Woolwich Labour Party

 

Greenwich and Woolwich Labour Party really only dates from the 1990s - before that there was Woolwich Labour Party and Greenwich Labour Party.  This is about Woolwich Labour Party

 

Woolwich Labour Party is historically important in the movement as the first recognisable Labour Party on which others were based.

 

A Labour Representation Committee had been set up in 1900 and contested elections to Woolwich Borough Council as under Woolwich and Plumstead Progressive Association. Woolwich Trades Council and the Independent Labour Party were also active. From 1902 a series of by elections were won by Labour’ candidates and in November 1902 Will Crooks won a Parliamentary election with a 3,229 majority.  It was immediately decided to set up the Woolwich Labour Representation Association, later known as Woolwich Labour Party.

There were more electoral successes and Labour took control of Woolwich Borough Council 1903, and the two county council seats in 1904. Offices were set up at 3 Woolwich New Road which also functioned as a printer’s office and from 1904 Woolwich Labour Party produced a weekly paper, The Pioneer, which continued until after the Great War. Most importantly, uniquely, the early Woolwich Labour Party had an individual membership from its inception with a tight organisation where ‘street captains’ oversaw the individual membership in their areas. Woolwich has always had a very big Like membership has had its - in 1953 for instance it was 9,761.

When the national party was set up in 1918 the principle of individual membership was accepted by the national party and embodied in its new constitution drawn up in 1918. This and its organisation were modelled of Woolwich.

Woolwich Labour Party is technically no longer with us. In 1993 changes in constituency boundaries joined Woolwich to Greenwich as Greenwich and Woolwich Labour Party. There is no longer an office in Woolwich but and the future of the site of the old Woolwich office is now unclear