Manitoba Labour Party
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The Manitoba Labour Party was a reformist, non-Marxist labour party in Manitoba, Canada. It was formed to contest the Manitoba provincial election of 1910, and was a successor to the province's second Independent Labour Party (1906-08).
The Labour Party's platform called for workers to receive "the full product of [their] toil". This ambiguous statement was ridiculed by the more radical Socialist Party of Canada, which called for collective ownership.
As the Socialist Party had already announced candidates for Winnipeg North and Winnipeg West, the Labour Party sought to avoid a confrontation and fielded only one candidate: Fred Dixon in Winnipeg Centre. Dixon was a centrist who supported the single-tax movement of Henry George, and campaigned in an alliance with the provincial Liberal Party. He was bitterly opposed by the SPC, which belatedly nominated W.S. Cummings in the riding as a spoiler.
Dixon lost Winnipeg Centre to Conservative Thomas Taylor, 2,012 votes to 1,939. Cummings's 99 votes may have made the difference in the outcome. Many in Winnipeg's labour community blamed the SPC for this loss, and the party became marginalized in the city for most of the following decade.
The Manitoba Labour Party dissolved after the 1910 election, but was later replaced by the Labour Representation Committee.
See also: Canadian political parties