The Winnipeg Labour Party was a reformist organization representing labour interests. Founded in 1896, it was based on an earlier Winnipeg organization known as the Independent Labour Party (which was influenced by the British party of the same name, but was not formally connected to any other group).
The party initially received support from both socialists and conservative trade unionists, and succeeded in electing Arthur Puttee to the Canadian parliament in 1900. The WLP was hostile to radical militancy in the labour movement, however, and lost the support of many socialists in the years which followed.
The WLP nominated two candidates for the provincial election of 1903: William Scott in Winnipeg Centre and Robert Thoms in Winnipeg North. Both finished well behind their Conservative and Liberal opponents.
Puttee was defeated in 1904, though he continued to promote labour causes in his newspaper, The Voice. In 1906, his organization was absorbed into another group calling itself the Independent Labour Party.
In 1872 Henry Buckingham Witton, a Hamilton carriage-maker, was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative candidate, as was Alphonse-Télesphore Lépine, a Montréal leader of the KNIGHTS OF LABOR, in 1888.
In the early years of the 20th century the TRADES AND LABOR CONGRESS showed a growing interest in political action, and in 1900 A.W., a WinnipegLabourParty founder, and Ralph SMITH of Nanaimo, BC, TLC president, were both elected to Parliament.
Puttee is considered the first labour MP because he was elected both in a January by-election as well as the November general election.
Winnipeg's workers were not opposed to economic growth per se but to economic growth which appeared to be achieved, in large part, at their expense.
British-born and much-travelled, Puttee was a printer, who had settled in Winnipeg in 1891 and had taken a leading role in the founding of the trades council, the labourparty, and The Voice; by 1899, he was the editor of the paper.
The party's platform had as its essential object the collective ownership of the means of production, but, at a time when British Columbia socialists had already decided that they could be satisfied with nothing but the destruction of the present order, the manifesto also advocated a number of reforms of capitalism.
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