Labour Party's roots: a railway signalman

[John Ashworth]

Whatever happened to the Labour Party?

Independent Sunday 30 September 2012

What is Labour for? If you could pay a visit back to 1899, a railway signalman from Doncaster called Thomas R Steels would certainly have been able to answer. Exasperated at the lack of a political voice for working people while the wealthy had the Tories and Liberals to stand their corner, he drafted a resolution for his local union branch. It called on the Trade Union Congress to assemble a conference with the support “of all the cooperative, socialistic, trade union and other working-class organisations” to look at how it could win “a better representation of the interests of labour in the House of Commons”.

It was a controversial idea. The first socialist MP, Keir Hardie, had only been elected a few years ago; as he entered Parliament for the first time, a policeman eyed his working-class clothes and asked him if he was working on the roof. “No, on the floor,” he answered. Many on the left felt the best bet for working-class people was to piggyback on the Liberals, forcing them to introduce social reforms. But the TUC approved Steels’ motion – and a few years later, the Labour Party was born...


More material from the website of the Labour MP for Doncaster:

Thomas R Steels was a railway signalman working for the Great Northern Railway Company who moved to Doncaster in around 1891.

In March 1899, Steels drafted a famous resolution on labour representation in Parliament. The Doncaster branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) then sent this resolution to the Trades Union Congress meeting in Plymouth.

The motion called on the TUC to organise a joint conference with socialist and co-operative bodies to discuss Labour representation.

Thomas Steels resolution agreed at the Good Woman public house on St Sepulchregate reads as follows:

“That this congress, having regard to its decisions of former years, and with a view to securing a better representation of the interests of labour in the House of Commons, hereby instructs the Parliamentary Committee to invite the cooperation of all the cooperative, socialistic, trade union and other working class organisations to jointly cooperate on the lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress of representatives from such of the above-named organisations as may be willing to take part to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of Labour members in the next parliament.

The resolution was adopted by the TUC at Plymouth. It was carried by 546,000 to 434,000 votes.

This is perhaps the first time the idea of the Labour Party appears in print and put important power in the hands of the executive committee and those of the society of Ramsey Macdonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, which helped secure his election to Parliament in 1906.