Alfred Hindmarsh - Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

In the 1905 general election, Hindmarsh stood as an IPLL candidate for Parliament in the Newtown electorate. Of the four candidates, he came a distant last. In the 1911 general election, he was elected in Wellington South as a candidate for the original Labour Party in the second ballot.

In the following year, 1912, the party was relaunched as the United Labour Party, with Hindmarsh still a member. In 1913, the United Labour Party itself agreed to merge with the Socialist Party to form the Social Democratic Party, but Hindmarsh believed that the resulting party would be too extreme. Hindmarsh chose became one of a group of United Labour loyalists who remained outside the Social Democrats, forming a loosely organised "remnant" faction.

In 1915, when the Social Democrats and the United Labour remnant agreed to form a united caucus, Hindmarsh was selected as chairman. The following year, most of this caucus agreed to establish the modern Labour Party — Hindmarsh was the acting parliamentary leader of the party during its period of establishment, although he did not take any executive office.