other organisation declares: "The Fabian Society
poses as a Socialist organisation, for we are told that this Society
'consists of Socialists.' It is indeed composed of middle-class men
who naturally deny the class struggle, profess to believe in
permeating the capitalist class with Socialism, and hold that the
tendency of society is towards government by the expert-Fabianism
therefore tends towards the rule of the bureaucrats or that section
of the educated middle-class. The Fabians are the cult of the civil
service and are Socialists neither in name nor in fact."[1159]

Let us now consider the genesis and character of the great Labour
party.

Formerly Socialists and trade unionists marched and fought apart.
However, "On the 27th February, 1900, a joint Socialist and Trade
Union Conference met in the Memorial Hall, London. One hundred and
seventeen delegates were present representing sixty-seven Trade
Unions, seven representing the Independent Labour Party, four the
Social-Democratic Federation, one the Fabian Society. The result was
the formation of the Labour Representation Committee,"[1160]
simultaneously representing trade unions and Socialists. "At the
General Election of 1906, the Labour Representation Committee ran
fifty candidates for Parliament and returned thirty. That year its
name was changed to the Labour Party."[1161] The Labour party
therefore unites trade unionists and Socialists. The Fabian Society
and the Independent Labour party have joined it. Only the
Social-Democratic Federation has so far kept aloof from it.

The Labour party, being chiefly composed of trade unionists, is fond
of posing as a non-Socialist party. It is true that "Mr. Keir Hardie,
the Labour leader, said they did not want Toryism, Liberalism, or
Socialism, only Labourism, but the same Keir Hardie sits as a delegate
on the International Socialist Bureau."[1162] "Many of the Labour
members in Parliament are avowed Socialists. The working-class
movement already is largely a Socialist movement, and is in continual
process of becoming more so. With the speculative side of Socialism
the average man with us has but small concern; it is its common-sense
which appeals to him. By inherited instinct we are all Communists at
heart."[1163]

"The Labour party, which now has thirty-one members in the House of
Commons, is not purely Socialist, but twenty-three or twenty-four of
its M.P.s, and nearly all its elected executive, are Socialists.