Workers in the colony of New South Wales created a political party in reaction to the use by employers of the full might of government to defeat strike action. The year was 1891. Workers had organised themselves into trade unions to protect and enhance the rights and working conditions of their members by way of action in common. Trade unions formed a political party in their own interest by establishing local labour leagues which anyone with a commitment to a party of organised labour could join. The party was a localist party – a labour league for every suburb and town across the colony with sufficient local support.

The party grew from below. The leagues selected their own candidates to contest constituencies in the Labor interest. For the first time in the history of Westminster parliaments, a coherent mass of people without wealth, income, ancestry, property, social standing, patronage or powerful connections could seriously contest the constituencies where they lived. Labor candidates and MPs came from the communities they represented. Having themselves selected a local candidate, all of the members of the leagues united behind that candidate. In return, the candidates selected for the first outing in 1891, for all of the party's first century and beyond, were obliged to express the views of the membership below. Without that right to select their own candidates – the driving imperative for the party's founding – the Labor Party would have been nothing.