Pete Curran

He was a member of the ILP's National Administrative Council from 1893 to 1898, and stood for the party in Barrow at the 1895 general election, but won only 6.9% of the votes cast.

His next contest was the 1897 Barnsley by-election, where he took just over 1,000 votes, only 9.7% of the total, and was attacked by Ben Pickard, General Secretary of the Yorkshire Miners' Association, for his socialist politics, and with claims that he had abandoned his wife.

[2] Curran married his second wife, Marian Barry, a prominent women's labour activist, by 1898, and the couple had two sons and two daughters.

Around this time, the couple were active opponents of the Second Boer War, and Curran resigned from the Fabian Society in protest at its support for the conflict.

On this occasion, he also faced Unionist Party and Irish Nationalist opposition, and these candidates took enough of the Liberal vote that he won the seat.