The Manitoba Labour Party (MLP) was a reformist, non-Marxist labour party in Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. It was created in early May 1910 as a successor to the province's second Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party (in Manitoba) (I)

Before World War I, there were at least two organizations in Winnipeg calling themselves the Independent Labour Party. The first of these was set up by British trade unionists in 1895, and collapsed soon thereafter....

 (1906-08). Former Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 A.W. Puttee was a leading MLP organizer. The party fielded one candidate in the 1910 provincial election

Manitoba general election, 1910

Manitoba's general election of July 11, 1910 was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada.The result was a fourth consecutive majority government for the Conservative Party of Manitoba, led by premier Rodmond Palen Roblin. Roblin's electoral machine won...

, and also ran candidates at the municipal level.

The party's founding convention declared that "the ultimate object of attainment shall be to preserve to the worker the full product of his toil". The ambiguity of this statement was criticized by the more radical Socialist Party of Canada

Socialist Party of Canada

There have been two different but related political parties in Canada that called themselves the Socialist Party of Canada . The current Socialist Party is an electorally inactive and unregistered federal political party in Canada...

 (SPC), which called for collective ownership in industry.

After the SPC nominated candidates for Winnipeg North and Winnipeg West in the 1910 provincial election, the MLP sought to prevent confrontation and vote-splitting by fielding only one candidate of their own: Fred Dixon

Fred Dixon

Fred Dixon was a Manitoba politician, and was for several years the dominant figure in the province's mainstream labour movement.Born in Englefield, England, Dixon was not a socialist...

 in Winnipeg Centre. Dixon was a moderate reformer, and campaigned in an unofficial alliance with the Manitoba Liberal Party

Manitoba Liberal Party

The Manitoba Liberal Party is a political party in Manitoba, Canada. Its roots can be traced to the late nineteenth-century, following the province's creation in 1870.-Origins and early development :...

. He was bitterly opposed by the SPC, which belatedly nominated W.S. Cummings to run against him as a spoiler.

Dixon lost to the Conservative Party

Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba is the only right wing political party in Manitoba, Canada. It is also the official opposition party in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.-Origins and early years:...

 incumbent, Thomas Taylor, by seventy-three votes. Cummings's ninety-nine votes may have made the difference in the outcome. The SPC was widely blamed for Dixon's loss, and became marginalized in Winnipeg's labour community for the next eight years.

The Manitoba Labour Party dissolved after the 1910 election. In 1912, its leaders formed the Manitoba Labour Representation Committee

Manitoba Labour Representation Committee

The Labour Representation Committee was a reformist labour organization in Manitoba, Canada, and was the ideological successor to groups such as the Winnipeg Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the Manitoba Labour Party...

.

Election results

Election	# of candidates nominated	# of seats won	# of total votes	% of popular vote	% in seats contested
1910 Manitoba general election, 1910 Manitoba's general election of July 11, 1910 was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada.The result was a fourth consecutive majority government for the Conservative Party of Manitoba, led by premier Rodmond Palen Roblin. Roblin's electoral machine won...	1	0	1,939		47.88

See also

• List of Manitoba political parties
• Winnipeg Labour Party
  Winnipeg Labour Party
  The Winnipeg Labour Party was a reformist organization in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, representing labour interests. Founded in 1896, it was based on an earlier Winnipeg organization known as the Independent Labour Party .The party initially received support from both...
  
  
• Labour candidates and parties in Canada
  Labour candidates and parties in Canada
  There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s...
  
  

External links

• Radical Politics in Winnipeg: 1899-1915, A. Ross McCormack

Some of the information in this article has been summarized from the article listed above, and from McCormack's Reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries : the Western Canadian radical movement, 1899-1919 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 90-91. Readers are encouraged to consult this work for more information.

All electoral information is taken from Elections Manitoba

Elections Manitoba

Elections Manitoba is the non-partisan agency of the Government of Manitoba, responsible for the conduct of provincial elections....

.