party system had influenced the process of the evolution of the ideological and political concepts of Labourizm.