ABSTRACT
The promotion of Labour candidates came to be regarded as a matter for such Trade Unions as desired to pursue it, or even mainly for the individual Trade Union leader who happened to have political aspirations. After Alexander Macdonald’s death in 1881, there were again only two Trade Union Members in the House of Commons —Thomas Burt and Henry Broadhurst—and both were committed to full support of the Liberal Party. Nevertheless, the General Election of 1885, following hard upon the Reform and Redistribution Acts, brought a sudden increase in the number of Trade Union M.P.s from two to eleven. The ‘Lib.-Labs.’ in Parliament suddenly became a group large enough to command some attention. At the General Election of 1886, the Gladstonian defeat brought down some of the Government’s Trade Union supporters. One of the miners, John Wilson, was beaten at Houghton-le-Spring; Joseph Leicester lost his seat at South-West Ham; and Joseph Arch was narrowly defeated in Norfolk by twenty votes.
