me Chairman of the
I.L.P., was elected Chairman, a post which he has ever since retained.
The Joint Committee has wisely confined its activities to matters about
which there was no disagreement, and its proceedings have always been
harmonious to the verge of dullness. The Committee began by arranging a
short series of lectures, replacing for the time the ordinary Fabian
meetings, and it proposed to the Labour Party a demonstration in favour
of Adult Suffrage, which was successfully held at the Royal Albert Hall.

In the winter of 1912-13 the Joint Committee co-operated with the
National Committee for the Prevention of Destitution (of which later) in
a big War against Poverty Campaign, to demand a minimum standard of
civilised life for all. A demonstration at the Albert Hall, a Conference
at the Memorial Hall, twenty-nine other Conferences throughout Great
Britain, all attended by numerous delegates from Trade Unions and other
organisations, and innumerable separate meetings were among the
activities of the Committee. In 1913 a large number of educational
classes were arranged. In the winter of 1913-14 the I.L.P. desired to
concentrate its attention on its own "Coming of Age Campaign," an
internal affair, in which co-operation with another body was
inappropriate. A few months later the War began and, for reasons
explained later, joint action remains for the time in abeyance.

It will be convenient to complete the history of the movements for
Socialist Unity, though it extends beyond the period assigned to this
chapter, and we must now turn back to the beginning of another line of
action.

The International Socialist and Trade Union Congresses held at intervals
of three or four years since 1889 were at first no more than isolated
Congresses, arranged by local organisations constituted for the purpose
in the preceding year. Each nation voted as one, or at most, as two
units, and therefore no limit was placed on the number of its delegates:
the one delegate from Argentina or Japan consequently held equal voting
power to the scores or even hundreds from France or Germany. But
gradually the organisation was tightened up, and in 1907 a scheme was
adopted which gave twenty votes each to the leading nations, and
proportionately fewer to the others. Moreover a permanent Bureau was
established at Brussels, with Emile Vandervelde, the distinguished
leader of the Belgian Socialists, later well known in England as the
Ministerial