The Labour Independent Group was an organisation of five former Labour Party Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom.
In April 1948, the MP John Platts-Mills organised a petition in support of Pietro Nenni and the Italian Socialist Party, who were in alliance with the Italian Communist Party, counter to Labour Party policy. He was expelled from the party. [1] In May 1949, six Labour MPs voted against signing the North Atlantic Treaty, and of them, Lester Hutchinson, Leslie Solley and Konni Zilliacus were expelled. [2]
All these MPs were known for their communist sympathies, and the four joined with another independent MP, Denis Pritt, who had been expelled from the Labour Party in 1940 for supporting the Soviet Union in the Winter War, to form the Labour Independent Group. [2] Pritt was appointed the group's Chairman. [3]
The group regarded Soviet foreign policy as essentially defensive, and criticized the United States and the United Kingdom as bearing the greatest responsibility for the Cold War.
Zilliacus developed a negative impression of Stalin when the two met, and so he resigned from the group later in 1949, instead adopting a position of support for Josip Broz Tito, who he had also met. [2] All four remaining members stood as "Independent Labour" candidates in the 1950 general election, but all lost their seats, thus dissolving the group. [3]
| Constituency | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hammersmith North | D. N. Pritt | 6,457 | 25.2 | 3 |
| Shoreditch and Finsbury | John Platts-Mills | 7,602 | 18.0 | 3 |
| Thurrock | Leslie Solley | 4,250 | 9.8 | 3 |
| Walthamstow West | Lester Hutchinson | 704 | 2.0 | 4 |
Tribune is a democratic socialist political magazine founded in 1937 and published in London, initially as a newspaper, then converting to a magazine in 2001. While it is independent, it has usually supported the Labour Party from the left. Previous editors at the magazine have included Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health who spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, former Labour leader Michael Foot, and writer George Orwell, who served as Literary Editor.
There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party, or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s. These were usually local or provincial groups using the Labour Party or Independent Labour Party name, backed by local labour councils made up of many union locals in a particular city, or individual trade unions. There was an attempt to create a national Canadian Labour Party in the late 1910s and in the 1920s, but these were only partly successful.
Ian Mikardo, commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour Member of Parliament. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in 1950–59 and 1960–78, and Chairman of the Labour Party in 1970–1971. He was also chairman of the International Committee of the Labour Party in 1973–78, vice-president of the Socialist International (1978–1983) and honorary president (1983–1993).
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John Faithful Fortescue Platts-Mills, was a British barrister and left-wing politician. He was the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Finsbury from 1945 to 1948, when he was expelled from the party effectively for his pro-Soviet sympathies. He remained a MP until 1950, and then returned to his legal career.
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The 1939 Westminster Abbey by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 17 May 1939 for the British House of Commons constituency of Westminster Abbey in London.
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Hugh Lester Hutchinson was a Labour politician who was elected to represent Manchester Rusholme in the 1945 General Election, winning the seat by ten votes.
The League for Democracy in Greece was a British organisation founded in 1945 with the aim of supporting Greek resistance fighters and leftists in the Greek civil conflicts of the 1940s. The League was active during the 1946-1949 Greek Civil War and during the post-civil war years, and until the fall of the Greek military dictatorship in 1974. In 1974, it renamed itself to the Friends of Democracy in Greece and started functioning on a stand-by basis. Throughout its campaigning, the League kept an active relationship with trade unions and local organisations throughout Britain and Greece, and also with the Parliamentary Labour Party.