Shortly after this incident, which Mr. MacDonald attributed to a misunderstanding, came the great railway strike and its settlement, in which he and Mr. Lloyd George were the leading factors. Received with enthusiasm by the Liberal press, this settlement was bitterly denounced by the _Labour Leader_, the official organ of the "Independents." Mr. MacDonald on the other hand expressed in the House of Commons deep satisfaction with the final attitude of the government and predicted that if it was maintained no such trouble need arise again in a generation. No statement could have been more foreign to the existing feeling among the workers, a part of whom it will be remembered failed to return to work for several days after the settlement. The "Independents" as the political representatives of the more radical of the unionists, naturally embody this discontent, while the Labour Party, being partly responsible for the settlement, becomes more than ever the semi-official labor representative of the government--a divergence that can scarcely fail to lead to an open breach. It was as a result of all of these critical situations, especially the great railway strike and its sequels, that an effort has been made to form a "British Socialist Party" to embrace all Socialist factions, and to free them from dependence on the Labour Party. It has succeeded in uniting all, except the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society, and includes even a number of local branches (though only a small minority of the total number) of the former organization. This Party has issued an outright revolutionary declaration of principles. Mr. Quelch, editor of the Social Democratic organ, _Justice_, had proposed the following declaration of principles, which was far in advance of the present position of the Independent Labour Party, if somewhat ambiguous in the clause printed in italics:-- "The Socialist Party is the political expression of the working-class movement, acting in the closest cooeperation with industrial organizations for the socialization of the means of production and distribution--that is to say, the transformation of capitalist society into a collective or communist society. Alike in its object, its ideals, and in the means employed, the Socialist party, _though striving for the realization of immediate social reforms demanded by the working class_, is not a reformist but a revolutionary party, which recognizes that social freedom and equality can only be won by fighting the class war through to the finish, and thus abolishing forever all class distinctions."[143]