CHAPTER XIII
LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE
WHEN in 1888 at the Whitsunday Annual Conference of the League the parliamentarian faction were decisively out-voted and asked to withdraw from the Party, there was for the moment a general expectation among the victors that the troubles within the League were over, and that its work would now proceed unimpeded by internal strife. Morris, however, was far from hopeful of that result. He knew the movement both in London and in the Provinces better than anyone else did, and he was too quick of eye not to discern the new peril of the situation. Returning that evening from the Conference to Hammersmith he remarked to me rather gloomily, 'We have got rid of the parliamentarians, and now our anarchist friends will want to drive the team. However, we have the Council and the Commonweal safe with us for at least a twelve-month, and that is something to be thankful for.'
This uneasy feeling about what had occurred was often expressed by Morris during my visit. There was, he said, something unnatural in casting out comrades who, however perverse in their methods, wished to remain banded with us. It didn't feel Socialist-like. Had their object been to break away from the League, as indeed in consistency to their principles they ought to have done, the position would have been quite different. Besides, he felt within himself that should it ever come to a choice with him between having to rank himself on the side of parliamentarianism
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