"The rise of the Labour Party has more to do with class-consciousness than with socialism." Discuss.

Before examining the question set out above, I believe it is necessary to clarify some of the terms that it uses in order that we may establish a framework within which to approach the issues. Firstly, in order to restrict the timeframe to a particular period in the history of the Labour Party, it must be decided what qualifies as the "rise" of a party. Is it, for instance, the first occasion a party has members returned to Parliament; perhaps it is when the party becomes the largest opposition party, or even when it accedes to power? I would dismiss the first criteria, as the Labour Representation Committee as was formed in 1900 had MPs returned in the general election of that year; yet this marks the beginning of the growth of the Labour Party. As for being the largest opposition party, Labour achieved this in the 1922 election, but it could also be argued that as early as 1918, they were already emerging as the main opposition to the Conservative party, given the split in the Liberal party. However, I believe that these dates are too early to mark the end of the rise of the Labour Party, as 1918 marked a significant year for it as it committed itself formally to a socialist agenda enshrined it the constitution it adopted in that year. It is only in 1924, with the formation of the first Labour Government under MacDonald (albeit a short-lived minority one dependent on the support of the Liberals) that we can say the rise of the Labour Party has finished for the purposes of this question. Secondly, we must define what we mean by "class-consciousness." This I will take to mean that a section of the population becomes aware that it is a member of a particular class, identifies with other members of that class, and together they form themselves into a unified group which one could label as "working-class" or "middle-class," etc. Consequently, from a political point of view, the emergence of class-consciousness could lead to a desire for representation of that group�s political views by members drawn from within it, if they feel that the existing political structures are not sufficient to best represent their interests. This is what I shall look for in considering the importance of class-consciousness in the rise of the Labour Party.
In order to evaluate the role socialism played in the rise of the party, we must look at the way in which the party was established, and examine how much influence the socialist elements within the party had. There were three main socialist groupings - the Social Democratic Federation which was founded in 1881 and was the one outright Marxist party in British politics at this time, the Fabian Society, a middle-class intellectual movement that had a strong influence in the early Labour Party, and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) formed in 1893. What was to become the modern Labour Party was initially a federal grouping consisting of these socialist societies and trade unions. In 1900, these groups attended a conference called by the TUC at which the Labour Representation Committee was established. The first executive of the party which had twelve members consisted of seven trade unionists and five representatives of the various socialist societies. This is despite the fact that at the conference the delegates from the socialist societies numbered 129, whereas there were over half a million trade unionists. This gives the misleading impression that the new party was dominated by socialists. On the contrary membership of the socialist societies was vastly inferior to that of the trade unions. Indeed, the SDF became disaffected by the new party after it refused to accept the concept of "class war" at its inaugural conference, and withdrew from the organisation. There were also disagreements between the other members of the LRC. The simple reality is that the LRC was in no way a socialist party - indeed, a good deal of the trade unionists were reluctant to view the new organisation as a party at all. Instead, they saw it as little more than a pressure group which extended the interests of trade unions in promoting their own agenda and working for their interests in parliament.
It is important to understand the motivation of the trade unions in the formation of the LRC. For several years prior, trade union candidates had been sitting in the Commons as so-called "Lib-Lab" MPs. These were a small group of working-class men who took advantage of the strong union membership in particular constituencies (especially those were miners were dominant) to get elected in order to represent working-class interests in parliament. These MPs were a small group (usually no more then a dozen were ever returned) and they took the Liberal whip. However, the Liberal Party managed to alienate the working-class support it was used to getting in the latter decades of he nineteenth century in two ways. Firstly, it was unwilling (or unable financially) to support the campaigns of working-class candidates, and in many cases local constituency associations (against the wishes of the parliamentary leadership) chose middle-class candidates who could pay their own way to stand in areas of strong working-class representation. This was what prompted Keir Hardie to form the ILP in the first place. Secondly, the Liberal party failed to implement the type of social reform legislation that would have ensured continued working-class and trade union support; they were more concerned instead with Home Rule for Ireland and reforming the House of Lords. This caused great alienation among the trade unions. Thus they were motivated to establish the LRC as a means to furthering their political demands, and to ensure continued working-class representation in the Commons. MacDonald and Hardie�s motivation was also to ensure working-class representation independent from the Liberal Party. Neither group had the intention of setting up a socialist party inside parliament - they were instead attempting to further the interests of the working-class, which did not involve socialism. The reluctance which some unions demonstrated in not joining the LRC at its formation further demonstrates the low esteem with which it was held as being a vehicle for promoting working-class interests. Those unions which had been achieving success in having their candidates elected saw no advantage in becoming involved with the Labour movement, and were reluctant to break their links with the Liberal party: the Miner�s Federation did not join for several years, and the majority of those unions that were involved from the beginning were not among the most powerful unions such as the miners or cotton unions. It took a combination of factors, including increasing employer militancy and the Taff Vale decision of 1901 before many of the larger unions decided that they could achieve more through supporting the Labour Party.
Nonetheless, with the adoption of the 1918 constitution, the Labour Party became a party committed to socialist goals, and figures such as MacDonald had been publishing pro-socialist literature for over a decade prior. Is this evidence that there had all along been a socialist element to the organisation that was important in its foundation and had been biding its time until such a point as it could become the dominant ideology of the party? I believe not, for several reasons, the most important of which is the view that the ideological elements of the constitution were introduced to appease the middle-class socialists in the party, and that it was adopted as much to ensure a clear distinction between the Liberal Party and Labour as because of any large-scale conversion to the socialist cause. The wording of the constitution is regarded as vague enough to ensure support from all sections of the party, without alienating the trade unionists who were suspicious of socialists in general. However, after seeing the effectiveness of state control and intervention during the war, the unions were more amenable to forms of collectivism after the armistice. Yet this is not evidence of a conversion to socialism on the part of the trade unions, but an extension of the ideological pragmatism that had been demonstrated since the founding of the labour movement. Furthermore, many of the early Labour party leaders were not staunch socialists, but wished to found an independent party of the working-class because of their disaffection with the selection policy of the Liberal Party. They saw the labour movement as a pressure group on the Liberal flanks, and not an entity that was to replace the Liberal Party. Thus we can conclude that even with the adopting of a socialist agenda, the Labour Party was still as much a platform for working-class representation as it was a party embracing any particular brand of socialism after 1918.
Thus we can say that socialism was certainly not the most important factor accounting for the rise of the Labour Party. What, then, about class-consciousness? Both Ball and McKibben openly declare that the Labour Party�s origins were built upon the British working-class consciousness, but how did they come to this conclusion? Again the answer lies with the trade unions and the particular way in which the Labour Party was founded. The LRC was not founded by the working classes following a spontaneous increase in their level of self-awareness. Instead, it was the trade unions who acted as representatives of the working-class and who worked on their behalf who took it on themselves to advance the interests of the class by pursuing the actions they did. The fact that there was strong unionisation reflects the fact that there was a strong sense of class-consciousness among the working-class, as unions cannot be founded without this. One could argue that several trade unions could exist separately, merely as representatives of a particular industry, without all the separate workers in the various industries recognising that they would all belong to the same class, but the organisation and interaction between the different unions (especially via the TUC ) shows that there was a solidarity between the unions born of a recognition that they all represented the same type of people, regardless of occupation, and that they all had the same interests at heart. This is how the Labour Party took advantage of the strong working-class consciousness in Britain. As we have seen, there was not an initial consensus among all the unions that this was the most efficient way to achieve their goals, but the strength of loyalty to the unions by their members meant that they could deliver the votes of their members once they had thrown their weight behind Labour.
Thus I believe that it is not just the case that the rise of the Labour party had more to do with class-consciousness than socialism, but that the former is really the only factor that is necessary to consider, such was the weakness of any socialist ideology in the party prior to 1918. The party in this early period did contain socialists, but was an umbrella grouping for many different organisations. The strength of trade union numbers ensured that it was their interests and those of their members that had priority over what were seen as the zealous ideals of a few middle-class intellectuals. The LRC was an extension of initiatives at securing working-class representation inside parliament, not the formation of a socialist movement to displace the Liberal Party. The rise of the working-class consciousness as reflected through the trade unions, coupled with the disdain with which the Liberal Party appeared to treat them, resulted in a shift of trade union support, and thus working-class votes, to the infant Labour Party. To say that this was due to a wide-scale desire for a socialist party expressed by working-class is clearly a view that cannot be supported.