ABSTRACT
On June 8, 1881, a conference of the founders of the new Party took place, on which the Democratic Federation was formed. The Democratic Federation was founded for the purpose of spreading these views among the working classes. Before continuing the history of the Social Democratic Federation it is advisable to give an account of the Socialist League, for it was but an episode in the revival of socialism during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It would be hard to find a socialist organisation which exhibited so much talent and self-sacrifice and at the same time so little organising and executive capacity, as the Socialist League. The Social Democratic Federation began its career in 1885 as a small group, impaired by the defection of the men and women of the Socialist League, and immediately threw itself into the fray of parliamentary action in spite of its numerical and financial weakness.
