Labour Party (Malta)
The Labour Party known as the Malta Labour Party, is a social-democratic political party in Malta. Along with the Nationalist Party, the Labour Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in Malta. Since the March 2013 general election, the party has been the governing party in the Maltese House of Representatives; the Labour Party is a member of the Party of European Socialists, was a member of the Socialist International until December 2014. The Party structures are the General Conference, the National Executive, the Leader and the Deputy Leaders, the Party Congress, the Party Administration, the Parliamentary Group, the Councillors' Section, the District and the Regional Administrations, the Local Committees and the Branches; the General Conference is made up of delegates from the Party's other constituent structures and is the Party's highest organ. The National Executive brings together the Party Administration as well as elected representatives of other constituent structures and co-ordinators.
The Party Congress is made up of all members of the Party and elects the Leader and the two Deputy Leaders and determines the Party's broad policy outlines. The Party Administration is made of the Party Deputy Leaders and Party officials; the Parliamentary Group and the Councillors' Section bring together the Party's elected representatives in parliament and local councils. The Party is organised geographically in the local committees and district and regional administrations; the Branches of the Party include the women's, youth and candidates' sections. Although not formally part of the Party's structures, the PL owns a number of media and communication outlets; the party directly owns the Sunday weekly newspaper Kullħadd and through its holding company One Productions the party owns the television station One and radio service One Radio. The Labour Party was founded as the Chamber of Labour in 1921 by one of the union branches affiliated with the Imperial Government Workers Union. Band clubs and other organisations were invited to send delegates to the Party's founding meeting on 15 March 1921 the 30th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum.
Led by Colonel William Savona, the Party contested the general elections held in 1921 and 1924 under the new Constitution that gave the country a measure of self-government. The Labour-Constitutional alliance won the 1927 general elections, but Labour lost ground, gaining 13.9% of votes, three seats in the Legislative Assembly and no representation in the Senate. Strickland became Prime Minister. Labour leader Savona was not elected, the leadership of the Labour parliamentary group was temporarily entrusted to Colonel Michael Dundon; the Presidency of the Party and leadership of the parliamentary group was taken up by Paul Boffa that year. Labour gained nine seats out of ten in the elections held during November, 1945, in which, contrarily to previous elections, all men over twenty-one years of age were entitled to vote; the Party's electoral programme, for the first time in Labour's history, did not make any reference to religion. Boffa's Government was supported by the General Workers' Union, it carried out a number of reforms, such as the abolition of the Senate, the abolition of plural votes, as well as the introduction of women's right to vote.
However, Labour deputies resigned from their posts in July 1946 due to mass redundancies at the Dockyards. In the meantime, the'MacMichael Constitution' had been introduced, granting self-government to the Maltese. Labour's participation in the subsequent October, 1947 elections was once again supported by the General Workers' Union; the Party won 59.9% of the vote and twenty-four seats out of the possible forty within the Legislative Assembly. Paul Boffa became Prime Minister whilst Dom Mintoff became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reconstruction; the Labour Government introduced Social Services for the first time in Malta. The Labour Party was re-founded in 1949 as a successor to the Labour Party founded in 1921. Paul Boffa, Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister since 1947, resigned and left the party because of serious disagreements with his Deputy Dom Mintoff which had led to a series of cabinet crises. Boffa formed the Malta Workers Party while Mintoff re-organized the Labour Party as the Malta Labour Party.
The Malta Labour Party contested its first elections for the Malta Legislative Assembly the following year. The old Labour vote was split between the MLP and the MWP, giving them eleven members each; this allowed the Nationalist Party to have a slight edge in the formation of a government, which it did in coalition with the MWP. The government did not last long. Two other elections were held in 1951 and 1953 which both saw short-lived PN-MWP coalitions and the decline in the share of votes to the MWP with increasing support for the Labour Party; the MWP disintegrated and the MLP formed a government for the first time in 1955. This legislature was dominated by the issue of integration with the United Kingdom; the party, which started its life as an anti-colonial party with the slogan "Integration or self-determination" was now inclined towards the first part of the formula. A referendum was held in 1956 but given the number of abstentions and massive opposition by the Nationalist Party and the Catholic Church, the result was inconclusive.
This, together with a number of dismissals at the naval dockyard led to Mintoff's resignation and his call for massive protests in April 1958. The Governor re-established direct colonial government which lasted until 1962. In
Child labour
Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, is mentally, physically or morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation worldwide, although these laws do not consider all work by children as child labour. Child labour has existed to varying extents throughout history. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many children aged 5–14 from poorer families worked in Western nations and their colonies alike; these children worked in agriculture, home-based assembly operations, factories and services such as news boys—some worked night shifts lasting 12 hours. With the rise of household income, availability of schools and passage of child labour laws, the incidence rates of child labour fell. In the world's poorest countries, around 1 in 4 children are engaged in child labour, the highest number of whom live in sub-saharan Africa. In 2017, four African nations witnessed over 50 percent of children aged 5–14 working.
Worldwide agriculture is the largest employer of child labour. The vast majority of child labour is found in informal urban economies. Poverty and lack of schools are considered the primary cause of child labour. Globally the incidence of child labour decreased from 25% to 10% between 1960 and 2003, according to the World Bank; the total number of child labourers remains high, with UNICEF and ILO acknowledging an estimated 168 million children aged 5–17 worldwide were involved in child labour in 2013. Child labour forms an intrinsic part of pre-industrial economies. In pre-industrial societies, there is a concept of childhood in the modern sense. Children begin to participate in activities such as child rearing and farming as soon as they are competent. In many societies, children as young as 13 are seen as adults and engage in the same activities as adults; the work of children was important in pre-industrial societies, as children needed to provide their labour for their survival and that of their group.
Pre-industrial societies were characterised by low productivity and short life expectancy, preventing children from participating in productive work would be more harmful to their welfare and that of their group in the long run. In pre-industrial societies, there was little need for children to attend school; this is the case in non literate societies. Most pre-industrial skill and knowledge were amenable to being passed down through direct mentoring or apprenticing by competent adults. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late 18th century, there was a rapid increase in the industrial exploitation of labour, including child labour. Industrial cities such as Birmingham and Liverpool grew from small villages into large cities and improving child mortality rates; these cities drew in the population, growing due to increased agricultural output. This process was replicated in other industrialising countries; the Victorian era in particular became notorious for the conditions under which children were employed.
Children as young as four were employed in production factories and mines working long hours in dangerous fatal, working conditions. In coal mines, children would crawl through tunnels too low for adults. Children worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or selling matches and other cheap goods; some children undertook work as apprentices to respectable trades, such as building or as domestic servants. Working hours were long: builders worked 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80-hour weeks. Child labour played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset brought about by economic hardship; the children of the poor were expected to contribute to their family income. In 19th-century Great Britain, one-third of poor families were without a breadwinner, as a result of death or abandonment, obliging many children to work from a young age. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as children.
A high number of children worked as prostitutes. The author Charles Dickens worked at the age of 12 in a blacking factory, with his family in debtor's prison. Child wages were low. Karl Marx was an outspoken opponent of child labour, saying British industries, "could but live by sucking blood, children’s blood too," and that U. S. capital was financed by the "capitalized blood of children". Letitia Elizabeth Landon castigated child labour in her 1835 poem The Factory, portions of which she pointedly included in her 18th Birthday Tribute to Princess Victoria in 1837. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, child labour began to decline in industrialised societies due to regulation and economic factors because of the Growth of Trade Unions; the regulation of child labour began from the earliest days of the Industrial revolution. The first act to regulate child labour in Britain was passed in 1803; as early as 1802 and 1819 Factory Acts were passed to regulate the working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day.
These acts were ineffective and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time Committees" in 1831
Occupational safety and health
Occupational safety and health commonly referred to as occupational health and safety, occupational health, or workplace health and safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety and welfare of people at work. These terms refer to the goals of this field, so their use in the sense of this article was an abbreviation of occupational safety and health program/department etc; the goals of occupational safety and health programs include to foster a safe and healthy work environment. OSH may protect co-workers, family members, employers and many others who might be affected by the workplace environment. In the United States, the term occupational health and safety is referred to as occupational health and occupational and non-occupational safety and includes safety for activities outside of work. In common-law jurisdictions, employers have a common law duty to take reasonable care of the safety of their employees. Statute law may in addition impose other general duties, introduce specific duties, create government bodies with powers to regulate workplace safety issues: details of this vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
As defined by the World Health Organization "occupational health deals with all aspects of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards." Health has been defined as "a state of complete physical and social well-being and not the absence of disease or infirmity." Occupational health is a multidisciplinary field of healthcare concerned with enabling an individual to undertake their occupation, in the way that causes least harm to their health. Health has been defined as It contrasts, for example, with the promotion of health and safety at work, concerned with preventing harm from any incidental hazards, arising in the workplace. Since 1950, the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization have shared a common definition of occupational health, it was adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: "The main focus in occupational health is on three different objectives: the maintenance and promotion of workers’ health and working capacity.
The concept of working culture is intended in this context to mean a reflection of the essential value systems adopted by the undertaking concerned. Such a culture is reflected in practice in the managerial systems, personnel policy, principles for participation, training policies and quality management of the undertaking." Those in the field of occupational health come from a wide range of disciplines and professions including medicine, epidemiology and rehabilitation, occupational therapy, occupational medicine, human factors and ergonomics, many others. Professionals advise on a broad range of occupational health matters; these include how to avoid particular pre-existing conditions causing a problem in the occupation, correct posture for the work, frequency of rest breaks, preventative action that can be undertaken, so forth. "Occupational health should aim at: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical and social well-being of workers in all occupations. The research and regulation of occupational safety and health are a recent phenomenon.
As labor movements arose in response to worker concerns in the wake of the industrial revolution, worker's health entered consideration as a labor-related issue. In the United Kingdom, the Factory Acts of the early nineteenth century arose out of concerns about the poor health of children working in cotton mills: the Act of 1833 created a dedicated professional Factory Inspectorate; the initial remit of the Inspectorate was to police restrictions on the working hours in the textile industry of children and young persons. However, on the urging of the Factory Inspectorate, a further Act in 1844 giving similar restrictions on working hours for women in the textile industry introduced a requirement for machinery guarding. In 1840 a Royal Commission published its findings on the state of conditions for the workers of the mining industry that documented the appallingly dangerous environment that they had to work in and the high frequency of accidents; the commission sparked public outrage which resulted in the Mines Act of 1842.
The act set up an inspectorate for mines and collieries which resulted in many prosecutions and safety improvements, by 1850, inspectors were able to enter and inspect premises at their discretion. Otto von Bismarck inaugurated the first social insurance legislation in 1883 and the first worker's compensation law in 1884 – the first of their kind in the Western world. Similar acts followed in other countries
Collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong; the collective agreements reached by these negotiations set out wage scales, working hours, training and safety, grievance mechanisms, rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. The union may negotiate with a single employer or may negotiate with a group of businesses, depending on the country, to reach an industry-wide agreement. A collective agreement functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions. Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation between representatives of a union and employers in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as wages, hours of work, working conditions, grievance procedures, about the rights and responsibilities of trade unions.
The parties refer to the result of the negotiation as a collective bargaining agreement or as a collective employment agreement. The term "collective bargaining" was first used in 1891 by Beatrice Webb, a founder of the field of industrial relations in Britain, it refers to the sort of collective negotiations and agreements that had existed since the rise of trade unions during the 18th century. In the United States, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 made it illegal for any employer to deny union rights to an employee; the issue of unionizing government employees in a public-sector trade union was much more controversial until the 1950s. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order granting federal employees the right to unionize. An issue of jurisdiction surfaced in National Labor Relations Board v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago when the Supreme Court held that the National Labor Relations Board could not assert jurisdiction over a church-operated school because such jurisdiction would violate the First Amendment establishment of freedom of religion and the separation of church of state.
The right to collectively bargain is recognized through international human rights conventions. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies the ability to organize trade unions as a fundamental human right. Item 2 of the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work defines the "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining" as an essential right of workers; the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 and several other conventions protect collective bargaining through the creation of international labour standards that discourage countries from violating workers' rights to associate and collectively bargain. In June 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada extensively reviewed the rationale for regarding collective bargaining as a human right. In the case of Facilities Subsector Bargaining Association v. British Columbia, the Court made the following observations: The right to bargain collectively with an employer enhances the human dignity and autonomy of workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work… Collective bargaining is not an instrument for pursuing external ends…rather is intrinsically valuable as an experience in self-government… Collective bargaining permits workers to achieve a form of workplace democracy and to ensure the rule of law in the workplace.
Workers gain a voice to influence the establishment of rules that control a major aspect of their lives. Union members and other workers covered by collective agreements get, on average, a wage markup over their nonunionized counterparts; such a markup is 5 to 10 percent in industrial countries. Unions tend to equalize the income distribution between skilled and unskilled workers; the welfare loss associated with unions is 0.2 to 0.5 of GDP, similar to monopolies in product markets. In Sweden the coverage of collective agreements is high despite the absence of legal mechanisms to extend agreements to whole industries. In 2016, 84% of all private sector employees were covered by collective agreements, 100% of public sector employees and in all 90%; this reflects the dominance of self-regulation over state regulation in Swedish industrial relations. In the United States, the National Labor Relations Act covers most collective agreements in the private sector; this act makes it illegal for employers to discriminate, spy on, harass, or terminate the employment of workers because of their union membership or to retaliate against them for engaging in organizing campaigns or other "concerted activities," to form company unions, or to refuse to engage in collective bargaining with the union that represents their employees.
It is illegal to require any employee to join a union as a condition of employment. Unions are able to secure safe work conditions and equitable pay for their labor. At a workplace where a majority of workers have voted for union representation, a committee of employees and union representatives negotiate a contract with the management regarding wages, hours and other terms and conditions of empl
Trade union
A trade union called a labour union or labor union, is an association of workers in a particular trade, industry, or company created for the purpose of securing improvement in pay, working conditions or social and political status through collective bargaining and working conditions through the increased bargaining power wielded by creation of a monopoly of the workers. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with employers; the most common purpose of these associations or unions is "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment". This may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring and promotion of workers, workplace safety and policies. Unions may organize a particular section of skilled workers, a cross-section of workers from various trades, or attempt to organize all workers within a particular industry; the agreements negotiated by a union are binding on the rank and file members and the employer and in some cases on other non-member workers.
Trade unions traditionally have a constitution which details the governance of their bargaining unit and have governance at various levels of government depending on the industry that binds them to their negotiations and functioning. Originating in Great Britain, trade unions became popular in many countries during the Industrial Revolution. Trade unions may be composed of individual workers, past workers, apprentices or the unemployed. Trade union density, or the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union, is highest in the Nordic countries. Since the publication of the History of Trade Unionism by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the predominant historical view is that a trade union "is a continuous association on wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." Karl Marx described trade unions thus: "The value of labour-power constitutes the conscious and explicit foundation of the trade unions, whose importance for the working class can scarcely be overestimated.
The trade unions aim at nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below the level, traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry. That is to say, they wish to prevent the price of labour-power from falling below its value". A modern definition by the Australian Bureau of Statistics states that a trade union is "an organization consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members."Yet historian R. A. Leeson, in United we Stand, said: Two conflicting views of the trade-union movement strove for ascendancy in the nineteenth century: one the defensive-restrictive guild-craft tradition passed down through journeymen's clubs and friendly societies... the other the aggressive-expansionist drive to unite all'labouring men and women' for a'different order of things'. Recent historical research by Bob James in Craft, Trade or Mystery puts forward the view that trade unions are part of a broader movement of benefit societies, which includes medieval guilds, Oddfellows, friendly societies, other fraternal organizations.
The 18th century economist Adam Smith noted the imbalance in the rights of workers in regards to owners. In The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 8, Smith wrote: We hear, it has been said, of the combination of masters, though of those of workmen, but whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate When workers combine, masters... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants and journeymen. As Smith noted, unions were illegal for many years in most countries, although Smith argued that it should remain illegal to fix wages or prices by employees or employers. There were severe penalties for including execution. Despite this, unions were formed and began to acquire political power resulting in a body of labour law that not only legalized organizing efforts, but codified the relationship between employers and those employees organized into unions.
The origins of trade unions can be traced back to 18th century Britain, where the rapid expansion of industrial society taking place drew women, rural workers and immigrants into the work force in large numbers and in new roles. They encountered a large hostility in their early existence from employers and government groups; this pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout its beginnings, would be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed, as the masters of the guilds employed workers who were not allowed to organize. Trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed from no than the middle of the 14th century when the Ordinance of Labourers was enacted in the Kingdom of England but their way of thinking was the one that endured dur
United Nations
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization, tasked to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international co-operation and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, is subject to extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi and The Hague; the organization is financed by voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development and upholding international law; the UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. In 24 October 1945, at the end of World War II, the organization was established with the aim of preventing future wars. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; the UN is the successor of the ineffective League of Nations.
On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, adopted on 25 June 1945 in the San Francisco Opera House, signed on 26 June 1945 in the Herbst Theatre auditorium in the Veterans War Memorial Building. This charter took effect on 24 October 1945; the UN's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades during the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted of unarmed military observers and armed troops with monitoring and confidence-building roles; the organization's membership grew following widespread decolonization which started in the 1960s. Since 80 former colonies had gained independence, including 11 trust territories, which were monitored by the Trusteeship Council. By the 1970s its budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.
The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly. The UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, UNICEF; the UN's most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres since 1 January 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN's work; the organization, its officers and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes. Other evaluations of the UN's effectiveness have been mixed; some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, biased, or corrupt. In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international treaty organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross was formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and strife.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war. In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months the Allies met with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson wanted peace, but the United Kingdom and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies; the League of Nations was approved, in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the US Senate for ratification.
On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect. However, at some point the League became ineffective when it failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as in February 1933, 40 nations voted for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria, it failed against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War despite trying to talk to Benito Mussolini as he used the time to send an army to Africa, so the League had a plan for Mussolini to just take a part of Ethiopia, but he ignored the League and invaded Ethiopia, the League tried putting sanctions on Italy, but Italy had conquered Ethiopia and the League had failed. After Italy conquered Ethiopia and other nations left the league, but all of them realised that they began to re-arm as fast as possible. During 1938, Britain and France tried negotiating directly with Hitler but this failed in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
When war broke out in 1939, the League closed down and its headquarters in Geneva remained empty throughout the war. The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the U. S. State Department in 1939; the text of the "Declaration by United Nations" was drafted at the White House on December 29, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins
Labour Party (Ireland)
The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in the Republic of Ireland. Founded in 1912 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, by James Larkin, James Connolly, William X. O'Brien as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress, it describes itself as a "democratic socialist party" in its constitution. Labour continues to be the political arm of the Irish trade union and labour movement and seeks to represent workers interests in the Dáil and on a local level. Unlike the other main Irish political parties, Labour did not arise as a faction of the original Sinn Féin party; the party has served as a partner in coalition governments on seven occasions since its formation: six times in coalition either with Fine Gael alone or with Fine Gael and other smaller parties, once with Fianna Fáil. This gives Labour a cumulative total of nineteen years served as part of a government, the second-longest total of any party in the Republic of Ireland after Fianna Fáil; the current party leader is Brendan Howlin.
It is the fourth-largest party in Dáil Éireann, with seven seats. In November 2018, Labour announced that they were considering running candidates again in Northern Ireland, in response to a potential merger between Fianna Fáil and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, with whom Labour have long had fraternal links; the last time Labour had contested elections in the region was in 1973, shortly after the SDLP's formation. The Labour Party is a member of the Progressive Alliance, Socialist International, Party of European Socialists. James Connolly, James Larkin and William X. O'Brien established the Irish Labour Party in 1912, as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress; this party was to represent the workers in the expected Dublin Parliament under the Third Home Rule Act 1914. However, after the defeat of the trade unions in the Dublin Lockout of 1913 the labour movement was weakened; the Irish Citizen Army, formed during the 1913 Lockout, was informally the military wing of the Labour Movement.
The ICA took part in the 1916 Rising. Councillor Richard O'Carroll, a Labour Party member of Dublin Corporation, was the only elected representative to be killed during the Easter Rising. O'Carroll was shot and died several days on 5 May 1916; the ICA was revived during Peadar O'Donnell's Republican Congress but after the 1935 split in the Congress most ICA members joined the Labour Party. The British Labour Party had organised in Ireland, but in 1913 the Labour NEC agreed that the Irish Labour Party would have organising rights over the entirety of Ireland. A group of trade unionists in Belfast objected and the Belfast Labour Party, which became the nucleus of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, remained outside the new Irish party. In Larkin's absence, William O'Brien became the dominant figure in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and wielded considerable influence in the Labour Party. O'Brien dominated the Irish Trade Union Congress; the Labour Party, led by Thomas Johnson from 1917, as successor to such organisations as D. D. Sheehan's Irish Land and Labour Association, declined to contest the 1918 general election, in order to allow the election to take the form of a plebiscite on Ireland's constitutional status.
It refrained from contesting the 1921 elections. As a result, the party was left outside Dáil Éireann during the vital years of the independence struggle, though Johnson sat in the First Dáil; the Anglo-Irish Treaty divided the Labour Party. Some members sided with the Irregulars in the Irish Civil War that followed. O'Brien and Johnson encouraged its members to support the Treaty. In the 1922 general election the party won 17 seats. However, there were a number of a loss in support for the party. In the 1923 general election the Labour Party only won 14 seats. From 1922 until Fianna Fáil TDs took their seats in 1927, the Labour Party was the major opposition party in the Dáil. Labour attacked the lack of social reform by the Cumann na nGaedheal government. Larkin returned to Ireland in 1923, he hoped to resume the leadership role he had left, but O'Brien resisted him. Larkin sided with the more radical elements of the party, in September that year he established the Irish Worker League. In 1932, the Labour Party supported Éamon de Valera's first Fianna Fáil government, which had proposed a programme of social reform with which the party was in sympathy.
It appeared for a time during the 1940s that the Labour Party would replace Fine Gael as the main opposition party. In the 1943 general election the party won 17 seats, its best result since 1927; the party was conservative compared to similar European parties, its leaders from 1932 to 1977 were members of the Knights of Saint Columbanus. The Larkin-O'Brien feud still continued, worsened over time. In the 1940s the hatred caused the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. O'Brien left with six TDs in 1944, founding the National Labour Party, whose leader was James Everett. O'Brien withdrew ITGWU from the Irish Trade Unions Congress and set up his own congress; the split damaged the Labour movement in the 1944 general election. It was only after Larkin's death in 1947. After the 1948 general election National Labour had five TDs – Everett, Dan Spri
