election of twenty-nine Labour Members. When Paddy Ashdown and Neil Kinnock rule out the possibility of their parties standing down in one another's favour on the grounds of 'dangerous precedent', they should bear in mind it has been done before. Not only was the Election won by a landslide but the Government which was formed was arguably the best administration we have ever had. Hardie was subsequently elected as the Parliamentary Labour Party's first Chairman. Until his death in 1915, the man born in a one-room cottage in Lanarkshire was perhaps the best loved, and - by some - the most hated man in Great Britain. Scotland's socialist movement was particularly influenced by Christianity. It remains so to this day, with a far higher ratio of committed Christians representing its interests in Parliament than its English and Welsh counterparts: from the reformed Churches men such as John Smith, the shadow Chancellor, and from the fiery Left, the Catholic, Denis Canavan. Writing early in 1990 in the Catholic newspaper, The Universe, Liverpool Walton MP, Eric Heffer, recalled another Scottish Socialist MP, John Wheatley, a Catholic. Son of an Irish labourer, his family came to the West of Scotland seeking employment before the First World War. Father and son both worked in the mines. After his election to Parliament in 1922, Wheatley became involved in what Heffer described as a number of 'parliamentary scenes'. He also became involved in clashes with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, who he claimed were insufficiently committed to Leo XIII's social teachings contained in the 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum. He argued his case in a pamphlet, The Catholic Working Man, published in 1909. Like Hardie, Wheatley never accepted the historical materialism theories of Marx and Engels, and in the sectarian Glasgow of the day was an early voice in seeking to create a unity between Catholic and Protestant. He told fellow Catholic workers: 'Your interests and those of your fellow Protestant workers are identical. Your enemies are their enemies. Workers of every race and creed must unite.' In 1924, in the first Labour Government, Wheatley became Housing Minister and was responsible for the 'Wheatley' Housing Act which led to the construction of 250,000 publicly owned homes.
The Emergence of Social Democracy
During the inter-war years the Christian Socialist tradition increasingly became estranged from the social democracy of R.H. Tawney. The differences are perhaps