As soon as the Socialist League was formed in London a number of the provincial branches of the Federation, wholly or in part, left the Federation and joined. In Glasgow about one-half of us belonging to the Federation seceded and formed the Glasgow branch of the League early in January 1885. The Scottish Land and Labour League founded in Edinburgh, or the Scottish section of the Federation, by Andreas Scheu, also seceded from the Federation, and affiliated itself with the League.
Such in brief was the history and position of the modern Socialist movement in this country at the period when these recollections of William Morris begin.
The Socialist League, short-lived as its career was, was nevertheless an important factor in the making of the British Socialist movement and in shaping its character. The influence of its early teaching, its high idealism, its communistic aim, its conception of fellowship as the basic principle of Socialism, and its emphasis on, not merely the political and economic claims of Labour, but the necessity of art and pleasure in work as a means of joy in life—these ideas, which were the staple of Morris' teaching, and infused by the League into the early movement, have remained germinal in its propaganda, and have helped to give British Socialism its distinctive character.
