Fabian Society ligrally control the European Union

Today, the society functions
primarily as a

think tank and is one of 15

socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar
societies exist in Australia (the

Australian Fabian Society), Canada (the

Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and the now disbanded

League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.

The Fabian Society was founded on 4 January 1884 in London as an
offshoot of a society founded in 1883 called

The Fellowship of the New Life.[3]
Fellowship members included poets

Edward Carpenter and

John Davidson,

sexologist

Havelock Ellis and the future Fabian secretary

Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an
example of clean simplified living for others to follow, but when
some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid
society’s transformation, it was decided that a separate society,
the Fabian Society, also be set up. All members were free to attend
both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of
Western European

Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the rest of
the world.

The Fellowship of the New Life was dissolved in 1899,[4]
but the Fabian Society grew to become the pre-eminent academic
society in the United Kingdom in the

Edwardian era, typified by the members of its vanguard

Coefficients club. Public meetings of the Society were for many
years held at

Essex Hall, a popular location just off

the Strand in central London.[5]

The Fabian Society, which favoured gradual change rather than
revolutionary change, was named – at the suggestion of

Frank Podmore – in honour of the

Roman general

Fabius Maximus (nicknamed “Cunctator”, meaning “the Delayer”).
His

Fabian strategy advocated tactics of harassment and

attrition rather than head-on battles against the

Carthaginian army under the renowned general

Hannibal.

An explanatory note appearing on the title page of the group’s
first pamphlet declared:

“For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most
patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured
his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as
Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”[6]

Organisational growth

Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began
attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its
socialist cause, including

George Bernard Shaw,

H. G. Wells,

Annie Besant,

Graham Wallas,

Charles Marson,

Hubert Bland,

Edith Nesbit,

Sydney Olivier,

Oliver Lodge,

Leonard Woolf and

Virginia Woolf,

Ramsay MacDonald and

Emmeline Pankhurst. Even

Bertrand Russell briefly became a member, but resigned after he
expressed his belief that the Society’s principle of

entente (in this case, between countries allying themselves
against Germany) could lead to war.

At the core of the Fabian Society were

Sidney and

Beatrice Webb. Together, they wrote numerous studies[7]
of industrial Britain, including alternative

co-operative economics that applied to ownership of

capital as well as land.

Many Fabians participated in the formation of the

Labour Party in 1900 and the group’s constitution, written by
Sidney Webb, borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the
Fabian Society. At the

Labour Party Foundation Conference in 1900, the Fabian Society
claimed 861 members and sent one delegate.

The years 1903 to 1908 saw a growth in popular interest in the
socialist idea in Great Britain and the Fabian Society grew
accordingly, tripling its membership to nearly 2500 by the end of
the period, half of whom were located in London.[8]
In 1912 a student section was organised called the

University Socialist Federation (USF) and by the outbreak of

World War I this contingent counted its own membership of more
than 500.[8]

Early Fabian views

The first Fabian Society pamphlets[9]
advocating tenets of

social justice coincided with the

zeitgeist of

Liberal reforms during the early 1900s. The Fabian proposals
however were considerably more progressive than those that were
enacted in the Liberal reform legislation. The Fabians lobbied for
the introduction of a

minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a

universal health care system in 1911 and for the abolition of

hereditary peerages in 1917.[10]

Fabian socialists were in favour of reforming

Britain’s imperialist foreign policy as a conduit for

internationalist reform and a welfare state modelled on the

Bismarckian German model; they criticised

Gladstonian liberalism both for its individualism at home and
its internationalism abroad. They favoured a national

minimum wage in order to stop British industries compensating
for their inefficiency by lowering wages instead of investing in
capital equipment; slum clearances and a health service in order for
“the breeding of even a moderately Imperial race” which would be
more productive and better militarily than the “stunted, anaemic,
demoralised denizens…of our great cities”; and a national
education system because “it is in the classrooms…that the future
battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are already being
lost”.[11]

In 1900 the Society produced Fabianism and the Empire, the first
statement of its views on foreign affairs, drafted by Bernard Shaw
and incorporating the suggestions of 150 Fabian members. It was
directed against the liberal individualism of those such as

John Morley and Sir

William Harcourt.[12]
It claimed that the classical liberal political economy was
outdated, and that imperialism was the new stage of the
international polity. The question was whether Britain would be the
centre of a world empire or whether it would lose its colonies and
end up as just two islands in the North Atlantic. It expressed
support for Britain in the

Boer War because small nations, such as the

Boers, were anachronisms in the age of empires.[12]
In order to hold onto the Empire, the British needed to fully
exploit the trade opportunities secured by war; maintain the British
armed forces in a high state of readiness to defend the Empire; the
creation of a citizen army to replace the professional army; the

Factory Acts would be amended to extend to 21 the age for
half-time employment, so that the thirty hours gained would be used
in “a combination of physical exercises, technical education,
education in civil citizenship…and field training in the use of
modern weapons”.[13]

The Fabians also favoured the nationalisation of land rent,
believing that rents collected by landowners were unearned, an idea
which drew heavily from the work of American economist

Henry George.

Second generation

In the period between the two World Wars, the “Second Generation”
Fabians, including the writers

R. H. Tawney,

G. D. H. Cole and

Harold Laski, continued to be a major influence on

social-democratic thought.

It was at this time that many of the future leaders of the

Third World were exposed to Fabian thought, most notably India’s

Jawaharlal Nehru, who subsequently framed economic policy for
India on Fabian socialism lines. After independence from Britain,
Nehru’s Fabian ideas committed India to an economy in which the
state owned, operated and controlled means of production, in
particular key heavy industrial sectors such as steel,
telecommunications, transportation, electricity generation, mining
and real estate development. Private activity, property rights and
entrepreneurship were discouraged or regulated through permits,
nationalization of economic activity and high taxes were encouraged,
rationing, control of individual choices and

Mahalanobis model considered by Nehru as a means to implement
the Fabian Society version of socialism.[15][16][17]
In addition to Nehru, several pre-independence leaders in colonial
India such as

Annie Besant – Nehru’s mentor and later a president of

Indian National Congress – were members of the Fabian Society.[18]

Obafemi Awolowo, who later became the premier of Nigeria’s
defunct Western Region was also a Fabian member in the late 1940s.
It was the Fabian ideology that Awolowo used to run the Western
Region but was prevented from using it on a national level in
Nigeria. It is less known that the founder of

Pakistan, Muhammad Ali

Jinnah, was an avid member of the Fabian Society in the early
1930s.

Lee Kuan Yew, the first

Prime Minister of

Singapore, stated in his memoirs that his initial political
philosophy was strongly influenced by the Fabian Society. However,
he later altered his views, considering the Fabian ideal of
socialism as impractical.[19] In
1993, Lee said:

“They (Fabian Socialists) were going to create a just
society for the British workers – the beginning of a welfare
state, cheap council housing, free medicine and dental
treatment, free spectacles, generous unemployment benefits.
Of course, for students from the colonies, like Singapore
and Malaya, it was a great attraction as the alternative to
communism. We did not see until the 1970s that that was the
beginning of big problems contributing to the inevitable
decline of the British economy.”

—Lee Kuan Yew interview with Lianhe Zaobao[19]

In the Middle East, the theories of Fabian Society intellectual
movement of early-20th-century Britain inspired the

Ba’athist vision. The Middle East adaptation of Fabian socialism
led the state to control big industry, transport, banks, internal
and external trade. The state would direct the course of economic
development, with the ultimate aim to provide a guaranteed minimum
standard of living for all.[20]

Michel Aflaq, widely considered as the founder of the Ba’athist
movement, was a Fabian socialist. Aflaq’s ideas, with those of Salah
al-Din al-Bitar and Zaki al-Arsuzi, came to fruition in the Arab
world in the form of dictatorial regimes in

Iraq and

Syria.[21]

Salāmah Mūsā of Egypt, another prominent champion of Arab
Socialism, was a keen adherent of Fabian Society, and a member since
1909.[22]

Among many current and former Fabian academics are the late
political scientist

Bernard Crick, the late economists

Thomas Balogh and

Nicholas Kaldor and the sociologist

Peter Townsend.

Contemporary Fabianism

Through the course of the 20th century the group has always been
influential in Labour Party circles, with members including

Ramsay MacDonald,

Clement Attlee,

Anthony Crosland,

Richard Crossman,

Tony Benn,

Harold Wilson and more recently

Tony Blair,

Gordon Brown,

Gordon Marsden and
Ed
Balls. The late

Ben Pimlott served as its Chairman in the 1990s. (A Pimlott
Prize for Political Writing was organised in his memory by the
Fabian Society and

The Guardian in 2005 and continues annually). The Society is
affiliated to the Party as a

socialist society. In recent years the

Young Fabian group, founded in 1960, has become an important
networking and discussion organisation for younger (under 31)

Labour Party activists and played a role in the 1994 election of

Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Today there is also an active
Fabian Women’s Network and Scottish and Welsh Fabian groups.

On 21 April 2009 the Society’s website stated that it had 6,286
members: “Fabian national membership now stands at a 35 year high:
it is over 20% higher than when the Labour Party came to office in
May 1997. It is now double what it was when Clement Attlee left
office in 1951.”

The latest edition of the

Dictionary of National Biography (a reference work listing
details of famous or significant

Britons throughout history) includes 174 Fabians. Four Fabians,

Beatrice and

Sidney Webb,

Graham Wallas and

George Bernard Shaw founded the

London School of Economics with the money left to the Fabian
Society by Henry Hutchinson. Supposedly the decision was made at a
breakfast party on 4 August 1894. The founders are depicted in the

Fabian Window[23] designed by

George Bernard Shaw. The window was stolen in 1978 and
reappeared at Sotheby’s in 2005. It was restored to display in the
Shaw Library at the

London School of Economics in 2006 at a ceremony over which

Tony Blair presided.[24]

Young Fabians

Members aged under 31 years of age are also members of the

Young Fabians. This group has its own elected Chair and
executive and organises conferences and events. It also publishes
the quarterly magazine Anticipations. The Scottish Young Fabians, a
Scottish branch of the group, reformed in 2005.

Influence on Labour government

With the advent of a Labour Party government in 1997, the Fabian
Society has been a forum for

New Labour ideas and for critical approaches from across the
party. The most significant Fabian contribution to Labour’s policy
agenda in government was
Ed
Balls‘ 1992 pamphlet, advocating

Bank of England independence. Balls had been a

Financial Times journalist when he wrote this Fabian pamphlet,
before going to work for Gordon Brown. BBC Business Editor

Robert Peston, in his book Brown’s Britain, calls this an
“essential tract” and concludes that Balls “deserves as much credit
– probably more – than anyone else for the creation of the modern
Bank of England”;[25] William Keegan
offers a similar analysis of Balls’ Fabian pamphlet in his book on
Labour’s economic policy,[26] which
traces in detail the path leading up to this dramatic policy change
after Labour’s first week in office.

The Fabian Society Tax Commission of 2000 was widely credited[27]
with influencing the Labour government’s policy and political
strategy for its one significant public tax increase: the

National Insurance rise to raise £8 billion for

National Health Service spending. (The Fabian Commission had in
fact called for a directly

hypothecated “NHS tax”[28] to cover
the full cost of NHS spending, arguing that linking taxation more
directly to spending was essential to make tax rise publicly
acceptable. The 2001 National Insurance rise was not formally
hypothecated, but the government committed itself to using the
additional funds for health spending.) Several other
recommendations, including a new top rate of income tax, were to the
left of government policy and not accepted, though this
comprehensive review of

UK taxation was influential in economic policy and political
circles.[29]

Criticism

In the early 1900s Fabian Society members advocated the ideal of
a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of
sterilization. This is credited to the passage of the

Half-Caste Act, and its subsequent implementation in Australia,
where children were systematically and forcibly removed from their
parents, so that the British colonial regime could “protect” the
Aborigine children from their parents. In an article published in
The Guardian on 14 February 2008, (following the apology offered by
Australian prime minister

Kevin Rudd to the “stolen
generations“),

Geoffrey Robertson criticised Fabian socialists for providing
the intellectual justification for the

eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.[30][31]
Such views on socialism, inequality and eugenics in early 20th
century Fabians were not limited to one individual, but were widely
shared in Fabian Society.[32][33]

• David Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour
  Party, 1888–1906. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.
• A.M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics,
  1884–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
• Edward R. Pease,
  
  A History of the Fabian Society. New York: E.P. Dutton &
  Co., 1916.
• Lisanne Radice, Beatrice and Sidney Webb: Fabian Socialists.
  London: Macmillan, 1984.
• George Bernard Shaw (ed.), Fabian Essays in Socialism.
  London: Fabian Society, 1931.
• George Bernard Shaw,
  
  The Fabian Society: Its Early History. [1892] London: Fabian
  Society, 1906.
• Willard Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas
  in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881–1889. New
  Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.