Abstract
When H. M. Hyndman's contentious and authoritarian leadership of the British Social Democratic Federation provoked William Morris and nine other members of its Executive Council to resign on December 24, 1884, the Federation not only lost an important segment of its strength, but also some of its most effective members. With Morris went Dr. Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx Aveling, Belfort Bax (the confidant of Engels), Samuel Mainwaring (a leader of the Labour Emancipation League), John Lincoln Mahon (the founder, with Andreas Scheu, of the Scottish Land and Labour League), Robert Banner (with the very active Woolwich branch of the Federation), W. J. Clark, J. Cooper, and Joseph Lane. On December 30, less than a week after the secession of this group, Morris and his colleagues formed the Socialist League which almost immediately threatened to become a most formidable competitor of the S.D.F. From its headquarters in a Farringdon Street loft at the edge of East London, the Socialist League issued its periodical, The Commnoweal, and sallied forth to realize William Morris's hope of educating the masses for “the great and inevitable change” in British political, economic, and social life.
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