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, affiliated to the British Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and remained attached to the UK Labour Party which subsequently evolved.
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.
Famous quotes containing the words belfast, labour and/or party:
“Is it true or false that Belfast is north of London? That the galaxy is the shape of a fried egg? That Beethoven was a drunkard? That Wellington won the battle of Waterloo? There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions for different intents and purposes.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)