The Coventry Labour Representation Committee was founded in December 1902 and the Coventry Labour Party, which grew out of it, expanded its influence so that by 1923 Coventry had returned its first Labour MP. However, the early records of the Coventry party were destroyed during the blitz on the city in 1940, and the surviving records mostly date from after the war.
The first Labour MP was elected in Coventry in 1923 with a majority of 346. It was in the same year that the Coventry Labour Party employed its first full-time agent, George Hodgkinson. Despite the election defeat in the following year, Labour influence on the city of Coventry expanded during the 1920s and in 1929 Philip Noel Baker was returned as MP for Coventry, a seat he retained until 1931. The influence of the Labour Party in Coventry was consolidated by the municipal election result in 1937, when Labour gained control of the City Council
Reference: Paper finding aid for The Coventry Borough Labour Party
From the guide to the Papers of the Coventry Borough Labour Party, 1932-1967, (Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library)
