ABSTRACT
In 1917, Arthur Henderson began a fundamental restructuring of the British Labour Party. Where Labour had emerged from 1900 as a federation of affiliated trade unions, trades councils, socialist and co-operative societies, the party was reconstituted in 1918 as a nationwide organization with branches intended for every parliamentary constituency. A federal structure was retained but, for the first time, membership was open officially to individual men and women; local and divisional parties were formed to provide a permanent and distinctive Labour presence throughout Britain. In Henderson’s words, referring to the widening franchise and the ‘democratic will’ facilitated by the Great War, Labour was to be transformed into a ‘national popular party, rooted in the life of the democracy, and deriving its principles and its policy from the new political consciousness’.2
