After the unsatisfactory results of the elections of 1910 the conflict within the Independent Labour Party became more acute than ever. Mr. Barnes, then chairman of the Labour Party itself, and Mr. Keir Hardie, the chief figure in its Socialistic (_Independent Labour Party_) section, criticized severely the tactics that had been followed by the majority, _led also by two members of the same "Socialistic" section_, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Snowden. It is true that the difference was not very fundamental, but it is interesting to note that MacDonald and Snowden and their avowed non-Socialist trade-union allies were accused of giving so much to the Liberals as even to weaken the position of the Labour Party itself to say nothing of the still greater inconsistency of such compromises with anything approaching Socialism. Mr. Barnes and Mr. Hardie pointed out that the timid tactics pursued had endangered not only the fight against the House of Lords, but also the effort to keep down the naval budget and the proposed solution of the unemployment question that was to have acknowledged "the right to work." That is, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Snowden had been so anxious to please the Liberal government, that they had risked even these moderate reforms, which were favored by many anti-Socialistic Radicals. At the "Independents'" 1911 conference at Birmingham, again, a motion was proposed by the radical element, Hall, MacLachlan, and others, which demanded that this Party should cease voting perpetually for the government merely because the government claimed that every question required a vote of confidence, and that they should put their own issues in the foreground, and vote on all others according to their merits. This very consistent resolution, in complete accord with the position of Socialist Parties the world over, was however voted down by the "Independents," as it had been shortly previously at the conference of the non-Socialist Labour Party of which they are a section. The executive committee brought in an amendment in the contrary sense to that of the radical resolution, and this amendment was ably supported by MacDonald. Hardie and Barnes, however, persuaded the Congress to vote down both resolution and amendment on the ground that the "Independents" in Parliament _ought to support the Liberal and Radical government, except in certain crises_--as illustrations of which Barnes mentioned the Labourites' opposition to armaments and their demand for the right to work. Keir Hardie also declared that he was not satisfied with the conduct of the Labour Party in Parliament; his motion condemning the government's action in the Welsh coal strike, for example, had secured only seventeen of their forty votes. He claimed that the influence of the Liberals over the party was due, not to their social reform program, but to their passing of the trade-union law permitting picketing after the elections of 1906, and that he feared them more than he did the