The Independent Labour Party and the Yorkshire Miners: The Barnsley By-Election of 1897

Abstract

The Independent Labour Party was formed early in 1893, at a time when its founders hoped that reformist, undogmatic Socialism would soon attract the support of large numbers of working men. This was a hope shared by others committed to a more rigorous Socialist ideology. Even Friedrich Engels, convinced that the formation of a political party sustained by the working class was the task of greatest importance, hailed the ILP as the body desired by the old members of the International of the 1860's. But the early hopes were short-lived. Everyone of its twenty-eight candidates was defeated at the General Election of 1895, even Keir Hardie, the party's leader, who had been elected at West Ham without Liberal opposition in 1892. Many of the candidates polled well, but the overall result was a deep disappointment. In four subsequent by-elections between May 1896 and October 1897, ILP candidates of proven ability, while finding considerable support among the electorate, finished last on each occasion, and the trend of election results grew worse rather than better. The ILP polled thousands of votes rather than the few hundreds of the Marxist body, the Social Democratic Federation, but this was small consolation. In terms of membership and general party activity the years after 1895 also marked a regression. Gradually Hardie and his colleages became convinced that winning the workers to Socialism by means of the ILP alone was not a feasible strategy. There was no way, in the short term, to further the cause of independent labour without the adhesion of the non-Socialist trade unions. This inevitably meant the soft-pedalling of Socialism. Defeated as a separate force, the ILP was forced to accept the idea of an alliance with the trade unions, in the hope that any form of labour party would first become independent of the Liberals and eventually Socialist. The first assumption proved correct, the second on the whole incorrect, but it is difficult to see what other course could have been pursued at the time. Thus the years between 1895 and 1900, the vital pre-history of the Labour Party, were years which were to stamp it at its birth in 1900 as a party of practical trade unionists, fighting for limited aims, with a smattering of Socialists whose influence failed to dominate the party programme or strategy.