Mr. Headlam also was a party to both documents:
Mr. G.R.S. Taylor, alone of the three Executive members of the Special
Committee, supported the Report and dissociated himself from the Reply.
Of course the Executive Committee had to decide points in their Report
by a majority. That majority, in the case of the proposed revision of
the Basis, was, as already mentioned, one vote only. I did not concur
with the view expressed about the Labour Party, a body scarcely less
easy to be understood by an outsider than the Fabian Society itself: and
at that time I was the only insider on the Fabian Executive.
But the real issue was a personal one. The Executive Committee at that
time consisted, in addition to the three just named, of Percy Alden
(Liberal M.P. for Tottenham), Hubert Bland, Cecil E. Chesterton, Dr. F.
Lawson Dodd, F.W. Galton, S.G. Hobson, H.W. Macrosty, W. Stephen
Sanders, Bernard Shaw, George Standring, Sidney Webb and myself. Mr.
Alden was too busy with his new parliamentary duties to take much part
in the affair. All the rest, except of course Mr. Taylor, stood
together on the real issue--Was the Society to be controlled by those
who had made it or was it to be handed over to Mr. Wells? We knew by
this time that he was a masterful person, very fond of his own way, very
uncertain what that way was, and quite unaware whither it necessarily
led.
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