The Republican Labour Party was a political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1964, with two MPs at Stormont, Harry Diamond and Gerry Fitt. They had previously been the sole Northern Ireland representatives of the Socialist Republican Party and the Irish Labour Party respectively, so a common joke was that "two one-man parties had become one two-man party".
Fitt won the West Belfast seat in the UK general election of 1966, and held it in the 1970 election.
In August 1970, Fitt left the party and took most of its support with him, to found the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Led by Paddy Kennedy, the rump party struggled on for a time, but it was wiped out in both the 1973 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the 1973 local elections and as a result was disbanded.
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