Rhodesia Labour Party
political party in Southern Rhodesia
The Rhodesia Labour Party was a political party which existed in Southern Rhodesia from 1923 until the 1950s. Originally formed on the model of the British Labour Party from trade unions and being especially dominated by railway workers, it formed the main opposition party from 1934 to 1946. The party suffered a catastrophic split during the Second World War and lost all its seats, and a further split over the attitude to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended its involvement in Rhodesian politics.
Formation
Labour interests were allied to the Responsible Government Association in seeking self-government for the colony. At the 1920 election to the Legislative Council, two of the Responsible Government Association candidates associated with Labour while three Labour candidates and one Independent Labour stood separately. Following the successful referendum in 1922 supporting self-government, Labour supporters made definite attempts to form a party. As negotiations over a constitution progressed, there were hopes that Labour might be the strongest party in the country, but the constitutional provisions for boundaries were reckoned to be unhelpful.
The party was formally established later that year. The largest contribution to the party was made by the Rhodesian Railway Workers' Union. When the Responsible Government Party became the Rhodesia Party in December 1923, it resolved that negotiations with the Labour Party should be entered into by 15 January 1924, and the broad outlines of an agreement were reached prior to the first general election.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rhodesia Labour Party” is political party in Southern Rhodesia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rhodesia, Labour and Party, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 20, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q7321052. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1934, 1946 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhodesia Labour Party” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.