The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) was a political party in Northern Ireland which operated from 1924 until 1987. Origins The roots of the NILP can be traced back to the formation of the Belfast Labour Party in 1892. William Walker stood as the Labour candidate in the Belfast North by-election in 1905 coming a close second with 47% of the vote. The Belfast Labour Party won 12 seats and over 14% of the vote in the 1920 elections to Belfast Corporation. After partition After the partition of Ireland in 1921, the NILP was founded as a socialist political party by groups such as the Belfast Labour Party and found its main bed of support amongst working class voters in Belfast. Over 40 delegates attended the founding conference of the Labour Party of Northern Ireland held on 8 March 1924. It initially declined to take a position on the "Border Question" and instead sought to offer itself as an alternative to both nationalism and unionism. In the 1925 Northern Ireland general election, the party won 6% of the total vote and secured three seats in Belfast, including William McMullen elected in Belfast West, as well as Sam Kyle (Belfast North) and Jack Beattie (Belfast East); this was the last election for the Northern Ireland Parliament using the single transferable vote system. The party had a Westminster Member of Parliament on only one occasion, when Jack Beattie won the 1943 Belfast West by-election, retained the seat in 1945, but lost it in 1950. He regained the seat as an Irish Labour Party candidate in 1951. In the 1945 election to the Stormont parliament, held in the aftermath of the second world war, the NILP polled 66,503 votes, 18.6% of the total votes cast. In 1949, following the declaration of a Republic in the south, the Northern Ireland Labour Party's conference voted in favour of the Union with Great Britain. The NILP abandoned its neutral position on the border adopting a pro-union position that the “Northern Ireland Labour Party will maintain unbroken the connection between Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. Many anti-partition Labour activists drifted out of the NILP and joined the Irish Labour Party. The result was a sharp decline in the party's already limited electoral success, as Catholic voters deserted, and the Irish Labour Party attempted to organise in Northern Ireland. An earlier refusal to adopt a pro-union policy had