ABSTRACT
The Labour Party has become definitely Socialist in its constitution as well as its policy. The Society is a constituent of the Labour Party and of the International Socialist Congress; but it takes part freely in all constitutional movements, social, economic and political, which can be guided towards its own objects. In Central Europe the nation’s great and small has been too much occupied with the aftermath of the war to have time for social reconstruction. The Research Department, always semi-detached, gradually moved further away from the Society. In 1916 it opened its doors to non-members; in 1918 it became the Labour Research Department, and ceased to be a constituent part of the Society. The appointment of Sidney Webb to a seat on the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, briefly recorded in a former chapter, proved to be an event of great consequence.
