st to its members. It pursued an uneventful
but useful career, managed virtually by the secretaries of the two
societies, which divided the funds annually in proportion to the
literature supplied. Several Easter Conferences of Elected Persons were
held with varying success. Later on the nominal control was handed over
to the Joint Committee, next to be described.

The problem of Socialist Unity seemed to be approaching a settlement
when the three organisations, in 1900, joined hands with the Trade
Unions in the formation of the Labour Representation Committee, later
renamed the Labour Party. But in 1901, eighteen months after the
Committee was constituted, the S.D.F. withdrew, and thereafter unity
became more difficult than ever, since two societies were united for
collective political action with the numerically and financially
powerful trade unions, whilst the third took up the position of hostile
isolation. But between the Fabian Society and the I.L.P. friendly
relations became closer than ever. The divergent political policies of
the two, the only matter over which they had differed, had been largely
settled by change of circumstances. The Fabian Society had rightly held
that the plan of building up an effective political party out of
individual adherents to any one society was impracticable, and the
I.L.P. had in fact adopted another method, the permeation of existing
organisations, the Trade Unions. On the other hand the Fabian Society,
which at first confined its permeation almost entirely to the Liberal
Party, because this was the only existing organisation accessible--we
could not work through the Trade Unions, because we were not eligible to
join them--was perfectly willing to place its views before the Labour
Party, from which it was assured of sympathetic attention. Neither the
Fabian Society nor the I.L.P. desired to lose its identity, or to
abandon its special methods. But half or two-thirds of the Fabians
belonged also to the I.L.P., and nearly all the I.L.P. leaders were or
had been members of the Fabian Society.

The suggestion was made in March, 1911, by Henry H. Slesser, then one of
the younger members of the Executive, that the friendly relations of the
two bodies should be further cemented by the formation of a Joint
Standing Committee. Four members of each Executive together with the
secretaries were appointed, and W.C. Anderson, later M.P. for the
Attercliffe Division of Sheffield, and at that ti