ABSTRACT
The Society wants this to be clearly understood-for it is very easy to misunderstand. Most Socialist bodies have Annual Conferences at which they decide upon then* policies, which are thereafter supposed to be binding on then: members. The Fabian Society's annual gathering is a business meeting, which does not, save quite exceptionally, deal at all with questions of policy in the ordinary sense. It is not precluded from dealing with them; for it is always open to the members, at the annual meeting, to criticise the Society's pubhcations or its conduct of the Society's policy during the year. But in practice this hardly ever happens. The Executive may be criticised for not having done more than it has done, or for having tackled some problem of Socialist research in the wrong way; but it is hardly ever confronted with any proposal to pin down its activities to a definite line. This is because our principle of fostering free Socialist research and publishing the results without attempting to reach detailed agreement is understood and valued by our members.
