ABSTRACT
The right of Labour to a voice in national politics is no longer challenged. Labour has not yet attained its full measure of power; there are battles yet to be won, but the struggles before us cannot exceed in bitterness those in which the stalwarts of the middle and late sixties engaged. To many of the present generation those early struggles are quite unknown. In 1907, in Hexham Town Hall, while moving a vote of thanks to John Ward, M.P., I chanced to say that it gave me additional pleasure to perform that duty to the Labour member for Stoke-on-Trent, for the reason that it was my great privilege to have been the means of starting, in the year 1869, the first Labour candidate who went to the poll in Britain, when, to my intense surprise, I heard the voice of John Ward saying loud enough to be heard all over the hall: “You are wrong; you mean ‘89,’ not ‘69.’” This discovery that Ward, the Labour M.P., knew nothing about that historic contest set me wondering how many other persons are equally ignorant of all that pertains to the first attempt of Labour to obtain an entrance to the House of Commons. The true account of that audacious attempt is now about to be written for the first time.
