Social Democratic and Labour Party

The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP; Irish: Páirtí Sóisialta Daonlathach an Lucht Oibre) is a social-democratic and Irish nationalistpolitical party in Northern Ireland. The SDLP currently has three MPs in the House of Commons, and 14 MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The SDLP party platform advocates Irish unification, and the further devolution of powers while Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. During the Troubles, the SDLP was the most popular Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, but since the Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994 it has lost ground to the left-wing republican party Sinn Féin, which in 2001 became the more popular of the two parties for the first time. Established during the Troubles, a significant difference between the two parties was the SDLP's rejection of violence, in contrast to Sinn Féin's support for the Provisional IRA and physical force republicanism. The SDLP has fraternal links with other European social-democratic parties, including the Irish Labour Party and British Labour Party (neither of which contest elections in Northern Ireland), and is affiliated to the Socialist International and Party of European Socialists.

Labour Party (Lithuania)

The Labour Party (Lithuanian: Darbo Partija, DP) is a centre-leftpopulistpolitical party in Lithuania. The party was founded in 2003 by the Russian-born millionaire businessman Viktor Uspaskich.

In its first electoral test, the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections, it was by far the most successful party gaining 30.2% of the vote and returning 5 MEPs. It joined the European Democratic Party and thus the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group. At the 2004 legislative elections, the party won 28.4% of the popular vote and 39 out of 141 seats, making it the largest single party in the Parliament of Lithuania. After the election Labour formed a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and New Union.

At the legislative elections of 2008 the party that had entered into a coalition with the Youth party lost heavily, retaining only 10 seats in the Seimas from its previous 39 and obtaining 9% of the national vote. As its other coalition partner, New Union (Social Liberals) also lost heavily, the coalition they were forming with the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania collapsed. The party was left in opposition after a new centre-right coalition, led by Andrius Kubilius who became prime minister for a second time, and formed of Homeland Union, National Resurrection Party and Liberals' Movement of the Republic of Lithuania took over, gaining a combined governmental majority of 72 out of 141 seats.

Labour Party (Netherlands)

The Labour Party (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid; Dutch pronunciation: [pɑrtɛi vɑn də 'ʔɑrbɛit], shortened PvdA [peːveːdeː'ʔaː]) is a social-democraticpolitical party in the Netherlands. Since 5 November 2012, the PvdA has governed in coalition with the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in the second Rutte cabinet.

Party history

1945–1965

The Labour Party (PvdA) was founded on 9 February 1946, through a merger of three parties: the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), the social-liberal Free-thinking Democratic League (VDB) and progressive-Protestant Christian Democratic Union (CDU). They were joined by individuals from Catholic resistance group Christofoor and the Protestant parties Christian Historical Union (CHU) and Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP).

The founders of the PvdA wanted to create a broad party, breaking with the historic tradition of Pillarisation. This desire to come to a new political system was called the Doorbraak. The party combined socialists with liberal democrats and progressive Christians. However, the party was unable to break Pillarisation. Instead the new party renewed the close ties that SDAP had with other socialist organisations (see linked organisations). In 1948 some liberal members, led by former VDB leader Pieter Oud, left the PvdA because they were unhappy with the socialist course of the PvdA. Together with the Freedom Party, they formed the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a conservative-liberal party.

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Growing out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century, the Labour Party has been described as a "broad church", encompassing a diversity of ideological trends from strongly socialist to moderate social democratic.

Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931. Labour later served in the wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan.

The Labour Party was last in government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, beginning with a landslide majority of 179, reduced to 167 in 2001 and 66 in 2005. Having won 232 seats in the 2015 general election, the party is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, measures for income redistribution, and a commitment to representative democracy. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater egalitarian, democratic and solidaristic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Western and Northern Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated a peaceful, evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. In the post-war era in Western Europe, the example of the totalitarian Soviet Union, where the state controlled everything, was unappealing and socialists sought an alternative viable form of socialism that compromised between socialism and capitalism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning the prior goal of abolishing the capitalist system (private property, factor markets and wage labour) and substituting it for a qualitatively different socialist economic system.