The first attempt at a leadership for the Independent Labour Party (1893). ‘cockneys unbend & come to Bradford’.
The current issues around who should lead the new left formation Your Party are significant but the left and the labour movement have struggled with and resolved such issues before.
The ILP was formed in Bradford in January 1893 and many of the debates about the name of the party (should ‘socialist’ be included) and its organisation (a federal structure or not) are familiar in 2025. Another issue was the construction of a representative leadership.
The principle was that there must be leaders representing different areas of the country.
Cunningham Graham, Scottish Labour Party
HH Champion, Scottish United Trades Council
Tom Mann, London ILP
H Quelch London SDF
Ben Tillett, Yorkshire ILP
Stephen Fay, Manchester & Salford ILP
‘In addition the Midlands and the North of England could nominate some Midlander or Northerner provided they lived in London’. Indeed all of the leadership lived in London. When a provisional leadership did appear after the 1893 conference it met in Manchester
W H Drew President of the Bradford Labour Union noted of the London plan ‘what you should set your face to is a conference of provincial men and Londoners, and you cockneys ought to unbend and come say to Bradford. The idea that a representative leadership should all live in London didn’t work. As E P Thompson noted in Homage to Tom Maguire the new leadership of labour emerged not from ‘London Head Offices’ but from ‘those shadowy parts known as the Provinces’
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