COVENTRY BOROUGH LABOUR PARTY

The records of the Coventry Borough Labour Party were placed in the Modern Records Centre at its inception in October 1973. The early records of the Party were destroyed with the Party headquarters in the blitz on Coventry in 1940 and the minute books of the Women's Sections are the only surviving pre-war documents.

The first Labour M.P. was elected in Coventry in 1923 with a majority of 346. It was in the same year that the Coventry Labour Party took on its first full-time Secretary/Agent, George Hodgkinson. Despite the election defeat in the following year, Labour influence on the City expanded during the 1920s and in 1929 Philip Noel-Baker was returned as M.P. for Coventry (until 1931). That influence was consolidated by the municipal election result in 1937, when Labour gained control of the City Council, a control which it was to retain for the next thirty years. In 1945 the city was split into two constituencies and in 1950 into three. With the exception of Coventry South, which was held by the Conservative Party from 1959-64, Coventry can claim an unbroken record of Labour representation within the House of Commons from 1945-70. The involvement of Coventry Borough Labour Party in government and planning, both at national and local level, is of course reflected in this archive. There are a number of files relating to elections and election procedure, as well as examples of election propaganda from all parties from 1948-66. Something of the independence of the Borough Party (suggested by Crossman in his introduction to Hodgkinson's book Sent to Coventry) can be discerned from the files relating to the stand on Civil Defence and researchers interested in this aspect of the Borough Party's history should see also deposit MSS.24, Sidney Stringer papers on Civil Defence.

The archive also indicates much of the city's recent history. The re-development of the city after the blitz is highlighted by the minute books of the 1940s, while the correspondence and subject files of the 1950s and 1960s reflect the industrial activities of Coventry, through the link between local trade unions and the Labour Party.