parties belonging to the other classes.  The Manifesto, written by Bernard Shaw, is a brilliant essay on labour in politics and a criticism of both the existing parties; it assures the working classes that they could create their own party if they cared as much about politics as they cared for horse-racing (football was not in those days the typical sport); and it concludes by advising them to vote for the better, or against the worse, man, on the ground that progress was made by steps, a step forward was better than a step backward, and the only thing certain is the defeat of a party which sulks and does not vote at all.  The Manifesto was widely circulated by the then vigorous local societies, and no doubt had some effect, though the intensity of the antipathy to Liberal Unionism on the one side and to Home Rule on the other left little chance for other considerations.

Six members of the Society were candidates, but none of them belonged to the group which had made its policy and conducted its campaign.  In one case, Ben Tillett at West Bradford, the Society took an active part in the election, sending speakers and collecting L152 for the Returning Officer’s expenses.  Of the six, J. Keir Hardie at West Ham alone was successful, but Tillett did well at West Bradford, polling 2,749, only a few hundred votes below the other two candidates, and preparing the field for the harvest which F.W.  Jowett reaped in 1906.

The result of the election, which took place in July, was regarded as a justification for the Fabian policy of social advance.  In London, where Liberalism was strongly tainted with it, the result was “as in 1885,” the year of Liberal victory, and the only Liberal seat lost was that of the President of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association!  In the industrial cities, and in Scotland, where Liberalism was still individualist, the result was rather as in 1886, when Liberalism lost.  In London also “by far the largest majorities were secured by Mr. John Burns and Mr. Keir Hardie, who stood as avowed Socialists, and by Mr. Sydney Buxton, whose views are really scarcely less advanced than theirs."[29]

I have pointed out that Fabian policy began with State Socialism, and in quite early days added to it Municipal Socialism; but in 1888 the authors of “Fabian Essays” appeared to be unconscious of Trade Unionism and hostile to the Co-operative movement.  The Dock Strike of 1889 and the lecturing in London clubs and to the artisans of the north pointed the way to a new development.  Moreover, in the summer of 1892 Sidney Webb had married Miss Beatrice Potter, author of an epoch-making little book, “The Co-operative Movement,” and together they were at work on their famous “History of Trade Unionism.”