The 1909 Conference was attended by 29 delegates of local and University Societies, and by 46 delegates from London Groups and from the parent Society.  On this occasion a Constitution was adopted giving the Conference a regular status, the chief provisions of which required the submission to the Conference of any alteration of the Basis, and “any union affiliation or formal alliance with any other society or with any political party whereby the freedom of action of any society ... is in any way limited ... “; and of any change in the constitution itself.  These are all matters which concern the local organisations, as they are required to adopt the Basis, or some approved equivalent, and are affiliated to the Labour Party through the parent Society.  No contentious topic was on this occasion seriously discussed.

The Conference of 1910 was smaller, sixty-one delegates in all.  Resolutions against promoting parliamentary candidatures and favouring the by this time vanishing project for an independent Socialist party obtained but little support, and the chief controversy was over an abstract resolution on the “economic independence of women,” which was in the end settled by a compromise drafted by Sidney Webb.

Sixty delegates were present at the 1911 Conference, held at Clifford’s Inn, who, after rejecting by a seven to one majority a resolution to confine Fabian membership to Labour Party adherents, devoted themselves mainly to opposition to the National Insurance Bill then before Parliament.

In 1912 the Conference was still large and still concerned in the position of the Society in relation to Labour and Liberalism.

Both in 1913 and in 1914 the Conference was well attended and prolonged, but in 1915, partly on account of the war and partly because of the defection of several University Societies, few were present, and the business done was inconsiderable.

* * * * *

The Summer School was another enterprise started at the period.  It was begun independently of the Society in this sense, that half a dozen members agreed to put up the necessary capital and to accept the financial responsibility, leaving to the Society the arrangement of lectures and the management of business.

It was opened at the end of July, 1907, at Pen-yr-allt, a large house, previously used as a school, looking out over the sea, near Llanbedr, a little village on the Welsh coast between Barmouth and Harlech.  The house was taken for three years partly furnished, and the committee provided the beds, cutlery, etc., needed.  One or two other houses near by were usually rented for the summer months.