It was founded in 1944 by a coalition of former Nationalist Party members, former Irish Republican Army (IRA) members and Protestant trade unionists around Victor Halley, all based in West Belfast.
[1] The party produced a newspaper, Northern Star, edited by Vincent MacDowell[2] (father of former Green MEP Nuala Ahern) who would go on to be active at various times in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, the Green Party for which he was elected a councillor and the Irish Labour Party.
In the 1945 Northern Ireland general election, the party won 5,497 votes and Harry Diamond took the Belfast Falls seat.
Later that April, a 'six counties council' was set up to co-ordinate a merger into the Irish Labour Party pending the October 1949 party convention to amend the constitution to permit expansion into Northern Ireland.
[3] Diamond later stood for Parliament under a variety of labels before eventually forming the Republican Labour Party.