Parliamentary Labor Party

{{Short description|South Australian political party}}

{{About|the historical Australian party|current parliamentary groupings in the UK and Ireland|Parliamentary Labour Party|and|Parliamentary Labour Party (Ireland)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Labour politics in Australia}}

The Parliamentary Labor Party (also known as the Premiers' Plan Labor Party or Ministerial Labor Party) was a political party active in South Australia from August 1931 until June 1934.

The party came into existence as a result of intense dispute, especially within the Australian Labor Party, about the handling of the response to the Great Depression in Australia. In June 1931, a meeting of state premiers agreed on the Premiers' Plan, which involved sweeping austerity measures combined with increases in revenue. When the Premiers' Plan came up for a vote in South Australia, 23 of Labor's 30 House of Assembly members and two of Labor's four Legislative Council members voted for it. In August 1931, the South Australian state conference of the Labor Party expelled all of the MPs who supported the Premiers' Plan, including Premier Lionel Hill and his entire Cabinet.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article35678760 |title=Labor Party Expels Five M.P.'s |newspaper=Advertiser and Register |location=Adelaide |date=14 August 1931 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=21 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article133068424 |title=WHERE PREMIER WILL STAND. |newspaper=The News |location=Adelaide |date=6 January 1933 |accessdate=5 June 2015 |page=1 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Expelled MPs (23) in the House of Assembly:

• Frederick Birrell
• Alfred Blackwell
• Thomas Butterfield
• Clement Collins
• George Cooke
• Jack Critchley
• Bill Denny
• Thomas Edwards
• Even George
• William Harvey
• Lionel Hill
• Leonard Hopkins
• Robert Hunter
• Beasley Kearney
• Arthur McArthur
• Sydney McHugh
• John McInnes
• John Pedler
• Robert Richards
• Eric Shepherd
• Frank Staniford
• Albert Thompson
• Walter Warne

Expelled MPs (2) in the Legislative Council:

• James Jelley
• Stanley Whitford

Upon the failure of a November appeal to the federal executive of the Labor Party, the expelled MPs definitively constituted themselves as a separate parliamentary party.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article90638215 |title=New State Labor Party? |newspaper=The Chronicle |location=Adelaide |date=26 November 1931 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=41 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Having soundly lost its majority, the PLP ministry stayed in office until the 1933 election with the support of the conservative opposition—the Liberal Federation to 1932 and the Liberal and Country League afterward. Hill, facing increasing political challenges, had himself appointed Agent-General in London and abruptly quit politics in February 1932. Robert Richards briefly succeeded him as Premier, and led the party into the 1933 election.{{cite book | url=http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hill-lionel-laughton-6671 | title=Hill, Lionel Naughton (1881–1963) | chapter=Lionel Laughton Hill (1881–1963) | publisher=Australian Dictionary of Biography | accessdate=26 December 2014}}

The party, along with the official Labor Party and the rival splinter Lang Labor Party, performed poorly at the 1933 election. Due to massive vote splitting, the LCL won a landslide victory. The three Labor factions won only 13 seats between them, against 29 for the LCL. Of the 23 MPs the party had going into the election, only five – Blackwell, McInnes, Pedler, and Richards in the House of Assembly, and Whitford in the Legislative Council, were reelected. {{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37700501 |title=Labour Defeated. South Austrian Poll. |newspaper=Western Mail|location=Perth |date=13 April 1933 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=19 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32460490 |title=S.A. Elections |newspaper=The West Australian|location=Perth |date=12 April 1933 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=16 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article135546161 |title=S.A. UPPER HOUSE. |newspaper=Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate |date=14 April 1933 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=5 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Two of the three Lang Labor Party MHAs elected at the 1933 state election, Bob Dale and Tom Howard, left the party in 1933 post-election after falling out with leader Doug Bardolph and formed their own party, the South Australian Lang Labor Party (SALLP).

The four Labor parties merged back into the official Labor Party in June 1934 under the leadership of Andrew Lacey of the official Labor faction, following a successful unity conference.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58850868 |title=Reunion in Ranks of Labor |newspaper=The Mail |location=Adelaide |date=23 June 1934 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=2 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} Whitford, the party's sole upper house member, had left the party to sit as an independent by the time of the conference, and was not re-admitted.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128435135 |title=Last Minute News. |newspaper=The News |location=Adelaide |date=15 June 1934 |accessdate=26 December 2014 |page=5 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}