ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the controversy was not the only business that occupied the Society at the period of the South African War. The Society had always been concerned in public education. Its first electoral success was when Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam were elected to the London School Board in 1888, and except for one interval of three years Mr. Headlam has sat on the School Board and its successor, the London County Council. The educational scheme of the Society was not, however, the joint production of its experts. It was entirely the work of Sidney Webb. Headlam and Wallas, and the members who took part, contributed their share as critics, but as critics only, and for the most part as hostile critics. The Chairman of the Technical Education Board was something more than a self-constituted authority on the organisation of education: and the other members of the Society were engaged on a contest on their home ground.
