History[edit]

The party's origins lay in a split by the right wing of the British Socialist Party, primarily over issues raised by the First World War. In 1915, Victor Fisher formed the Socialist National Defence Committee^[1] along with Alexander M. Thompson and Robert Blatchford. They supported "the eternal idea of nationality" and aimed to promote "socialist measures in the war effort".^[2] The Committee was supported by John Hodge, George Henry Roberts, and for a time by Henry Hyndman who subsequently formed his own party, the National Socialist Party.


In 1916, this committee formed the British Workers League. It described itself as a "patriotic labour" group, and focused on support for the war and the British Empire and opposition to Little Englander and Cobdenite laissez-faire economics.^[3] The League was subsidised by Waldorf Astor^[4] through Lord Milner,^[5] who consulted with Fisher during the war.^[6] The League was supported by Labour MPs such as James O'Grady, Stephen Walsh and William Abraham.^[7]


The League sought to challenge pacificist Parliamentary candidates; this caused a rupture with the Labour Party. Eleven out of thirty-eight of the Labour Parliamentary MPs showed support for the British Workers League; however, many later returned to the Labour Party.^[8]


The British Workers League reconstituted itself in 1918 as the National Democratic and Labour Party, with the support of George Barnes, MP for Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, when he resigned from the Labour Party (Barnes, however, never stood for election under the NDP banner, and was re-elected in 1918 as a Coalition Labour MP). The NDP policy was described as follows, 'Support of the Coalition Government and the war effort. Broadly socialist in outlook and claimed to represent "the patriotic working class." It was bitterly opposed to the pacifist elements within the Labour Party.'^[9] The group gained the support of the Musicians' Union and parts of other unions, including some sections of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. It was primarily funded by Lloyd George Coalition Liberals.


At its high water mark, the party fielded twenty-eight candidates in the 1918 general election—twenty of them on the Coalition Coupon—and won ten seats.^[8][10][11] After the election, Clement Edwards was elected chairman of the NDP in parliament.^[12]


The National Democratic and Labour's remaining MPs joined the National Liberal Party and stood under that label in the 1922 general election. The National Democratic and Labour Party was wound up in 1923, but a grouping continued as the Empire Citizens' League^[10] from 1925 until the late 1920s. Its journal was renamed the Empire Citizen, which ceased publication in September 1927.^[13] Victor Fisher stood, unsuccessfully, for the Conservative Party.^[14]