Preview

The Rise of the Labour Party

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
546 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Rise of the Labour Party
The rise o the labour party was due to many factors.Factors such as the movement of people from the countryside to cities which changed the economic structure of britain and also changed the social structure and this led to the need for political change.

The need for political change to help the working class people who were living in poverty which had been highlighted by booth and rownatree who surveyed LOndon an york two of englands major cities .Better education led to the realisation that the two existing political parties were not suitable for the working class' needs .All were factors which conrtibuted to the rise of the labour party .

The british government was run mainly by rich aristocrats because working class people could not afford to become MPs but in 1911 they introdiced payment for MPs which let the working class represent themselves in their constituencies in parliament either the liberal or conservative parties .Although this had happened the rich aristocracy still believed that they knew best when dealing with the poor even though they did nothing to help the poor .This attitude was based partly on the principle of laissez fair which meant little help was given to the poor and the little help that was given was harsh like the poor houses .These factors needed to be changed and the only way was through political change this also lead to the rise of the labour party .

Another reason for the rise of the labour party was the failure of the 1832 act which granted the vote to small buisiness men , financiers and entreprenuers of the industrial revolution but ignored the organised sections of working class.Although the 1832 act failed to grant working class people the vote the 1867 , 1872 and 1884 acts gave the vote to more working class people , although this had happened the new voters did not have a party to represent them .These problems also helped the rise of the labour party through the necessity of of a party to represent the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The government could not fumction without money so the issue was put to the voters to decide. The Conservatives had to win a large number of seats in order to justify their rejection of the budget, however they did not and ithe election was therefore a defeat for the Conservatives. However, the Liberals no longer had an overall majority in the commons so they could only get their bills passed if they got the support of the Labour party and Irish Nationalists. The Irish Nationalists would only give their support in return for granting of Home Rule for Ireland, so the Liberal party had to include Home Rule in their policy. The Liberals were reliant on the Labour Party as Labour would only support them in return for favourable legislation for trade unions, assistance for working class candidates to become MPs. This allowed the Labour Party to develop links with uniona and allowed them to field more candidates at future elections, enabling them to challenge the Liberal Party; weakening the Liberals. After the election the budget was re-introduced into parliament and was passed by both…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The liberal’s victory in the 1906 was a very significant one due to how they won it with such an overwhelming majority; it was the biggest electoral victory since 1832. In the 1890’s the liberals were suffering from a crisis identity and they were lacking in money and morale. In the 1906 election the liberals won 49.4% of the vote and that amounted to 399 seats which was such a large margin compared to in 1900 where 45% of the vote was only 183 seats. There are four main reasons arguably why the Liberals won the1906 election and these are through Conservative faults such as the massacre in the Boer war. The education act in 1902 and Chamberlain’s tariff reform campaign also lost the conservatives a lot of support, which meant people turned to liberals just due to disliking the conservatives. The most important reason was Arthur Balfour getting involved and not making the right decisions for the conservatives and losing a lot of the voters they had before. The liberals also used a very negative campaign in order to get voters to realise the flaws in the conservative’s ideals and make them vote for the liberals just through dislike of the other parties.…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Class dealignment can be described as the relationship between social class and voting behaviour weakening, meaning that the electorate are beginning to vote for political parties which are not generally associated with their social class. The extract quotes “In the 1960s, Peter Pulzer concluded that, 'class is the basis of British party politics.'” The 1970s showed how the electorate strongly stuck to voting for parties based on their social class, and confirms Pulzer's ideas. In '74, 56% of the Conservatives support was from ABC1 classes, whilst the majority of Labours was from C2 and DE classes. The table in the extract shows how the percentage change of C1, C2 and DE class votes for the Labour party has decreased greatly – 11% for C2 and 8% for DE - which confirms the idea of class dealignment, as people from working class backgrounds such as C2 and DE have been more likely to vote for Labour in the past.…

    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Want' aimed to provide cash benefits to the people who needed them; 'Disease' aimed to provide the National Health Service; Ignorance aimed to provide free compulsory education; Squalor aimed to help people who were homeless due to the war by providing more houses; Idleness aimed to provide full employment. These were all major issues during wartime Britain and the Labour Party's support in their cleansing was a huge factor in their victory at the 1945 general…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the1870s, the Conservative Party won three out of four elections and formed the government for 17 years out of a total of 20 years. It reflected the Conservative Party was the most powerful party in England at that time; they even had an overpowering majority of seats in the House of Lords. They had support from everywhere. However, the situation changed dramatically when the Liberal party won the general election in 1906 with an overwhelming majority of 400 seats as against 157 seats for the Conservatives party. This event was marked as the well-known ‘Liberal landslide’. There are several reasons why the Conservative lost such a large amount of seats; national efficiency, the imposition of Education Act and Licensing Act, tariff campaign and Neglect of social reform.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both men, who served as Prime Ministers, reformed many institutions with many of them effecting the working class like education (bringing up the working class), trade union (helping the working class fight for work wrights), public health (living conditions affecting the working class) and licensing (the way many working class people passed the time), along with the electoral institution (workers being able to vote on the matters which the work upon, such as factory conditions and education). Many historians, such as William Kuhn, argue that William Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, passed many other reforms as well to help the working class, including the Ballot Act of 1872. However, some historians, such as Monypenny and Buckle, say that Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative Prime Minister, did more to help the working class, including passing the Second Great Reform Act of 1867.…

    • 1712 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Liberals created many reforms which impacted the lives of British people differing between aid and attention for well being of all ages and insurance for the unemployed or sick. This essay will investigate whether they were of positive or negative on the British people.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Some historians believed the government only took little action against poverty as socials commentators Booth and Rowntree showed it wasn’t the individuals fault. Winston Churchill summed up the aim of the liberals as he said This means that the liberal government provided very little help to the lower class so that they could help themselves escape poverty. Historians alleged that it could be estimated that as much as one third of the population would have been below the poverty line before the reforms and people feel no other government could have handled the issue of poverty any better at that time which shows the liberals were as successful as they could be towards the five social groups. However The Liberal Government largely focused on specific difficulties in society but failed to introduce solutions to deal with issues such as housing or National Health Service that affects everyone. This shows that the Liberal reforms 1906-1914 were only successful on a small scale as it was unable to improve the poverty levels of the whole…

    • 1589 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many reasons why the Liberals introduced reforms. My first and in my opinion, most important reason why the Liberals introduced reforms was the politically motivated, political rivalries. Winston Churchill’s former party the Conservatives had already brought in some reforms, which showed the first signals for the Liberals to do so too. However, it was the newly formed Labour party which were the big competitors for the Liberals. They begun to start gaining votes and were an emerging threat. The Liberals wanted to win over ordinary people so that they would vote the Liberals instead of Labour. David Lloyd George realised that he would gain votes from the working class and would be kept in power if he introduced the reforms, as he makes clear in a speech given in 1906, ‘We must eliminate the widespread poverty which scars this land glittering with wealth, otherwise the working men of Britain will vote Labour instead of Liberal’. This quote makes it clear that one of the reasons the Liberals brought in the reforms was because of their concerns and rivalry with Labour.…

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Perhaps, the most ‘revolutionary’ reform that Labour introduced was the NHS. Although there was liberal influence and consensus between the parties over welfare, the clear historical fact remains that Atlee’s Labour party introduced this. The public were in dire need of better healthcare – especially those who couldn’t afford it. Unfortunately, the majority of the population after the war were still living on a very small income and not many people in society could afford health services.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Labour weakness was the most important reason for Conservative dominance from 1951 to 1964. How far do you agree? Between 1951 and 1964, the Conservative's time in power, the Labour party were providing ineffectual opposition. One of the reasons for this was their internal disputes over issues such as unilateralism. However, there were also more important reasons for Conservative dominance, such as the economy and growing prosperity in Britain, the property owning democracy and the greater availability of credit, modern conveiniences and luxury items. Prosperity during this time was growing, and people were in general wealthier than they had been before. A reason for this could have been the manipulation of the economy by the Conservatives; their stop-and-go stagflation lowered and rose taxes in accordance to the election date in order to gain more votes. Though they had no real long-term economic plan and their wily manipulation was often criticised, it did help them to gain votes. The wages also rose during this time meaning people were able to more freely afford luxury items and other things such as mortgages, which links to the property owning democracy.…

    • 562 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Also, in 1880’s Germany’s system of welfare benefits and old age pensions had already been set up. This was important because Germany was seen as a threat due to its healthier and better educated population therefore it may have influenced the introduction of the reforms because it made Britain lag behind other countries therefore if Britain wanted to keep its position as a world power it had to be run efficiently with a strong, healthy and well-educated workforce. However, some historians argued that politicians have passed the reforms mainly for the political advantage as the Liberal party wanted to gain working class votes over Labours. Even though, the Liberals showed that they were trying to improve the standards of living. They operated the First Labour Exchanges and have minimised the time a worker was unemployed, thereby increasing the efficiency of the Labour Market and therefore allowing people to get more money making this factor more important than the surveys of Booth and Rowntree.…

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Indeed, a major reason for Labour’s victory was because Harold Wilson advocated a campaign for economic modernisation of Britain so the nation did not fall behind the excelling economies of European rivals such as West Germany. Economists raise the significant point that economic modernisation looks at the internal dynamics of a nation while referring to social and cultural structures and the adaptation of new technologies. The Conservatives failed in every social and economic aspect of this theory, as shown in 1963, as unemployment reached approximately 800,000 making a mockery of Macmillan’s, ‘never had it so good speech.’ The inability of the Conservative Party to economically modernise Britain led not only to their downfall in the 1964 election, but also to the collapse of Britain’s economy during this era. Economists point out that as a result of Conservative mismanagement of the economic sectors, Britain faced financial hardships, including a huge balance of payments deficit, which undeniably caused higher levels of inflation, causing the cost of living for ordinary British people to rise. Moreover, the economic boom of the late 1950s and the, ‘Age of Affluence,’ had reached its end, with great saturation in the markets for consumer goods. Inevitably, poor…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    However the 85% approval ratings of Churchill in 1945 indicate that the public were not disaffected with him. Ultimately the reason for Labour’s victory can be found in its development since the 1930’s to become a stronger party. They lead a more effective election campaign than the conservatives, which was better funded. They tapped into the voters desire for a better future, reminding them of the falures of the conservatives during the 1930’s. They also had more agents in the constituencies than the conservatives because the trade unionists were fully involved. Labour’s leadership was seen to be…

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Workingmen’s Party was a political party that was inspired by Karl Marx. This was made up of men who lived in Charlestown, Massachusetts that believed that they were not being paid and treated fairly for the work that they provided. “Our labor has digged the canals, and constructed the railways, which are intersecting the country in all directions.” (127) These men were giving the labors in the United States a voice. They were the people who were building, and creating everything for the capitalists, yet they were not making the same amount of money as them.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics