Ginger group

A ginger group is a formal or informal group within, for example, a political party seeking to influence the direction and activity of the organisation as a whole. Ginger groups work to alter the party's policies, practices or office-holders, while still supporting its general goals.

The term derives from gingering a horse to make it seem more lively, or "gingering up" a food or beverage to add flavour or spice.

Ginger groups sometimes form within the political parties of Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.

See also

References

External links

Ginger Group

The Ginger Group was not a formal political party in Canada, but a faction of radical Progressive and Labour Members of Parliament who advocated socialism. The term ginger group also refers to a small group with new, radical ideas trying to act as a catalyst within a larger body.

The Ginger Group split with the Progressive Party in 1924 when Progressive leader Robert Forke proved too eager to accommodate the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King and agreed to support the government's budget with only minimal concessions. J. S. Woodsworth, using his right as the leader of the Independent Labour MPs, moved a stronger amendment to the budget based on demands the Progressives had made in earlier years but had since abandoned. The Progressive and Labour MPs who broke with their Progressive colleagues to support Woodsworth became the "Ginger Group". and was made up of United Farmers of Alberta MPs George Gibson Coote, Robert Gardiner, Edward Joseph Garland, Donald MacBeth Kennedy and Henry Elvins Spencer as well as United Farmers of Ontario MP Agnes Macphail. The group was later joined by Labour MPs J.S. Woodsworth, William Irvine, Abraham Albert Heaps and Angus MacInnis, independent MP Joseph Tweed Shaw and Progressive MPs Milton Neil Campbell, William John Ward W.C. Good and Preston Elliott.

Ginger Group (Queensland)

The ginger group, in Queensland politics was a group of Liberal Party of Australia MLAs during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, who despite nominally being a part of the government, were opposed to some of the policies of their senior coalition partner, the National Party of Australia. Initially a small informal grouping within the Liberal Party, the group came to wield greater and greater power within the Liberal partyroom, culminating in Terry White's successful leadership challenge in 1983, and the party's subsequent defeat and loss of influence at the 1983 election.

Background

After the Second World War, the politics of the Australian state of Queensland was dominated by the Australian Labor Party and the Country Party. In Queensland, the rural-urban divide has historically been less pronounced than in other states. While the Liberal Party and its predecessors have long been the dominant partner in the non-Labor Coalition, in Queensland the Country Party was the dominant partner from 1936 onwards when the joint Country and Progressive National Party was split into separate parties matching the federal Country and United Australia, later Liberal, parties.