Son of W. B. Yeats, Michael Yeats became auditor in 1944, and in that capacity organised the inaugural meeting on 'The small nations'; Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and Jan Masaryk, minister for foreign affairs in the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile in London, were his main speakers. Yeats had further involvement with the society in 1969, when it proposed admitting women members. The proposal passed by a single vote; having supported it, Yeats contended that had he stayed at home on the night of the vote the society would have remained all male.