WI: British Labour Party Never becomes one of the two main parties

So what if the Labour Party never becomes a major party after the Great War? I was thinking that they could be like todays Lib Dems with never more than 100 seats. What do you think?
 

Zeldar155

Banned
We most certainly wouldnt have had the Labour rule 1997-2010, Which i guess says goodbye to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
 

Zeldar155

Banned
I think the NHS would be created, but not recive much funding at all really, making it ineffective.
 
You need to be more specific about the PoD, why did the Labour party never become a major party as they mostly have in Europe historically? To prvent the party from ever gaining over 100 seats you're going to need to have a PoD before the 1922 election. Did Britain avoid war, or did the Liberals just avoid coalition? Did the Labour party collapse into infighting shortly it's creation? Did the Liberals even make a deal with the trade unions and solidified themselves as the main working class party?
 
I think the NHS would be created, but not recive much funding at all really, making it ineffective.
I don't think we'd have the NHS. We might have some form of universal healthcare based upon compulsory health insurance, but as to whether it would be better or worse than the current system in terms of cost and quality, I couldn't possibly say.
 
I think you'd need a PoD before 1918, if you want something plausible - after that date, even if you avoid Liberal splits (very difficult given the characters involved), you'd need Labour to go far to the left for it to lose its credibility amongst the law-abiding majority, which I don't see as very likely.

A First World War that either doesn't involve Britain, lasts for a short period of time or doesn't drain the country of manpower and treasure would do the trick. Much of the Liberal decline can be explained by the events of the War - the fact that we were in a war in the first place which alienates the pacifist, Guardian types; the inertia and lack of dynamism of the Liberals in prosecuting the war; the betrayal of traditional Liberal principles involved in supplying the necessary manpower and resources to fight - conscription, nationalisations etc; the lack of sympathy for working class families taken advantage of by unscrupulous landlords and employers while their husbands and fathers were at the front ("our husbands are fighting the Prussians in Flanders and we are fighting the Prussians of Partick") - all of these factors caused a collapse in Liberal morale and support which first manifested itself in the 1918 election.
 
We most certainly wouldnt have had the Labour rule 1997-2010, Which i guess says goodbye to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I am pretty sure Blair would have joined another party and sought to be Prime Minister he wasn't exactly a socialist to put it mildly and wasn't a lot different from some Tories.

A smaller labour party may have exercised the balance of power. Maybe it would be like the Canadian NDP rather than the Irish Labour Party. There would be a post war consensus but with little or no nationalisation but an NHS and welfare state.

How could it happen? The liberal party adopts a more positive approach to working class representation and selects say 100 or even 50 trade unionists in 1895 or 1900 and the TUC continues to support the Liberals
 
A very rough TL idea I had for such an occurance was to have Campbell-Bannerman survive past 1908 a PM. He was 71 at the time so he won't last long but a few years would make a massive difference.

He was a radical in the true, historical sense of the word, paved the way for the People's Budget, Home Rule and was supportive of the Lib-Lab MPs.

Have him introduce MP wages, which will strengthen his support from working-class MPs and weaken the need for TUC-funding.

From there, his handling of the People's Budget will probably be less confrontational but ultimately with the same result. Hopefully for the Liberals he can avoid the multiple elections and erosion of their majority.

After that butterflies take hold really - however something as chance-ridden as the Archduke's assassination could easily be avoided with almost a decade of flux. So without the *Great War, the Liberals will be better off - until the Home Rule Act kicks in.

At that point you'll have violence in Ulster and imagine a Tory victory in 1915/16 leading to an Ulster parliament as well but I think Ireland will be held on to.

Regardless of all that, without the National Government I think the Liberals will be able to hold onto their working-class support.
 
Thoughts..

There are a number of possibilities - one is to have Ramsay MacDonald adopted as a Liberal candidate in Southampton in 1894 and another is to have Gladstone adopt more moderate economic policies in the 1880s persuading Keir Hardie that the Liberals WILL stand for the workers against the bosses.

Without Hardie and MacDonald and others, Labour would be much weaker in the years before WW1 and the Liberals would be a broad church coalition.

Another option is to have the Liberals form a minority Government after the 1923 election - another is to have a different relationship between Asquith and Lloyd George, another would be no WW1 or a much shorter conflict.
 
Check out the 'people from alternate universes' thread that does the rounds around here every few days. The PoD appears to be that butterflies from McKinley surviving his assassination led to Teddy Roosevelt being president during WWI, which led to Pershing, Foch and Haig driving to Berlin in 1919 rather than accepting an armistice, which led to a leftist revolution in Germany that led to purges, massacres and the total discrediting of Socialism in the West (far more so than Russia IOTL). Consequently Labour has never got off the ground, and was even banned as a party between the 1920s and the end of *WWII.

Here's the thread. It has a lot of information (mainly by me) about contemporary British politics, including the makeup of the two main parties (Liberals and Conservatives) as well as the leadership and history of the eternal third party, Labour.
 

Thande

Donor
Check out the 'people from alternate universes' thread that does the rounds around here every few days. The PoD appears to be that butterflies from McKinley surviving his assassination led to Teddy Roosevelt being president during WWI, which led to Pershing, Foch and Haig driving to Berlin in 1919 rather than accepting an armistice, which led to a leftist revolution in Germany that led to purges, massacres and the total discrediting of Socialism in the West (far more so than Russia IOTL). Consequently Labour has never got off the ground, and was even banned as a party between the 1920s and the end of *WWII.

Is suffrage still limited in the UK after WW1? Because that would go a long way towards hampering Labour.
 
A valid question and not one that's come up in the thread. Feel free to chip in, I bumped it just now with some more biographies - it'd be nice to get some fresh additions, and perhaps a biography of one of the Pankhursts would answer the question of Suffrage.
 
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