CHAPTER VI
FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE
FROM the outset to the end of its career the Socialist League was harassed with internal trouble. The members of the League had, as my readers will remember, split away from the Social Democratic Federation, chiefly on the ground that as revolutionary Socialists they could take no part in parliamentary agitation—at any rate not until Socialism had so far ripened in the country that Parliament could be made the means of precipitating the social revolution. Nevertheless, almost as soon as the League was formed a considerable section of its members in London began a campaign inside its ranks to get parliamentary action included among its avowed means of agitation. And again, no sooner was this body of disturbers finally compelled to withdraw from the League after a few years of incessant strife than an Anarchist faction began to afflict the League in a kindred way by stirring up dissension in order to get the League to declare itself an Anarchist organisation.
These troubles, particularly as the dissentients pursued their agitation with acerbity and recourse to intrigue and personal accusation, worried and vexed Morris. So much so, indeed, that eventually the irritation of it all greatly lessened his pleasure in working inside the League, and so led to the breaking up of the League altogether.
It was in the Whitsuntide of 1888, when the parliamentarian faction had attained a sufficient following in London to give their efforts to capture the League some
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