Independent Labour Party | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | ILP |
| Founder | Keir Hardie |
| Founded | 1893 |
| Dissolved | 1975 |
| Preceded by | Scottish Labour Party Bloomsbury Socialist Society Scottish United Trades Councils Labour Party |
| Merged into | Labour Party |
| Succeeded by | Independent Labour Publications (pressure group inside the Labour Party) |
| Headquarters | Mentmore Terrace, London (till 1964) |
| Newspaper | Labour Leader |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| National affiliation | Labour Party (1906–1932) |
| International affiliation | |
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates. A sitting independent MP and prominent union organiser, Keir Hardie, became its first chairman.
The party remained positioned to the left of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Representation Committee, which Hardie founded in 1900 and was soon renamed the Labour Party, and to which the ILP was affiliated from 1906 to 1932. In 1947, the organisation's three parliamentary representatives defected to the Labour Party, and the organisation rejoined Labour as Independent Labour Publications in 1975.