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In December 1884, such important figures in England’s budding socialist movement as William Morris, Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling, E. Belfort Bax, and John L. Mahon, among others, broke with the Social Democratic Federation led by H. M. Hyndman and formed the Socialist League. One of the key disputes leading to the break arose in relation to Hyndman’s then scarcely concealed jingoism and strong support for the British Empire. The immediate issue in this regard was the British government’s sending of General Charles Gordon to Khartoum in the Sudan, supposedly to evacuate civilians and troops after the Sudanese defeat in 1883 of the Egyptian expeditionary force, led by British General William Hicks. Imperial Britain had recently gained colonial control over Egypt, following the latter’s defeat in the Anglo-Egyptian War, and were then seeking to extend their rule to Sudan, which had for decades been subject to Egypt (at that time itself an imperial subject of the Ottoman Empire), but where a revolt against foreign rule had begun in 1881, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah (the Mahdi). Arriving in Khartoum, Gordon fortified the city and unleashed his troops on surrounding tribal communities that he had originally befriended. He was killed in the ensuing siege of Khartoum in January 1885, two days before a British relief column arrived. With the death of Gordon, the public clamor for revenge and for the British imperialist conquest of the Sudan, promoted by publications like the