ABSTRACT
The Bradford Conference of 1893—The Election of 1895. The Conference which met at Bradford on January 13th and 14th, 1893, and there founded the Independent Labour Party, was presided over by Keir Hardie. It consisted of 124 delegates, of whom the majority came from the industrial North. The report of the proceedings at Bradford suggests that the Conference was by no means clear about its intentions, except that it had assembled in order to bring into being a national movement for the independent political representation of Labour. The great majority of the delegates came from local ‘Independent Labour Parties’, ‘Labour Unions’, or similar bodies of an essentially political character. Some of the leaders, however, notably Keir Hardie himself, were actively engaged in an endeavour to persuade the Trade Unions and the Trades Union Congress to take up independent Labour representation; and to these it seemed essential to hold the door open to Trade Union affiliations.
