ABSTRACT
The Labour Party's National Executive looked to Arthur Henderson, who had worked in tandem with Ramsay MacDonald since before the founding of the Labour Party. When neutral socialists proposed the holding of an international conference in Stockholm, the Labour Party's National Executive, influenced by the views of Henderson, voted not to participate. MacDonald's subsequent resignation as chairman of the Labour Party stemmed from his rejection of the sheer irrationality of the conflict. Probably more significant than the Independent Labour Party (ILP) pamphlet material was the consideration of the post-war world in the pages of the Labour Leader. The Labour Party's 1916 conference heard its chairman warn that it was impossible to have forced military service without the risk of forced industrial service. During the first several years of the war neither the Labour Party nor the ILP paid much attention to the ideas for post-war organization that began to surface among critics of the existing order.
