Benwell
Benwell is an area in the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Benwell village was recorded in A. D. 1050 known as Bynnewalle which translates as "behind the wall" or "by the wall". Referring to its position relative to Hadrian's Wall. At this time it was part of the Barony of Bolbec. By the 13th century the medieval manor of Benwell had been subdivided into two, but one of the halves was further subdivided. So, although people refer to the three sections of Benwell Manor as ‘thirds’, this gives a misleading impression, because one of the ‘thirds’ was larger and wealthier than the other two; this third belonged to the Scot family, who were wealthy merchants from Newcastle and by 1296 they were the principal taxpayers in Benwell. The Scot family went on to create a deer park in 1367, which became Scotswood. In the 16th century Benwell village was arranged in two rows of houses on either side of a wide street or green. A plain oblong tower, three storeys high with battlements around the roof was recorded as being built.
In 1540, the Crown, under King Henry VIII, took possession of Benwell Tower from Tynemouth Priory when it dissolved the monasteries. Early in the 17th century, Benwell was split into smaller estates which were bought by the Shafto and Riddell families who were merchant families interested in exploiting the coal reserves on the banks of the Tyne. Benwell Colliery was opened in 1766 and operated until 1938; the original layout of Benwell exists in the form of Benwell Village, Benwell Lane, Ferguson's Lane and Fox and Hounds Lane. The tower from the 16th century was rebuilt in the 18th century and all traces were removed when the present hall, Benwell Towers was built in a Tudor style by John Dobson in 1831. Benwell Towers featured in the BBC television show Byker Grove. By the 1990s, Benwell was regarded as one of the most troubled parts of Tyneside, if not the whole of Britain. In April 1994, The Independent reported that unemployment in the area stood at 24% and that drug abuse and arson were both a major problem in the area, with a number of arson attacks known to have been carried out in an attempt to intimidate witnesses to crimes and deter them from giving evidence in court.
The area is represented on Newcastle City Council as part of the Benwell and Scotswood ward, with three Labour councillors, including Jeremy Beecham,the former chairman of the Labour Party and the Local Government Association. He was first elected for Benwell in 1967. National statistics ward info Newcastle council ward info
A1 road (Great Britain)
The A1 is the longest numbered road in the UK, at 410 miles. It connects London, the capital of England, with Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, it passes through or near North London, Welwyn Garden City, Baldock, Letchworth Garden City, Peterborough, Grantham, Newark-on-Trent, Doncaster, Ripon, Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne and Berwick-upon-Tweed. It was designated by the Ministry of Transport in 1921, for much of its route it followed various branches of the historic Great North Road, the main deviation being between Boroughbridge and Darlington; the course of the A1 has changed where towns or villages have been bypassed, where new alignments have taken a different route. Several sections of the route have been upgraded to motorway standard and designated A1. Between the M25 and the A696 the road has been designated as part of the unsigned Euroroute E15 from Inverness to Algeciras; the A1 is the latest in a series of routes north from London to York and beyond. It was designated in 1921 by the Ministry of Transport under the Great Britain road numbering scheme.
The earliest documented northern routes are the roads created by the Romans during the period from AD 43 to AD 410, which consisted of several itinera recorded in the Antonine Itinerary. A combination of these were used by the Anglo-Saxons as the route from London to York, together became known as Ermine Street. Ermine Street became known as the Old North Road. Part of this route in London is followed by the current A10. By the 12th century, because of flooding and damage by traffic, an alternative route out of London was found through Muswell Hill, became part of the Great North Road. A turnpike road, New North Road and Canonbury Road, was constructed in 1812 linking the start of the Old North Road around Shoreditch with the Great North Road at Highbury Corner. While the route of the A1 outside London follows the Great North Road route used by mail coaches between London and Edinburgh, within London the coaching route is only followed through Islington. Bypasses were built around Barnet and Hatfield in 1927, but it was not until c.1954 that they were renumbered A1.
In the 1930s bypasses were added around Chester-le-Street and Durham and the Ferryhill Cut was dug. In 1960 Stamford and Doncaster were bypassed, as were Retford in 1961 and St Neots in 1971. Baldock was bypassed in July 1967. During the early 1970s plans to widen the A1 along Archway Road in London were abandoned after considerable opposition and four public inquiries during which road protesters disrupted proceedings; the scheme was dropped in 1990. The Hatfield cut-and-cover was opened in 1986. A proposal to upgrade the whole of the A1 to motorway status was investigated by the Government in 1989 but was dropped in 1995, along with many other schemes, in response to road protests against other road schemes; the inns on the road, many of which still survive, were staging posts on the coach routes, providing accommodation, stabling for the horses and replacement mounts. Few of the surviving coaching inns can be seen while driving on the A1, because the modern route now bypasses the towns with the inns.
The A1 runs from New Change in the City of London at St. Paul's Cathedral to the centre of Edinburgh; the road skirts the remains of Sherwood Forest, passes Catterick Garrison. It shares its London terminus in the City area of Central London, it runs out of London via St. Martin's Le Grand and Aldersgate Street, through Islington, up Holloway Road, through Highgate, Potters Bar, Welwyn, Baldock, Sandy and St Neots. Continuing north, the A1 runs on modern bypasses around Stamford, Newark-on-Trent, Bawtry, Knottingley, Wetherby, Boroughbridge, Scotch Corner, Newton Aycliffe and Chester-le-Street, past the Angel of the North sculpture and the Metrocentre in Gateshead, through the western suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne, Alnwick, Berwick-upon-Tweed, into Scotland at Marshall Meadows, past Haddington and Musselburgh before arriving in Edinburgh at the East End of Princes Street near Waverley Station, at the junction of the A7, A8 and A900 roads. Scotch Corner, in North Yorkshire, marks the point where before the M6 was built the traffic for Glasgow and the west of Scotland diverged from that for Edinburgh.
As well as a hotel there have been a variety of sites for the transport café, now subsumed as a motorway services. Most of the English section of the A1 is a series of alternating sections of primary route, dual carriageway and motorway. From Newcastle upon Tyne to Edinburgh it is a trunk road with alternating sections of dual and single carriageway; the table below summarises the road as non-motorway sections. The non-motorway sections do not have junction numbers. A 13-mile section of the road in North Yorkshire, from Walshford to Dishforth, was upgraded to motorway standard in 1995. Neolithic remains and a Roman fort were discovered. A 13-mile section of the road from Alconbury to Peterborough was upgraded to motorway standard at a cost of £128 million, which opened in 1998 requiring moving the memorial to Napoleonic prisoners buried at Norman Cross. A number of sections between Newcastle and Edinburgh were dualled between 1999 and 2004, including a 1.9-mile section from Spott Wood to Oswald Dean in 1999, 1.2-mile sections from Bowerhouse to Spott Road and from Howburn to Houndwood in 2002–200
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Scotswood Bridge
Scotswood Bridge is one of the main bridges crossing the River Tyne in North East England. It links the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne on the north bank of the river with the MetroCentre and Blaydon in Gateshead on the south bank, it is situated 5.2 km upstream of the better-known city centre bridges. The first bridge across the river at this location was the Old Scotswood Bridge, or "The Chain Bridge" as it was known locally, it was a suspension bridge with two stone towers. It was passed by parliament in 1829 and designed by John Green, with construction beginning that year; when it was opened on 16 April 1831 it was the first bridge over the River Tyne to be opened during Tyneside's industrial era. The bridge was freed from tolls in 1907. In 1931 the bridge needed to be widened; the width was increased from 17 ft to 19.5 ft with two 6 ft footpaths. The suspension cables and decking were strengthened, allowing the weight limit to be raised to 10 tonnes; the bridge proved too narrow for the traffic it needed to carry and its increasing repair costs proved too much.
After standing for 136 years, it was closed and demolished in 1967 after its replacement had been completed. A replacement for the Chain Bridge had been proposed as early as 1941. Permission was granted in 1960. A new bridge was designed by Mott and Anderson and built by Mitchell Construction and Dorman Long. Construction commenced on 18 September 1964, it was built to the west of the Chain Bridge, which continued operating during the new bridge's construction. The bridge was opened on 20 March 1967, it is a box girder bridge, carries a dual carriageway road. Combined costs for demolition of the old bridge and construction of the new one were £2.5 million. Scotswood Bridge carried the traffic of the Gateshead A69 western by-pass from 1970 up until the construction of Blaydon Bridge and the new A1 in 1990. Between June 1971 and January 1974 traffic on the bridge was limited to single file to enable strengthening work to take place, needed to address design concerns, it has required further strengthening and repairs a number of times since.
Scotswood Bridge at Structurae
Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service
Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service Tyne and Wear Metropolitan Fire Brigade, is the fire and rescue service for the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear. The service provides emergency fire cover to the five comprising metropolitan boroughs of Sunderland, Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, serving a population of 1.09 million people and a total geographical area of 538 square kilometres. Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Authority is responsible for the running of the service, as well as the publication of performance indicators in accordance with its legal obligations. In April 2017, Chris Lowther was appointed Chief Fire Officer. In November 2018, the service announced proposals to cut frontline operations in order to meet budget requirements imposed by the Government; the proposals are under public consultation and members of the public are welcome to complete the consultation survey and attend the remaining meetings, a full list of which can be found at the Tyne and Wear Fire Service website.
The public consultation ends in January 2019. Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service was established as Tyne and Wear Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1974 as a result of changes to area boundaries within the North East of England. A fire service did exist through delivery of several smaller fire services established under the Fire Brigades Act 1938 which made it a requirement for local authorities to provide fire cover to their area, although the smaller services were never united as one service as they are today until 1974. During the second World War, all local fire services in the region and on a national level created under the 1938 legislation were nationalised to form the National Fire Service, remaining this way until the Fire Services Act 1947 which handed control back of fire cover back to local authorities in 1948; when the service was established in 1974, it brought together four small local fire services and parts of two others to form the service that exists today. In June 2003 Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott submitted a white paper to Parliament outlining reforms to the Fire Service in the UK.
Part of the reforms outlined included changing the name of fire services across the UK to'Fire and Rescue Service', giving greater emphasis to the changing role of the fire service. In 2004, following further government publications, the name of the service was changed from Tyne and Wear Metropolitan Fire Brigade to Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, with post-2004 vehicle livery and all other parts of the service reflecting the name change. In 2006, the service had built six new fire stations under the Public Private Partnership initiative, replacing older fire stations that were in need of extensive upgrade. In 2011, the location for the new Sunderland North fire station in Fulwell was announced, with the station expected to be opened in late 2014 and replacing the current station nearby. In July 2014, due to government budget cuts the fire and rescue service was forced to remove a frontline fire appliance from Swalwell and one from Wallsend fire station. May 2015 saw the introduction of two Targeted response vehicles to be based at Washington fire station.
In September 2015 a further two targeted response vehicles would replace two fire appliances, one at Newcastle central and one at Sunderland central. Further cuts were implemented in October 2016 removing a further two fire appliances, one at West Denton and one at Hebburn. Water Ladder: A01 / C01 / E01 / F01 / G01 / H01 / J01 / K01 / M01 / N01 / Q01 / S01 / T01 / V01 / W01 / Y01 Water Tender: C02 / F02 / J02 / K02 / N02 / Q02 / V02 / Z02 Targeted Response Vehicle: C17 / C172 / N17 / N172Aerial Ladder Platform: E03 / M03 / V03 Hazardous Response Unit: S04 Operational Support Unit: V05 Special Rescue Unit: K06 Incident Command Unit: A07 Swift Water Rescue Unit: F093 Fire Boat: F09 Boat Transporter Unit: F094 Outreach Support Vehicle: A12 L4V: K13 / Y15 Prime Mover: Q10 / Y16Pods: Bulk Foam Unit Flood Prevention Unit High Volume Pump Urban Search & Rescue: Prime Mover: L10 / L11 / L12Modules: Module 1 - Technical Search Equipment Module 2 - Heavy Transport, Confined Space & Hot Cutting Equipment Module 3 - Breaching & Breaking Equipment Module 4 - Multi Purpose Vehicle Module 5 - Shoring OperationsCBRN Response: Incident Response Unit: J08 Prime Mover + Mass Decontamination Unit: J10 Detection, Identification & Monitoring: W14 Training Water Tender: L01 / L02 / L03 / L04 Advanced Driver Training Water Tender: VTS1 / VTS2 Driver Training Lorry: Fire apparatus Fire service in the United Kingdom Fire station FiReControl List of British firefighters killed in the line of duty Official website Official Site of the FIRE KILLS: YOU CAN PREVENT IT!
Campaign Fire Gateway Website, Fire Safety Information and Fire Service locater Tyne & Wear YouTube channel
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status; the NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other emergency services, the public access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. In addition to ambulance services provided by NHS organisations, there are some private and volunteer emergency medical services arrangements in place in the UK, the use of private or volunteer ambulances at public events or large private sites, as part of community provision of services such as community first responders. Air ambulance services in the UK are not part of the NHS and are funded through charitable donations.
Paramedics are seconded from a local NHS ambulance service, with the exception of Great North Air Ambulance Service who employ their own paramedics. Doctors are provided by their home hospital and spend no more than 40% of their time with an air ambulance service. Public ambulance services across the UK are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care, which are: Emergency calls Doctor's urgent admission requests High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers Major incidentsAmbulance trusts and services may undertake non-urgent patient transport services on a commercial arrangement with their local hospital trusts or health boards, or in some cases on directly funded government contracts, although these contracts are fulfilled by private and voluntary providers; the National Health Service Act 1946 gave county and borough councils a statutory responsibility to provide an emergency ambulance service, although they could contract a voluntary ambulance service to provide this, with many contracting the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance or another local provider.
The last St John Division, to be so contracted is reputed to have been at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, where the two-bay ambulance garage can still be seen at the branch headquarters. The Regional Ambulance Officers’ Committee reported in 1979 that “There was considerable local variation in the quality of the service provided in relation to vehicles and equipment. Most Services were administered by Local Authorities through their Medical Officer of Health and his Ambulance Officer, a few were under the aegis of the Fire Service, whilst others relied upon agency methods for the provision of part or all of their services.” The 142 existing ambulance services were transferred by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 from local authority to central government control in 1974, consolidated into 53 services under regional or area health authorities. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England.
The June 2005 report "Taking healthcare to the Patient", authored by Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service, for the Department of Health led to the merging of the 31 trusts into 13 organisations in England, plus one organisation each in Wales and Northern Ireland. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, this has further reduced to 10 ambulance service trusts in England, plus the Isle of Wight which has its own provision. Following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioning of the ambulance services in each area passed from central government control into the hands of regional clinical commissioning groups; the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary provider for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England, 1 each in the other three countries. In England there are now ten NHS ambulance trusts, as well as an ambulance service on the Isle of Wight, run directly by Isle of Wight NHS Trust, with boundaries following those of the former regional government offices.
The ten trusts are: East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust London Ambulance Service NHS Trust North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS TrustThe English ambulance trusts are represented by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, with the Scottish and Northern Irish providers all associate members. On the 14 November 2018 West Midlands Ambulance Service became the UK's first university-ambulance trust; the service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board that provides ambulance services throughout whole of Scotland, on behalf of the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Due to the remote nature of many areas of Scotland compared to the other Home Nations, the Scottish Ambulance Service has Britain's only publi
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom, described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The party's platform emphasises greater state intervention, social justice and strengthening workers' rights; the Labour Party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940-1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfare state from 1945 to 1951. Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Labour again governed from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1979. In the 1990s Tony Blair took Labour closer to the centre as part of his "New Labour" project, which governed the UK under Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010.
After Corbyn took over in 2015, the party has moved leftward. Labour is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, having won the second-largest number of seats in the 2017 general election; the Labour Party is the largest party in the Welsh Assembly, forming the main party in the current Welsh government. The party is the third largest in the Scottish Parliament. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, holds observer status in the Socialist International, sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament; the party includes semi-autonomous Scottish and Welsh branches and supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland. As of 2017, Labour had the largest membership of any party in Western Europe; the Labour Party originated in the late 19th century, meeting the demand for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban working class, a demographic which had increased in number, many of whom only gained suffrage with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1884.
Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. The first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. At the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardie's roots as a lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party which led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that "Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx".
In 1899, a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all left-wing organisations and form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates; the motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, the proposed conference was held at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street on 26 and 27 February 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations—trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates. After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, meant to co-ordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population.
It had no single leader, in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united; the October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored. Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike; the judgement made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative Government of Arthur Balfour to industrial and business interests intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared to have little concern for the industrial proletariat and its problems. In the 1906 election, the LRC won 29 seats—helped by a secret 1903 pact between Ramsay MacDonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone that aimed to avoid splitting the opposition vote between Labour and Liberal candidates in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office.
In their first meeting after the election the group's Members of Parliament decided to adop
