In February 1900, the Society's Executive Committee submitted a postal ballot to approximately 800 Fabians asking them whether they were in "favor of an official pronouncement being made now by the Fabian Society on Imperialism in relation to the War?" [1] Just over half of the membership responded, and by the narrow vote of 259 (54 percent) to 217 (46 percent), the Society decided in favor of Shaw's position not to make a pronouncement against the Boer War. Immediately afterwards, eighteen mostly important members resigned, including two members of the Executive Committee, James Ramsay MacDonald and J.F. Green, as well as other influential members such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Walter Crane, Henry Salt and Pete Curran. [2]
This vote and the resignations it engendered have often been cited as proof the Society "went jingo" in 1900. This was not exactly true. For one thing, the ballot merely asked whether the Society should take an official position on the matter of the Boer War. Undoubtedly some of the 259 members who voted "no" on the postal ballot were in favor of the war but there is no true way of knowing how many members took this position as the question was not asked. Furthermore, given the arguments made just before the balloting by proponents of a "no" vote, that the issue was beyond the concern and expertise of the Society and that it could end up splitting the Society and impede its work on pressing domestic issues, it is very likely that a large percentage of members who ended up voting "no" did so more because they shared these beliefs than because they were imperialists or supported imperialism. [3] More importantly, though, even if the vote represented a victory by imperialists and imperialism over anti-imperialists and anti-imperialism, such a result is a very limited one as only 476 members (59 percent) out of over 800 even bothered to vote. Despite a spirited two-month campaign waged between supporters and opponents of the proposition, the remaining 41 percent of the membership that did not vote must not have considered imperialism important enough to bother. Though the 259 (32 percent of the membership) to 217 (27 percent) vote was a significant one, it can hardly be said that such a vote amounted to any sort of mandate for a pro-imperialist policy, if any at all.
Two months later, however, the Fabian Executive decided that the Society needed to issue an official tract on imperialism, if for no other reason than to be able to "continue to produce tracts on municipal bakeries, fire insurance, pawnshops, slaughterhouses, steamboats and the milk supply." [4] With tensions calmed somewhat and several anti-imperialist members having resigned from the Society, the Fabian Executive decided Shaw should draft a tract on the issue of imperialism. It was believed that with MacDonald and other major anti-imperialists out of the way, Shaw could produce a document that would be generally acceptable. [5] The end result of this endeavor was Fabianism and the Empire, the first official pronouncement of the Fabian Society on the subject of imperialism.
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