Scottish Labour Party

The Scottish Labour Party (Scottish Gaelic: Pàrtaidh Làbarach na h-Alba, Scots: Scots Labour Pairty; branded Scottish Labour) is the section of the Labour Party which operates in Scotland. Labour hold 37 of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and two of six Scottish seats in the European Parliament.

Labour won the largest share of the vote in Scotland at every UK general election from 1964 until 2015, when they lost heavily to the Scottish National Party, every European Parliament general election from 1979 until defeated by the SNP in 2009, and in the first two elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and 2003. After these, Scottish Labour entered a coalition with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, forming a majority Scottish Executive. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, Scottish Labour became the second largest party, with a lower share of the vote and one fewer seat than the Scottish National Party (SNP), who subsequently formed a minority government. It remained the second largest party after the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, with the SNP forming the first majority government since devolution in 1999. In a landslide defeat at the 2015 UK general election, it was reduced to a single Member of Parliament, losing 40 of its 41 seats to the SNP, the first time the party had not won the largest number of seats in Scotland since 1959.

Labour Leader

The Labour Leader was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later renamed New Leader and Socialist Leader, before finally taking the name Labour Leader again.

19th century

The origins of the paper lay in The Miner, a monthly paper founded by Keir Hardie in 1887. Its main purpose was to advocate for a federation of Scottish miners. The first issue contained an influential programme for labour, co-authored by Hardie and Chisholm Robertson, marking Hardie's switch from support for the Liberal Party to advocating independent labour candidacies. The paper was used as Hardie's platform in the Mid Lanarkshire by-election, 1888, following which Hardie became a founder member of the Scottish Labour Party and relaunched The Miner as the Labour Leader.

In 1893 the Scottish Labour Party affiliated to the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Hardie became the party's first leader and began using the Labour Leader as a forum for the development of policy for the new party. In 1894 he was able to increase the paper's frequency from monthly to weekly.

Scottish

Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:

See also

Scottish people

The Scottish people (Scots: Scots Fowk, Scottish Gaelic: Albannaich), or Scots, are a nation and socially defined ethnic group resident in Scotland. Historically, they emerged from an amalgamation of two groups—the Picts and Gaels—who founded the Kingdom of Scotland (or Alba) in the 9th century, and thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celts. Later, the neighbouring Cumbrian Britons, who also spoke a Celtic language, as well as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons and Norse, were incorporated into the Scottish nation.

In modern use, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland. The Latin word Scotti originally referred to the Gaels but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Though sometimes considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been used for the Scottish people, though this usage is current primarily outside Scotland.

There are people of Scottish descent in many countries other than Scotland. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, and latterly industrial decline and unemployment, resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is a Scottish presence at a particularly high level in Canada, which has the highest level per-capita of Scots descendants in the world and second largest population of descended Scots ancestry after the United States. They took with them their Scottish languages and culture.

Scottish language

Scottish language may refer to:

See also