Labour Parliament

Labour Parliament 

a congress of trade union representatives and delegates of workers’ assemblies held in Manchester from Mar. 6 to 18, 1854. The Labour Parliament was convoked by revolutionary Chartists, who hoped, by creating the Mass Movement organization, to rally the British proletariat and to ensure wide support for the renascent Chartist movement. K. Marx was elected honorary delegate to the parliament.

The Labour Parliament adopted a resolution on measures to aid strikers and developed other points of the Mass Movement program. However, the Chartist leaders made considerable concessions to the reformist delegates; for instance, no demand for the winning of political power by workers was included, and emphasis was placed on the organization of production associations along the lines of Louis Blanc’s Utopian ideas. The majority of the trade unions did not support the idea of creating the Mass Movement, and the Chartists did not succeed in convoking the next congress, scheduled for the fall of 1854.