From this time onwards the Socialist party made slow but steady progress. The Fabian Society, founded also in 1884, devoted itself to adapting the principles of socialism to Eng lish political conditions, and in 1893 the late J. Keir Hardie (q.v.) (Ayrshire Miners), who had been elected to Parliament for West Ham, near London, theyear before, founded the In dependent Labor Party, a socialist body whose object was to promulgate a form of socialism more acceptable to British trade unionists than the doctrinnaire and revolutionary gospel ac cording to Marx, which was then expounded by the Social Democrats.
Here we must turn aside to make one point clear. The Independent Labor Party (com monly called the I. L. P.) is a small, though influential, socialistic body, which has some 60, 000 members. It must be carefully distin guished from the Labor Party which is before all things independent, as well as from the Labor Party in its wider sense. This impor tant distinction is constantly neglected even in the best-informed London press.
During the 15 years prior to 1899 the Social ist societies kept up a constant agitation for the direct and independent representation of labor in Parliament, with a certain measure of success. John Burns was elected in 1892 for Battersea as an independent attached to no party. Keir Hardie, after his election, carried his independence even further, but lost his seat in 1895, and was not re-elected till 1900. But only one member ever got in on a purely Social ist ticket for a few months in 1910— Victor Grayson. Meanwhile the trade unions had been gradually permeated with the new spirit, and in the autumn of 1899 at their Plymouth con ference, a resolution was carried instructing their executive to call a conference of trade unions and Socialist societies in order to form a new body for the promotion of labor represen tation. This conference met in London in Feb ruary 1900, and the Labor Representation Com mittee was then founded with a membership (at the close of the first year) of 376,000, of whom less than 23,000 were Socialists and the rest trade unionists.
The new body (which in 1906 altered its name to the Labor Party) consisted of a feder tion of trade unions, trades councils (that is the local organization of trade unionists in each town), and the three Socialist societies, of which, as previously mentioned, the Independent Labor Party is one. The Social Democrats,
however, withdrew a year or two later. At the general election of 1900, the Labor Representa tion Committee, as it was then called, put 15 candidates into the field, but it was only a few months old; the Conservative Party, asking a vote of confidence from the country while the South African War was in progress, won an overwhelming victory, and the Labor Party was not ill-pleased to score two wins, Keir Hardie at Merthyr and Richard Bell (a railway man) at Derby. During the next five years it won three sensational bye-elections, but Mr. Bell dropped out, and at the dissolution the new party numbered four. Mr. Bell's defection was due to a change in the policy of the body. It was first formed to create a ((groups; it was determined that candidates supported by the Labor Representation Committee might ally themselves on other questions with the exist ing parties; that independence should be limited to labor questions alone. Against this policy a constant internal struggle went on till the Newcastle conference of February 1903, when the extremists won an overwhelming victory, and thenceforward the watchword wascomplete independence of all other political parties.
There are two chief reasons for this policy. One, of course, is distrust of the Liberal Party which is largely middle-class, controlled by wealth, and in league with a section of the aristocracy. It is not necessary to discuss how far this distrust is well founded, because it is undeniable that the Liberal Party, as at present constituted, must consider other interests as well as those of the workers. The other reason is more cogent. If labor makes any political alliance it must be with the Liberals. Once indeed the secretary of the cotton-operatives was a Tory candidate for Oldham, but he lost the seat for his party, and he is the only excep tion to the otherwise unbroken rule that labor alliance means alliance with Liberalism. But very many trade unionists, especially in Lan cashire, are Conservative, or at any rate are strongly anti-Liberal. In fact it was the acces sion of 103,000 textile operatives that at the Newcastle conference turned the scale de cisively for independence. Five years were spent in active preparation, and the long expected election of 1906 found the Labor Party ready for the fight.