Labor Party

An eclectic  political formation in the ELF that drew inspiration from Marxist currents associated  with the Soviet Union, the Labor Party arose during the reform (Eslah) movement of the late 1960s and dominated the  restructured  ELF from 1971 to 1982, when it splintered at the end of a civil was with the EPLF. It has been compared to the clandestine EPRP) that controlled the EPLF  throughout its existence, but the Labor Party, like the ELF, was never as ideologically homogenous or as internally disciplined  as its Maoist counterpart in the EPLF, and its leadership included such  disparate political figures as  Abdalla Idris Mohammed, Ahmed Nasser, Azien Yassin, Herui Tedla, Ibrahim Mohammed Ali, Ibrahim Totil and Saleh Ahmed  Eyay. This led to conflict within the Labor Party, just as it did in the ELF.
When Herui was not elected to the front’s Revolutionary Council (RC) at its 1975 congress, after being chastised for acting on his own to initiate talks with the rival EPLF, he broke with the Labor Party and formed the Eritrean Democratic Movement  to challenge its hegemony. This, together with the Labor-dominated RC’s decision to enter unity talks with Osman Saleh Sabbe’s, ELF-PLF at the expense of its relations with the EPLF, triggered an eruption of dissent labeled falul by the  ELF leaders and an exodus of Kebessan fighters.  Many joined the EPLF. Others became refugees  in Sudan. One faction regrouped as the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Eritrea (DMLE) and took sanctuary with the TPLF, eventually reconstituting itself as the Eritrean Revolutionary Democratic Front (ERDF) and  participating in various opposition alignment that , in 2005 produced the EDA
When the Labor Party was finally dissolved by 1982, many of its leaders aligned themselves with either the ELF faction identified with Abdallah I Idris or the newly formed ELF.RC.

Source Connell, Dan and Killion, Tom (2011) Historical dictionary of Eritrea : Historical dictionaries of Africa ;volume 114. pp.342-344