The National Labour Party () was an Irish political party active between 1944 and 1950. It was founded in 1944 from a rebel faction of the Labour Party, inspired by the intransigence of the incumbent leadership of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) against the majority of the party on the basis that communists had infiltrated Labour at the turn of the 1940s. History The split in the Labour Party was preceded by divisions in the broader labour movement, specifically the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union under William O'Brien and the Workers' Union of Ireland under James Larkin. Larkin had rejoined the party in 1941, and two years later, he was nominated by the Dublin North-East branch of the Labour Party to contest the 1943 general election. The Administrative Council of the national party, with ITGWU members in the majority, refused to ratify this nomination. However, the Dublin party and Dublin-based candidates supported Larkin, as did Labour leader William Norton, and eventually Larkin was a victorious Labour candidate. When the ITGWU faction sought the expulsion of Dublin officials as revenge, it was routed. Two weeks later, the ITGWU disaffiliated from the Labour Party. Five of the eight TDs sponsored by the union resigned from the parliamentary party to form the National Labour Party in January 1944, led by William O'Brien and James Everett. Senator Thomas Foran was appointed chairman of the party. Foran was still recognised by other Labour senators as Leader of the Labour Party in the Seanad. There was much bitterness between the two parties. The ITGWU claimed that communists had infiltrated the Labour Party. The ITGWU attacked "Larkinite and Communist Party elements" which it claimed had taken over the Labour Party. The split and the anti-communist assault put Labour on the defensive. Alfred O'Rahilly in The Communist Front and the Attack on Irish Labour widened the assault to include the influence of British based unions and communists in the ITUC. The National Labour Party juxtaposed itself against this by emphasising its commitment to Catholic Social Teaching. Presiding at a meeting of the provisional executive of the party in March 1944, Thomas Foran expressed its "unqualified support" of Irish neutrality and condemned a declaration of the Communist Party of Ireland "expressing approval of the attempt to force this country to abandon neutrality." Senator Michael Colgan, a National Labour candidate speaking of the party in May