Progressives' anti-imperialist instincts, however powerfully felt, could not in themselves bring about lasting changes to the contours of progressivism. To do so they required organisational and theoretical expression. The lasting effects of the Boer War on the progressive milieu and its organisations can only be seen as detrimental: relationships between individuals were strained; debates in the Rainbow Circle were heated and repetitive; the Fabian Society was severely and irreparably debilitated, but neither side of the struggle was able to produce a new, permanent organisation or alliance to replace existing ones. On the pro-war side the Fabian Junta's attempt to ‘permeate’ the Liberal Imperialists quickly proved a failure, destroyed by, among other things, the Fabians' support for the Education Act of 1902. On the anti-war side, organisations like the SACC and the LLAAM lasted only as long as the war itself; and it is hardly necessary to add that the spectacle of SDF militants defending Morley's meetings was never to be repeated once the war was over. The hopes of men like Massingham and Coit for a new organisation of anti-imperialist ‘democrats’ came to nothing. Moreover, the Fabian defections apart, the Boer War gave rise to no substantial change in the composition or relative strengths of the major political organisations to which progressives adhered.

It took the far graver crisis of the First World War and its aftermath to precipitate major changes in the organisational balance of progressivism.