Wheatley then started a successful printing business,[1]: 74  which published leftist political works.

[1]: 76 Against the UK's involvement in World War I, he campaigned against conscription and assisted in organising rent strikes in Glasgow.

Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald sometimes disapproved of Wheatley's debating methods, as well as his friendship with James Maxton.

( Maxton was suspended from the Commons on one occasion when he called Conservative MP Sir Frederick Banbury "a murderer" for a proposed cut in child welfare.)

But Wheatley continued to work closely with his ILP colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party, especially Maxton.

His nephew, John Thomas Wheatley, became a Labour MP for Edinburgh East in 1947 and Lord Advocate.