The Second Annual Conference

The Second Annual Conference of The Socialist Party of Great Britain will gather at the Communist Club at Easter, to review the work of the year and draw from it the lessons which will enable us to avoid any mistakes of the past and perfect our organisation for the future. The delegates will find the Party stronger numerically than it ever was, and growing rapidly. The propaganda work being confined in the main to the metropolis, our progress has, of course, been made principally in the metropolitan area. Nevertheless, in most of tlie large and many of the small provincial centres we have now either members of the Party or subscribers to our official organ, THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, and we think we are quite justified in saying that without being extravagently sanguine over the matter, we have no doubt at all that the near future will show branches forming around the existing nucleus in those districts. At present Watford to the North and Bexley to the South stand as our Branch outposts. A year hence, with the maintenance of that enthusiasm and determination which have endured unabated with our membership during the two years of our existence—and may therefore fairly be regarded now as constant and even an increasing quantity—and we shall surely be heard of further afield. We are young, but in our short two years of life not one single fact, not one isolated incident, has inspired a doubt in our mind as to the correctness of the attitude we have assumed in opposition to all other parties. On the contrary, everything has confirmed us in our faith, and demonstrated the dangers that, attend even the slightest deviation from the line rigidly dictated by the conditions of the class struggle. We have seen how the most honest of men may only traverse these side-tracks and seeming shortcuts at the imminent risk of danger from the pitfalls and gins that beset them. We do not know of an instance where an honest man has escaped unscathed. Knowing therefore what we know, we may go forward with added confidence, satisfied that if our honest man remains honest he will, directly he has discovered his error, make all haste to extricate himself from the difficulties of the political cul-de-sac into which he has unwittingly strayed and follow after along the path of our progress. Let those who gibe at our youth (as though truth had any relation to old age) take what measure of poor consolation they may from their own decrepitude. Let those who sneer at our size (as though truth and bulk were interchangeable terms) make as merry in their hearts as they may. Time, whose inexorable advance none may stay, will cure us all too speedily of our youth, as it will cure our sneerers and gibers of their delusions. For them there is nothing but a painful awakening or—dissolution. The future is with us. Therefore, Comrades of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, let us utilise the opportunity presented by our second Annual Conference to cement again our resolve to follow the straight track at whatever cost, and may our gathering together serve to inspirit us, and nerve us, and strengthen our arm for the work which remains to be done before the last entrenchment of capitalism is rushed, the last rampart scaled, and the forces of Labour, so long held in subjection, come into their own.