Labour Unity
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Labour Unity (Hebrew: אחדות העבודה, Ahdut HaAvoda) was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Israeli Labour Party.
[edit] History
The original Labour Unity party was founded in Ottoman Palestine before World War I and was headed by David Ben-Gurion. After the war, it merged with the right-wing section of Poale Zion to form Mapai, and effectively disappeared.
The party was resurrected in 1946 after a split from Mapai. In 1948 it united with Mapam and fought the 1949 and 1951 elections as part of the party.
However, during the second Knesset Moshe Aram, Yisrael Bar-Yehuda, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon and Aharon Zisling broke away from Mapam under the name Labour Unity - Poale Zion. However, they were not recognised by the speaker of the Knesset as an independent party.
The 1955 elections were fought as Labour Unity and the party managed to win 10 seats, making them the fifth largest in the Knesset. They formed part of both of Ben-Gurion's governing coalitions during the third Knesset. Party member Nahum Nir was appointed Knesset speaker (the only time a speaker has not been a member of the ruling party), Bar-Yehuda was made Minister of Internal Affairs, and Moshe Carmel became Minister of Transportation. However, they party were ultimately responsible for bringing down the government in 1959 when they and fellow coalition partners Mapam voted against the government on the issue of selling arms to West Germany and refused to leave the coalition.
In the 1959 elections the party was reduced to seven seats. They again joined the coalition government until its collapse in 1961, with Ben-Aharon becoming Minister of Transportation. The 1961 elections saw them gain one seat, and become part of all three coalition governments of the fifth Knesset with Yigal Allon becoming Minister of Labour and Ben-Aharon, Bar-Yehuda and Carmel all acting as Minister of Transportation during the session.
For the 1965 elections, the party allied with Mapai to form the Labour Alignment. The new party won 45 seats, increasing to 63 (the only time a single party has ever commanded a majority in the Knesset) when Mapam and Rafi also joined in 1968. Mapai, Labour Unity and Rafi merged within the newly-renamed Alignment to form the Israeli Labor Party and ceased to exist as individual entities.
[edit] External links
- Party history Knesset website (English)
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