as an alternative social administration for five weeks, undermining the power of the conservative government. At the time there was no real conflict or division between the trade and industrial union mentality. Many supporters of the ALP in the Trades and Labour Councils were radical, militant and supported socialism. Politics The failure of each of the industrial conflicts of the 1890s was seen as a demoralising blow for the labour movement. Some unionists, demoralised with direct action, turned to a political solution and sought election to colonial parliaments, and led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party. The first general election contested by Labour candidates was the 1891 New South Wales election, where Labour Electoral League of New South Wales candidates won 35 of 141 seats, giving Labour the balance of power. Also in 1891, three United Labor Party (ULP) of South Australia candidates were elected to the South Australian Legislative Council. At the 1893 South Australian election the United Labor Party led by John McPherson won 10 of the 54 seats and the balance of power in the House of Assembly, allowing the liberal government of Charles Kingston to be formed, ousting the conservative government of John Downer. By the 1905 South Australian election Thomas Price became the first Labor Premier of South Australia. Re-elected at the 1906 double dissolution election serving until his death in 1909, it was the world's first stable Labour Party government. So successful, John Verran led Labor to form the state's first of many majority governments at the 1910 South Australian election. Labour candidates emerged in the late 19th century with much success, being a part of informal coalition governments from the early 1890s. In 1899, Anderson Dawson formed a Labour minority government in Queensland, the first Labour government in the world, which lasted one week while the conservatives regrouped after a split. . The first national Labour government in the world was that of Chris Watson in 1904, whose government lasted four months. Labour held the balance of power in the early years of federation, and was able to use it to secure the setting up of the protectionist system in Australia, and the passage of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, to set up a compulsory arbitration system in Australia. In the 1870s and 1880s, the trade union movement had organised a series of protests against "foreign" (by which was