The NQLP held a majority within the Townsville council from 1943 to 1949, having formed a coalition with local Communist councillors such as Fred Paterson until 1946.
[4] Aikens was elected for the Electoral district of Mundingburra in the 1944 Queensland state election and would serve in the state parliament for the next 33 years; in 1960 a redistribution turned his seat into the Electoral district of Townsville South.
Although initially contesting a few other seats in northern Queensland the party only ever elected Aikens.
He was defeated in the 1977 Queensland state election and the party subsequently folded.
[3] Rather than maintaining a set platform, the party was noted for being "merely a medium for Aikens’s political career".