ABSTRACT
The Independent Labour Party, supplemented in some areas by a local Fabian Society, took the place largely occupied by the Individual Members’ Section of the Local Labour Party. In 1908, the Miners’ Federation decided to approach the Labour Party with a view to affiliation. The true pioneers of local Labour organization within the party were not so much the federal bodies established by the local Socialist branches and the Trades Councils as the Local Labour Associations founded in a few areas by particular M.P.s on a basis of local membership. These bodies organized local Labour opinion on a basis not explicitly Socialist, whereas in most areas individual association with the party was possible only through one or other of the Socialist bodies. Ramsay MacDonald’s ascendancy was decorously parliamentary: he sought to impress himself and his party upon the electors by demonstrating their fitness to govern according to all the precedents of parliamentary usage.
