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The Labour Party is a political party in the Union of Britain and the dominant party of state, having continuously held power in Britain since the end of the British Revolution in 1925. The exact ideology of the Labour Party is difficult to quantify due to its broad nature but it has been described as, and refers to itself as, a "broad popular front of all leftist groups within Great Britain committed to upholding the ideals of the British Revolution and securing the liberty livelihood of the British workers and their comrades abroad." To this end, the Labour Party has been described as an alliance orthodox syndicalists, democratic socialists, social democrats, trade unionists and revolutionary socialists. Since 1923, Labour has made up the government within Great Britain barring the period of 1924-1925 encompassing the period of the National Government and civil war. Likewise, Labour controls all Regional Assemblies in the Union of Britain and holds a supermajority in both houses.

History[]

The party was founded in 1900 by Kier Hardie, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century, principally the Independent Labour Party. Labour experienced a slow rise to influence in the United Kingdom, having experienced an electoral breakthrough in the post-war 1919 elections which saw it enter a close third place, behind the Liberal Party. At the next election in 1923, it overtook the Liberal Party to become the second largest party in parliament, behind the Conservatives. Working with the Liberals to sink the Conservative agenda, Labour were permitted to form a minority government under Ramsay MacDonald though this collapsed less than a year later amid the fallout of the Cachin Letter scandal. MacDonald was assassinated less than a month after and leadership fell to the more radical and republican George Lansbury, who permitted the Syndicalist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) to formally affiliate to Labour. Tensions would rapidly rise throughout 1924, culminating in the British Revolution and with it, the de jure banning of the Labour Party though it continued to function unimpeded in rebel territories and formed the political core of the revolutionary movement and later government.

Following the conclusion of the British Revolution, Labour now formed the centre of the new political scene and was by and far, the dominant party. The former membership of the SPGB had been absorbed into Labour during the civil war, following the former's banning, with this new "syndicalist" faction exerting an outsized degree of influence on the trade union movement, and consequently the Labour Party. An issue of affiliation emerged where-in the Independent Labour Party - formally the de facto parliamentary wing of the Labour Party sought to contest elections as a semi-independent force in its own right owing to this shift in the main party. This was permitted, on the basis they ran in a semi-electoral pact, and the ILP began the process of detaching itself though it would not formally disaffiliate until the 1930s. Labour consequently won a majority in the 1926 general elections to the newly reorganised TUC and formed a coalition government with the ILP under the leadership of A.J. Cook.

The party continued to absorb smaller left-wing groups throughout the 1920s though its political dominance was challenged in the early 30s following the death's of Cook and Wheatley, leading to the disaffiliation of the ILP. Tom Mann became the party leader following Cook's death and steered it through the tumultuous years that followed, culminating in the 1932 Parliamentary Crisis that officially transformed Britain into a dominant-party state under Labour rule. The party would absorb much of the defunct ILP, some radical liberals and Oswald Mosley's Popular Revolution Party across by 1933. As of 1935 it remains the largest party in the Federal Congress and in all Regional Assemblies and is set to dominate the upcoming 1936 elections.

Structure[]

Despite the appearance of being a "party" Labour has largely kept true to its roots of operating as a broad federation of left-wing bodies. While individual membership is available, broadly speaking members are drawn upon from affiliate groups. These traditionally take the form of one of three types organisations: Political parties organising under Labour, socialist societies that form more intellectual strands and special interest groups and trade unions that largely form the rank-and-file membership along with the congressional membership. Other types of affiliates exist, for example the Young Syndicalist League or the Council of Regions, but these are rare and usually fill some sort of special niche. At the most basic level, members are organised into geographically divided Branch Labour Parties that are organised along Provincial Lines. These then coalesce into a devolved Regional Labour Party that oversees and organises all activity in its Region and focuses on Regional administrations. Above this, sits the Congressional Labour Party - comprised of those members who sit in the Federal Congress - which is overseen by the National Executive Committee, the overarching party executive, selected by the lower levels of the party.

Due to the broad and federal nature of the Labour Party, factionalism is rife an has existed since its foundational beginnings. Factions are usually tied to individual personalities and the loyalties they instil but can at times be also linked to geography and sometimes even ideology. Broadly speaking, as of 1935, the Labour Party can be divided into five over-arching factions:

  • The Federationists - The largest of the five, and nominally the most powerful, the Federationists broadly refer to the party's 'centrists' and left-wing elements that support a maintenance of the federal and syndicalist system. Internally they are heavily atomised into multiple sub-factions and other cliques based on ideology or personal loyalty, though this latter allows the Federationists to command much of the rank-and-file trade union vote and their old guard leadership.
  • The Autonomists - An often shifting faction sitting in the centre of the party, the Autonomists trace their lineage back to the left-wing defectors from the ILP - the "32'ers" - and have since evolved to encompass the more devoted Christian Socialists within Labour and much of its more hard-line pacifist elements. An eclectic faction forged around Centrist Marxism and Guild Socialism alongside Christian Socialism and Co-Operatism, it has likewise come to welcome regionalist movements and left-wing rural activism into its ranks, creating a generally progressive and Christian-inspired political force focused on political liberalisation and decentralisation.
  • The Parliamentarians - The last redoubt of "Old Labour", the Parliamentarians uphold Labour's social democratic tradition, from within the mainstream party and notably advocate for the restoration of a "parliamentary house", replacing federalism with political centralism and the further introduction of Keynesian thinking into the economy. Despite being seen as the "right" of Labour, the Parliamentarians themselves are split internally between rightward, leftward and centrist flanks. Likewise, their name is not a reference to their support for Parliamentarianism in itself but rather from the term "Parliamentary Labour", a phrase adopted by more moderate Labour Party congress members in the Provincial Parliament, after the ILP had formally split from Labour proper, though the term was adopted by TUC members as well.
  • The Maximists - The informal name given to the ideological followers of Oswald Mosley, regardless of whether they belong to the New Labour Association, the Maximists advocate for political centralisation, authoritarianism, state control of the economy and "maximum devotion to the revolution" by both the people of Britain and the state itself. Relatively small in contrast to the other cliques and far more tight knit, being centred around a single organisation, the Maximists project outsized power owing to their influence in the cabinet and Mosley's own personal charisma though despite its outward appearance, internal dissent does abound.
  • The Vanguardists - The smallest and nominally weakest faction, though like the Maximists they cast a long shadow, the Vanguardists are a mixture of the old guard Leninist-inspired Marxists of the British Socialist Party and a younger generation that desires a more hard-line revolutionary course in syndicalist fashion. Initially powerful in the pre-Revolution SPGB, their influence has long waned and they largely survive of the patronage of orthodox Federationists, both united in their opposition to the "dilution" of revolutionary militancy, instead favouring a more narrowly ideological Labour Party acting as the revolutionary vanguard, hence their name.
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