Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/235

 Rh social questions. Poverty became a problem of public concern, not a mystery for private and individual treatment. The Radical Party in politics had been shipwrecked. The British guns thundering in front of Alexandria in 1882, at the bidding of a Liberal Government, did as much havoc in Radical clubs and associations at home as they did in Egypt.

An obscure body called the Democratic Federation had been formed from the spirits who haunted the Eleusis Club in Chelsea (a famous home of militant Radicals) and who met on Clerkenwell Green, in 1882, and it was the soil upon which the culture of Karl Marx was planted. Mr. Hyndman, an ardent disciple of Marx, became the leader of the new party which changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation ("Party" was substituted for Federation in 1906) in 1884. The propaganda of Socialism was begun. The first start was not encouraging; for a split took place within a few months, and the Socialist League, with which the name of William Morris will always be associated, was formed. The Federation was Marxian out and out, the League had strong Anarchist leanings, and the two were at the time of their split supplemented by the eclectic Fabian Society which had sprung from a little idealist group, which Professor Thomas Davidson had formed a year or two before, called the New Fellowship. From these camps the Socialist doctrines issued. The League weakened and gradually disappeared after helping