Members of the First International largely supported the St. Imier congress, and opposed the General Council's suppression of the Bakuninists at the 1871 London Conference and 1872 Hague Congress. As a result, the Anti-authoritarian International congresses in 1873 and 1874 attracted Belgian, English, Dutch, and German federations into the fold, along with the First International's statist and anti-statist factionalism. The English Federation, for example, explicitly disagreed with the Jurassian position on action, but as long as the federations were free to pursue their own methods, affirmed the higher purpose of restoring a federalist International. The Jura argued for abstention from political action, citing their fruitless experiences with parliamentary politics and their subsequent organization outside political parties. By 1876, the alliance between the statists and anti-statists had mostly dissolved and the Jura Federation was in decline. The Jura watchmakers cooperative in La Chaux-de-Fonds had a work shortage and the group's isolation from the general population had worn them.