Leeds Convention

The Leeds Convention was a socialist meeting in Leeds, England, held on 3 June 1917. It was organised by the British Socialist Party and Independent Labour Party in the wake of the February Revolution, which had seen the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia. The Labour Party organisers hoped it would instigate a shift within the party towards support of a peace treaty to end the First World War. Many leading British socialist figures spoke at the convention and it supported, almost unanimously, the four resolutions proposed. These were to support the Russian Revolution, to support a peace treaty, to support civil liberties and to establish a network of councils of workers' and soldiers' delegates.

The convention was criticised in the right-wing press and raised the concerns of British king George V but ultimately led to little progress. The Labour Party came to dominate the movement and, with prominent member Philip Snowden declaring "I am for Socialism coming through parliament and no other way", almost none of the workers' and soldiers' councils were established. The international Third Zimmerwald Conference came to be seen as the more prominent organisation calling for a "people's peace". Although characterised as a revolutionary body one historian, Stephen White writing in 1974, states that the convention was predominantly a pacifist meeting. Many of its attendees went on to found the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920