Lang Labor

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Lang Labor was a faction of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) consisting of the supporters of Jack Lang, who served two terms as Premier of New South Wales and was the party's state leader from 1923 to 1939. It controlled the New South Wales branch of the ALP throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s. The faction broke away to form separate parliamentary parties on several occasions and stood competing candidates against the ALP in state and federal elections.

By the early 1920s, Lang was the dominant ALP figure in New South Wales. He reached national prominence during the Great Depression by opposing the economic policies of James Scullin's federal ALP government. The resulting party split of 1931 saw the Federal Executive expel the Lang-controlled New South Wales branch from the party. Led by Jack Beasley, the Lang Labor members in federal parliament formed a separate party and in November 1931 voted to bring down the Scullin Government. Lang Labor candidates ran against the official ALP at the 1931 and 1934 federal elections, and at its peak the faction held nine out of 74 seats in the House of Representatives. Lang also had supporters outside of New South Wales, most notably several state MPs in South Australia who won elections under his banner.

After a series of "unity conferences", Lang Labor was readmitted into the official ALP in 1936, with Lang remaining as the party's state leader in New South Wales. He was deposed in 1939, after which his influence waned. In 1940, he and his supporters left the ALP for a second time, forming the Non-Communist Labor Party as an explicitly anti-communist body. It had a degree of success at the 1940 federal election, but rejoined official Labor in the lead-up to the 1941 state election. Lang was again expelled from the party in 1943 and ran separate candidates against the official ALP in several further elections. He served a single term in the House of Representatives from 1946 to 1949, while the last Lang Labor MPs in the Parliament of New South Wales were defeated in 1950.
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