ABSTRACT
Constitutionally, the only remaining task was ‘to complete the foundations of the democratic state’, by introducing manhood suffrage, abolishing all property disqualifications, getting rid of the house of lords, providing for public payment of representatives and holding annual elections. Fabian intellectual dominance of British Socialism during its formative years, together with the Liberal-Labour parliamentary alliance of 1906-14, effectively inhibited the development of a distinctive Labour attitude on questions of the constitution and the machinery of government. If a future Labour Government met with obstacles that the normal processes of parliamentary democracy seemed incapable of overcoming, the demand for parliamentary reform would probably arise again. In a period of rapid social change, it is a risk that might easily become a grave one; for it represents the effort of men who, although small in numbers, have the immense powers great wealth confers, to challenge, by means outside the ordinary conventions of parliamentary life.
