Independent Labour Party
독립노동당
A British party of the left, founded in 1893 at a conference in Bradford out of dissatisfaction with the Liberals’ reluctance to endorse working-class candidates; Keir Hardie was its first chairman. It played a key role in founding the Labour Representation Committee, the later Labour Party, in 1900 and remained affiliated to Labour until 1932. In 1975 it joined Labour as Independent Labour Publications.
In depth
At the end of the nineteenth century many who wanted working men in Parliament saw the Liberal Party as their vehicle, and union-backed candidates were elected as “Lib-Lab” MPs with Liberal support. Marxists who believed in class struggle founded the Social Democratic Federation in 1881, and other socialists too grew frustrated with the low priority the Liberals gave to working-class candidates. Out of this frustration the Independent Labour Party was founded at a conference in Bradford in 1893, with Keir Hardie, already an independent MP and union organiser, as its first chairman.
The ILP members Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald were delegates at the founding of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, which became the Labour Party in 1906. After the ILP left Labour in 1932 its remaining members tended to be young and radical, and it actively supported the Republic in the Spanish Civil War: some twenty-five members and sympathisers, George Orwell among them, went to Spain in an ILP Contingent to help its sister party, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). In 1947 its three MPs defected to Labour, and in 1975 it joined Labour as Independent Labour Publications.