ABSTRACT
However, the widespread labour unrest of the period after 1910, the emergence of guild socialism and, after 1912, the commitment of the Webbs to the Labour Party as the appropriate political vehicle for their genre of socialism led to the embrace of theoretical positions and the articulation of policies more socialistic in character. It was, though, in the aftermath of a war that had profoundly shaken the faith of many in the stability and beneficence of the capitalist order, and seemingly vindicated the substance of socialist critiques, that the policy stance, economic literature and Constitution (1918) of the Labour Party assumed a decidedly socialist hue.2
