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)
“Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse ... what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.”
—Harold Wilson, Lord Riveaulx (1916–1995)