the members. As soon, therefore, as he had gone through the civility of greeting a number of literary and 'art' folk who had gathered in the reception-room, he came away with Mavor and myself across the city to Watson Street, off the Gallowgate, where upstairs in a low-ceilinged warehouse flat the branch meetings were held. He arrived just as the public meeting was over, and found a dozen or so members grouped round the platform awaiting Morris' coming, W.J. Nairne, the secretary, acting as chairman.
The trouble inside the London Executive of the Federation, of which I have spoken in a previous chapter, had already divided the Glasgow branch into two factions. Nairne was unschooled, but an exceedingly zealous propagandist, who with myself had been chiefly instrumental in forming the branch, and was a keen partisan on the Hyndman side, so much so that he greeted Morris quite frigidly on his arrival, only grudgingly offering him his hand. The members generally, however, gave Morris a hearty cheer. Nairne said that he supposed Comrade Morris would like to say a few words to the members, and with this rather discouraging invitation Morris briefly addressed the meeting.
He was glad, he said, to have the opportunity of meeting for the first time his comrades in Glasgow—the few who had banded themselves together to begin the tremendous task of bringing into being a Socialist Commonwealth in Great Britain, and he congratulated them on the signs he had observed in Glasgow and Edinburgh of public interest in the subject of Socialism. He then alluded in careful words to the friction in the London Executive on the question of political policy, and expressed the hope that the dispute would be got over and that they would all be able to work together in unity inside the Federation; but even should the regrettable happening come that the two sides resolved to separate, he hoped both would continue friendly towards one another, making common cause for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
