Chapter II - Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party

CHAPTER II FABIANS AND THE RISE OF THE LABOUR PARTY A. Ideological Education In the ensuing chapter is indicated Fabian penetration into the ideological area supporting a Labour Party to set a creed; into the area of resurgent union organizing to propagandize for the Party; into the hinterlands to exercise the Party in political action. By a fluke almost symbolical, the marks of Fabian penetration into the lowly cooperatives revealed Fabian permeation high into the realms of so-called" liberal" economics. Fabians were at once active and speculative. Arthur Henderson, J. P. Middleton, Barbara Wootton and A. Lockhurst Scott might be out in the hustings marshalling the voters into Labour ranks but the indoctrination of the leadership went on fervidly in London town, under the apparently inexhaustible Webb. The first step in the reconstituting of the Party was the laying down of a set of quasi-philosophical principles. The Society issued a prospectus for a " TutC?rial Class on the Policy and Principles of the Labour Party." 1 To be conducted by Sidney Webb at either Tothill Street or the Central Hall, the class \vould cover a six part syllabus and read eight books: Henderson's Aims of Labour, Webb's Toward Social De1nocracy, the Labour Year Book, A. W.

Humphrey's History. of Labour Representation, Mrs. Webb's Case for the Nationalltlinimu111" the FRD's How to Pay for the War (edited by Sidney Webb), and Sidney and Beatrice Webb's The Prevention of Destitution, Woolf's International Govern ment, and the Education Program1ne of the Workers' Education Association. The class was arranged by the Fabian Society, and-indicative that this was not precisely a laborers' set-up-10s 6d was charged for tuition. In the light of the fact that this course was to furnish an exposition of the" policy and principles " 1 This broadsheet was found appended to the volume of the FN which covers 1916-1920in the Library of Congress collection. 52 Fabians and the R'tse of the Labour Party 53 of the Party, said to be a political party, it is surprising to read under Section IV of the syllabus, "Music, Literature, Drama, and Art. Religion." There was nothing to warrant inclusion of the arts and religion to be found in Section I which purported to show how the principles of the Party were adduced from its history: Labour Representation in Parliament, 2 the ILP, the LRC, the effects of the Taff Vale and the Osborne judgments.

Although the elections of 1906 and 1910 are listed,it is not shown that even though "the constitution of the Labour Party and its successive transformations" followed these elections it was by sequence and not as generic growth. Indeed, these elections had demonstrated that a democratic drive toward the attainment of the commonweal cotildhave thriven within the old framework of parties. The body of persons and organizations bent. on reform might never withou,t an extraneous impulsion have been trans formed into the One-Party.3 The spark which precipitated the peculiar party was Socialism which now ordained that the " essen tial principles of Labour Party Policy" should run along the line of economics and sociology to invade by consequence the area of religion. All this is visible in this syllabus for a tutorial class in " Labour Party " policy and principles. Under "The Policy of the National Minimum " and "The Control of the ,Environment" are to be observed two of Mr.

Webb's "abysses": "The abyss involved in unmitigated indi vidualism" and " the abyss involved. in unfettered competition and the wage system "-they form but one abyss in reality, human fallibility, an area which .was to be filled up by Socialism; and this not only in Webb's teaching but in Laski's, Robson's and 2 It is. interesting to note that the third party took its rise in this special or unique representation, not, however, by evolving but by being induced to evolve something new-not by working within' the traditional framework of .politics, but by lending itself to the creation of a new social element. S This term, One-Party, is one we will helve occasion to use through the study, to stand for the instrument which the Movement created to express its will and which embodied the meaning, totalitarian. It aimed to eml:ace in a political apparatus all who labor by -hand or by brain. It might better be named the" All-Party." Young Fabians writing in The Clarion at the end of the 1920's will be found to declare that in the future society must be divided between those who are Labour and those who are "damnably other wise."

S4 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 the Fraser symposists', aU of which'will appear in a further treatment. So many are the reforms liste,d as objectives under Sections II and IV, where the abysses are found, that the element of Social ism in. which· they occur is' easily disregarded: Factory legislation, sanitation, education, housing, infant care, scientific research few would boggle at these propositions indeed; corrected indi vidualism .and moderated competition which produced these ends would be universally welcomed. Yet the theme which ran through Webb's every utterance, as expressed in his presidential address to the Party Conference of 1923 and as ,propounded to the Managers 4, (discussed. at length elsewhere) was: Only Socialism can do it. Webb exposed the basic assumption of professing Socialists, i.e., individualism and competition as elements of Capitalism could not possibly be made to include responsibility for. the good of society even by removing blemishes and invoking morality. "Profit," for Fabians, was. separated from community gain; they rejected the concept that private savings increase com munity national assets. T~e responsibility for the common good was something to be taken over by Socialism which, unlike a proper religion, absorbed the State. The Socialist State is the State of the One-Party rule.

Against the inference that liberty to act individualistically in the matter of the wage system was to disappear, Trade Unionists might have been expected to struggle. But the Tutorial Class was not exactly a school for Trade Union men. The union organi-' zations had been injected with Socialism since 1894 through ILP in which, in 1919, two-thirds of the members were Fabians, ac cording to Edward Pease. Thus the unions had been prepared to be brought under the One-Party aegis. The story· of their struggle to assert themselves independently is .the theme for another study.5 The rank and file of Trade Unionists would 4: Cf. Sidney Webb, The Root of Labour Unrest (London: Fabian Society, 1920). 5 That they have st'ruggled is apparent from Cole's works in Fabian Social ism of 1943, p. 163, .where he outlines his II New Unionism": II I want the Socialist body [elsewhere he notes that the' Fabian Society is the only extant Socialist body] to carry [it] into the Trade Union Movement." Cole has splendid ideas about attaining freedom through the Shop Council from the Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 55 have no quarrel with the proposition that unmitigated individual ism (Webb's phrase) should be mitigated and unfettered com petition be· at least controlled; and mere Trade Unionism, once it exchanged self-activity (the term" Direct Action" has taken on the meaning of violence) for political representation, asked that the law should remove inequities arising from human imperfec tion. But according to the principles of the Tutorial Class private ownership, competition and the wage system were to be extin guished, and in the Webb system these economic relationships were to be absorbed by Socialism (through Parliament, of course) replacing avowedly with simple ethics the theological impulsion (i.e., Charity) in individuals and association. (We shall see in anotuer connection that the young Fraser Group under Harold Laski's guidance held that Socialism should do for civilization what the Church had done for Europe· after the barbarian in vasions. These students had come to think of Charity as a dole not as a Theological Virtue and an energizing· force in organiza tion.) Socialism, according to the tutor, was to be the new civ ilization. What Sidney Webb taught of religion in the 1920's was set forth by Fabian Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamilton, in her Sidney and Beatrice Webb. He stood averse to any profession of secularism, as such. By freedom of religion, however, his students· must needs come to comprehend religion as " liberated" by being ejected large stratifications which Webbism fostered. Cf. Cole, Fabian Socialism, pp. 152-163. His insistence on Socialism to carry the H New Unionism" into the Trade Union Movement has the effect of assuring the One-Party ideal among the liberatJi workers. The difference between the Coles and the Webbs is still wha~ it was; 1943 and 1950, as in 1920. Cole returned and cooperated with F~ianism to assure the "carrying in " .of Socialism, when, as he properly conc~ives without so stating it, the monolithic state disappears.

Cole's ideas are su~limely consonant with the doctrine of "free association" and might be thou~ht anti-Marxist because he adheres to the idea of col laboration of workers and management at the works-council and shop-council level. But managdment is State and Party management in his fore-vision. Previously he had I. written in The Clarion that there must be no alliance between worker organizations and owners, as will be shown elsewhere. And his whole system is precipitated in fluid Socialism as animating spirit and ideal. He declares that the whole ideal is "ethical" (ibid., p. 164), (but, most certainly non-theological), and he uses metaphors drawn from New Testament history which show that he identifies himself and Socialism with the Christian religion which he otherwise treats as a myth (ibid., p. 29).

56 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 from the field of economics and social planning. Socio-economics having subverted the political art to economic and social ends would invest the State which, in those realms which constitute the domain of H Caesar," lies outside the surveillance of the Church, and would make religion "free." Furthermore, Webb thought of religion as an emotion. 6 The" abyss" of the wage system was to be filled in by the " spirit" (Webb's term) which guided the unions and the Party. It would be strange or unusual to take note of such matters in an ordinary history of a political party, but it is necessary to do so in the. case of the Fabian-led Labour Party because on the agenda of Webb's tutorial classes in Labour Party principles stood" Religion." Those elements which were integre gated in Webb's Tutorial Class to educate Labour politicians can not be separated in an honest evaluation.

Section III of the syllabus destroyed the last pretence to there being a mere political party in the thing Webb was creating. Never a stick was wielded, a stone thrown,)a barricade raised, nor even a shout in the streets; yet here was "the revolt of the masses." The syllabus read': "Why Democracy cannot stop at political organization, but must include control of industry and commerce." Since by Democracy Webb did not mean State, or purely political government, but the politicizing of social order ings,1 i. e., unions, cooperatives, social agencies in local govern ment and the like, within the Party, here was the ~ubversion of order. This ideological revolt of the masses consisted in the sub merging of civil order in social order, the subversion of political science to the sole role of service to socio-economic ends; in a 6 In present day currency, the collapse of that earthly trinity, republican ism, capitalism' and religion (which last, because in a real republic God is the source of authority, can collaborate wit~ government) is represented by the new semantics-" dynamic democracy," meaning politicized social ele ments; and II decadent governments," meaning Republics which recoil from Statism.

7 In the discussion of Pigou's criticism of the Webbs' Consumer Co operative ·Movement, which showed an engineer's model of the~ommunistic order as outlined in the Webb's thought, we have shown in another place what the syllabus meant here by II The sharing of Democratic Control between the Vocational Organizations and the Government [which represents] both the present generation of Consumers and the permanent interests of the State." Infra p. 102.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 57 word, The Revolution. The thing called res publica is now defined as H Control of· material, processes, product, profit, and price"; and " res privata" rises to the surface of national configuration. The base of the triangle representing societary order is now broadly extended across the top; and what was hitherto the top most peak, the angle marked State, is pointing, but momentarily before subsiding in annihilation, perilously at the bottom.s The monolithic State is an annihilated State wherein the political is consumed in the economic and social. The trinity of arts, political, economic and societary, having lost differentiation have become unitarian "Democracy" wherein the ·Party calling itself the People and investing the area of the State invades the private juridical order. There was one bright young man. who grasped Webb's ulti mates. At, the time, in the 1920's, G. D. H. Cole did not see beyond the monolith of Statism as he was later to see. For this reason, as a Guild Socialist, he remained aloof from the Society (even while the Webbs, esteeming his talents, endured his daring to differ and his impertinence) ; but he worked, up to 1924, for the Fabian Research Department 9 which had been founded by Beatrice Webb, and he returned to· the Society in 1929, meantime devoting himself to the education of young· radicals in Oxford, most of whom, like Gaitskell and Horrabin, joined the Society 8 Cf. Cole, Fabian Socialism, pp. 120 ff. "Democracy means that the people have power, and not merely the formal right to say who shall have it."

(He applied the Shop Council plan to the civil order and he confused power and authority. In a Democracy people designate who shall· bear authority. He confused social and political democracy.) Cole's power to synthesize immobilizes his thought often, e.g., "Nazi and Communist totalitarianism ... are not in the least the same in any essential particular. But they both rest in the knowledge that voting does not make a democracy [not an essential particular?] and that he who places his reliance on universal suffrage is building upon quicksand." Aside from the characteristic con tradiction, Cole says Soviet Russia is a democracy because the "whole community owns the vital instruments of production is trying to be a classless society ... giving everybody an equal chance " 9 In 1920 this Department had become the Labour Research Department but was not yet Communist. It had moved about 1919 to Labour Party Headquarters. Cole quarrelled with the Communists over their obnoxious methods.

58 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 with him in the 1930's. He had married, by then, Margaret Post gate, a colleague in the Department. The Coles developed their " New Unionism" and "Shop Councils" under a principle of collaboration of management. (not capital) and labor, while they differed from the Webbs who urged stratification and non-alliance. But the· difference was only apparent. The latter pair prepared the monolithic State which was really a State in which political life had disappeared (unless it the permanent interests of the State" should restore the non-Socialist status quo-a contradiction they were perfectly capable of containing in their preachment) and they had no plan beyond the One-Party or Order, to rule over the outcropped socio-economic mounds (Councils, Soviets or Zemst vos) in the societary terrain upon which the shadow of the mono lith lay. These Cole was preparing to invest with his "New .Unionism." The Coles and the Webbs held a common faith in Socialism and the One-Party.l0 Cole foresaw in the 1920's the disappearance of the political State, and he was to prepare to warn against its perpetuation as .the "Servile State." Beyond Statism where Webb merely stopped short, and beyond" joint consulta tion," i.e., the meeting of representatives of vocational groups with government agencies, Cole saw that H Industrial Democracy means much more· than ' j oint consultation' . . . [it means] to seek out deliberately functions of workshop control that can be transferred to the workers themselves." 11 And another young Fabian destined 10 For the Webbs the monolithic State would harden and perdure; for the Coles it would form a chimera and disappear; for Marx it would II wither" ; for Stalin it was a temporary tower of steel. .Cf. Margaret Cole, Growi"g Up Into Revolution, pp. 94-102. She declared here that she had no objection to Communism as such, only to taking orders from Moscow.

llCQle, Labour's Second Term, p. 10. Cole in 1949 wants to see this council system principle at work in the armed services; and he considers it to be working in the field of agriculture, where he equates .farmers, for whom the Government has been "solicitous" to give a "sense of managing their own affairs" [sic], with the factory workers. Certainly Cole should be credited with the intelligence to know that farmers differ in the matter of proprietorship from wage earners; yet he is asking that the Government which has nationalized industries induce· in workers a sentiment which will have the same value as proprietorship. Where papal doctrine encourages wage earners to aspire to proprietorship of land, Cole treats the farmer as a (future) mere wage earner. Cf. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, passim.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 59 to greatness also descried the societary terrain beyond the mono lith :,12 Twelve years after his Labour in Perspective appeared, Clement Attlee was to restate: "Socialism is not just State Capitalism. The taking over of antndustry. is not an end in itself-it is a means of attaining freedom." U Freedom" meant the breakup into Councils, and other subsidiary groups. His book expounding the Socialism of a Fabian is a complete restatement again in 1949, as twelve years before, of the points Webb exposed in the tutorial syllabus of 1920. It preaches total nationalization of land, industry and labor,13 and of course the abolition of Capitalism. Attlee believes Capitalism might be abolished without State ownership of all industry. He suggests worker ownership and worker control-under the Party. What was the definition of the H Freedom JJ Attlee envisioned is not discoverable except by going back to Cole: The first principle of soundness in an economic system.:---12 Clement Attlee, Labour in Perspective and Twelve Years Later (London: Victor Gollancz, 1949), pp. 99 and 193 f.

'13 Ibid. Attlee argues that the "terror" of " socialistic" practices such as that of taking over the Post Office-something which seems nothing but right to Americans-is passing away; he does not obscure the truth that the Socialist Government means to nationalize all and not selected industries. Attlee and Cole do not advocate that the State should repress evil doers in commerce and industry ·by law, should see to it that public conveyors and purveyors, licensed and ~egulated, maintain service and goods in full supply at fair prices, and should develop for the people such enterprise or construc tion (like TVA) as are needed by or are too onerous for private capital. All that Webb, his students, and his colleagues say is said in such language as to signal to Continental Socialism-especially that which they would develop into "Social Democracy" -assent and comradeship; and this more especially with that Socialism toward which it is believed Russian Commu nism is a transition. Cf. the Memoirs of George Lansbury, pp. 223-264, but especially pp. 244 and 261; also of Ben Turner, pp. 211-231. Cf. also Cole, Fabian Soeialism,pp. 45 and 116 f., and the whole of the brochure by the Webbs, Is Russian Sovietism a N.ew Civilization?, which they answer affirmatively. It is this writer's contention that the Webbs and Shaw learned nothing new in Russia but only found articulation for what was inherent in their thought. Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris (1937) begins with a reference to the II new civilization." He answers the Webbs directly, all but naming them, by describing the new barbarism. He also refers to the conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe which he uniquely deprecated in 1924.· Cf. Pius XI, OPt cit., p. 4 f.

60 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 is that it should use all the available resources of man power to work upon the gifts of nature up to the point at which men prefer having more leisure to having more material wealth.1-4 Although this translates total mobilization, the note of genuine freedom rings in the advocacy of the Works Council and the Shop Council, "not as a meeting place for rival representatives of two , sides' but as a body representing every grade and group in the factory as partners in the common adventure of making it a success" ;15 and Cole's New Unionism had the same quality. But this " freedom" tone is muffled; it is not the true tone of liberty. In Cole's conception these Councils were presupposed to exist in a Socialist, One-Party world,16 where private ownership of the means of production was abolished,· specifically. Such was the indoctrination on the speculative side which Webb in the Tutorial Classes and Attlee and Cole from the Oxford milieu, supplied to the young leaders of the Party.

The Webbs did everything, suffered much insolence, to keep young Cole in the ranks of Labour. In this writer's opinion, he symbolize~ their own tendency toward the acceptance they were to come to make of the" new civilization," U.S.S.R. The policy and principles set forth in Section· V of the Tutorial 1·4: Cole, Fabian Socialism, p. 68. His capital-less world leaves no adven ture-save perhaps the sweepstakes; Cole's leisured universe is one wherein homo economicus must needs be perfected or be doomed to provide the ma terials for endless mystery stories-unless, forsooth, the printers should come to prefer their leisure to printing. 15 Ibid., p. 69. 161bid., p. 141. Cole carries his concept of free association over into local government, which should be made into "the small neighborhood group of dwellers in, say, a blo~k of flats or a single street or group of small streets ... a civic centre in miniature ... [with] its civiC restaurant, and ...

some one to whom the members can turn for advice in any of the troubles in life.... " (Baby sitters and games for grown-ups as well as children should be available, too.) This absurd ordering by blueprint of what develops, at least in America, from the natural association of people "in the block" assumes importance only when it is recalled that the inspiriting reason and permanent ideal was Socialism, Mr. Cole's "Socialist faith." By inspecting and categorizing ordinary societary phenomena, social scientists like Cole affix to these a coefficient altogether artificial. In such coefficients, and by manipulating them in series, they concatenate· Socialism.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 61 Class syllabus on "National Finance" were consonant with the liberal economics of the day and might have been found in the Economic Journal, the organ of the Royal Society of·.Economists, where Webb and Keynes, Pigou and W. A. Robson (Fabians) were associated; where the names of Haldane, Balfour and Alfred Marshall mingled with Bastable, Beveridge and Tawney (Fa bians) . Snowden's budgets were. to be filled with the same details as Webb set down in his syllabus: "Application [of " developed faculty" and advanced knowledge] to the problems of the budget, re-graduation of Income Tax and Death Duties, the Conscription of Wealth"; but there was added thereto the characteristic note of British Socialism as Fabians developed it: "The Standard of Life" was" No cake until all have bread." This aphorism was as economically absurd as the silly words ascribed to the queen whose memory· it evoked. That Webb meant to teach that society should exhibit no wealth until all had competence; that he would teach that nothing accrued· to society from the advances made by the more successful unless all made the same advance immediately, could be inferred from the slogan. Of course, Webb meant noth ing more than that his State would provide no luxuries until it had saturated the area of human material needs with middle-class standardized goods. On the other hand, the intention may have been simply to attract to his school for guidance the posturing young men who, in the 1920's, fancied themselves the guillotin·ers of a symbolic Marie Antoinette. Mr. Laski's students had a pre occupation with the French Revolution. l1 He also was tutoring the Labour Party.

1'he reader will experience some surprise to find that the next topic, Section VI, reads: "The Britannic Alliance and Inter nationalism." (However, it will be recalled that "Democracy" was to assu:-ue control of c01'nmerce.) Reproduced here, the con tent of the course needs no comment except that the uses of inter nationalism will come up again: The silent Transformation of the BrittsL. ~mpire into a Britannic Alliance. Why there will be no " Inlt'~rial " Parliament. The Constitutional Machinery of the---11 Cf. FAR (1933), p. 6. Laski's Socialist Tradition in the French Revolution, like his essay on Karl Marx, "continue[d] to sell well."

62 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Britannic Alliance. The Abandonment of Cosmopoli,-' tanism in favor of Internationalism, and what this implies in Foreign Relations, Tariff Policy and the estab lishment of a Supernational Authority. 18 That a step in the technique of creating a cooperative common wealth of States bound together by II internationalism" was the setting up of Fabian Societies abroad. and the encouraging of Labor parties in foreign countries was something not set forth in the syllabus.19 The· outline involved imperialism because Socialist headquarters must constitute imperial headquarters at least during the transformation or transition. 20 The answer to Professor Pigou's question as to where the capital for large enter prise involving great risk in cooperation would be found, lies in '18 Fabian Harold Laski, to whom in the 1920's Arthur Henderson (in an other example of the toleration of impudence for the sake of capturing young talent) apologized for misunderstanding him, and who was thus rejoined with the Party's new activity, prolific writer as he always was, produced in 1949 Socialism as Internationalism (London: Fabian Society and Gollancz, 1949). Pointing out the implication to Trade Unions and professional groups that their private national interests must be sacrificed, he shows that Socialism implies the separation of Nation from State. The first goes on on cultural lines; the latter goes out to meet other States and be merged in one world, ending all sovereignty. Laski's suggestions presuppose a condition of international anomy. Having repealed the natural law as a basis for inter national relations, Laski and his followers substitute an artificial basis.

19 FSAR always carried a paragraph on the affiliated Fabian Sodeti~s in Japan, India, America (Laider's II Industrial Democracy"), and Germany. Cf. Cole, Labour's SeeoM .Term, Fabian -Tract 273 (London: Fabian Society and Victor Gollancz, 1949), p. 16. II We must keep on trying to reach out across the iron curtain for means of reestablishing Socialist comradeship. . . . " Cf. also, Mark Starr, Labour Politics in U.S.A.; foreword by Margaret Cole (London: Fabian Publications and Victor Gollancz, 1949). The author is Educational Director of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union,.·U.S.A., Chairman of· Queens County Liberal Party. Starr feels that the organization called II Americans for Democratic Action" has fallen short of the hopes that it would II play the role of the Fabian Society" and "formulate long term goals and a philosophy for the new political alignment that is in formation" (p. 42). It is doubtful that Fabians have never deviated from. their assigned role of mere formulators.

20 In the "transition," America would provide the ·capital. The ensuing thoughts indicate the reasons for ADA's unsympathetic attitude toward Spain at present. Spain's unions cannot be world-amalgamated.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 63 the process of "transformation" from. "Cosmopolitanism" wherein differentiated nations subsisted together in mutual under standing, into "Internationalism." Where anomy resulting from the dissolving of national allegiance would also dissolve inter -national relations-in the old and well-understood meaning of the term-Fabians would substitute Socialism as the cohesive force among nations. And it follows that those nations whose economic systems were consonant or could be made consonant with " inter nationalist" ideals would be cherished and favored and all others would be. fought-if· only by means of political boycott-until they should conforn1. Shaw pointed out the logical conclusion to Webb's propositions and was so consistent as to advocate that headquarters be not in London but in Geneva 21 in his 1929 tract for the Society, The League of Nations (Fabian Tract 226) wherein he advocated abolishing all the political apparatus of the League save Albert Thomas's ILO office which he equated with " Vatican."

Thus the "philosophy" of the intelligentsia, leaders of the rising Labour Party, was promulgated while the prosy business of penetrating committees went on at the county and borough levels. Trade Unionism presented a middle ground between the ideolo gical camp and the field where the Party took its stand. That Fabian organizers were not agreed on unionizing methods may have been detrimental to the union movement. It is possible that the Webb-Cole argument, by offering alternatives, obscured the real goal of unionism and prevented trade union organization from developing its own character. 22 In any case in organizing or in n Cole found that the destruction on the Continent during World War II affords U larger opportunities· for the building of an international Socialist order." Cf. Fabian Socialism (1943), p. 52. His last sentence in Fabian Sodalism salutes and singles out for cooperation abroad parties banded under "Social Democracy."

22 Cf. Leo XIII, Pope, Rerum Novarum (Washington, D.C.: NCWC, 1942), pp. 32-35, where. the ideal free associations of workingmen are described. They are differentiated by "temperament of each people"; they care for their own sick, needy or aged; they allow no. wide difference in their offices such as to create discord; they settle disputes between themselves and employers (or groups of employers) before their own tribunals, It men of the same body" (employer-employee body); they disburse their funds 64 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 writing about it, Fabian work served to stimulate interest in or ganization and in politics and to bring industrial workers into the Party. A large contribution to organizing energy was made by Fabian women; and the Party gained the women's vote. In 1920, the Webbs, taking tendencies, which they believed they had foreseen in 1894, for positive trends to be recorded as history, wrote: To the new school of Trade Unionists the nationalisa tion or municipalisation of industry, or its assumption by consumers' cooperation, is a necessary preliminary to the partnership of Labour in its government. What they·are after is to alter, not only the status of the manual worker, but also the status of the employer who is the director of industry; they wish them both to become agents of the community; they desire that the manual workers and brain workers alike should be inspired, not by the greed of gain made by profit or price, but by the desire to pro duce the commodities and services needed by the com munity in return for a sufficient livelihood, and the per sonal freedom and personal responsibility which they believe should spring from vocational self-government. 23 No doubt, "vocational self-government" is the bridge built from Guild-Socialism to State-Socialism. Just above this quoted pas sage the Webbs had described the Trade· Unionist of 1920 as objecting to any sort of partnership with Capitalists or share holders since this involved leaving Rent and Interest to proprie tors. They feared that any such cooperation was destined " irre trievably [to 1 break up the sol~darity of the manual working class." (Yet, as "agents of the community " they should have a status confused with employers.) That the Webb presentation of the unionist view was not history but hope is borne out by the story of the years that followed. They presented their scheme rather than current history. The position to be occupied by the according to individual needs and provide religious benefits and educational opportunities.

23 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 673. The principle contained in this quotation means the defeat of the papal principle of subsidiarity. Government collaboration in the industry council does not imply Government absorption of either labor or ownership.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 65 Labour Party "in the passionate support of public ownership" toward carrying out the scheme was described in 1920: [As ] . . . the result of successive attacks upon the very existence of Trade Unionism ... there has been growing up a distinct political organisation of the Trade Union Movement, aiming at securing the acceptance by the electorate, as a whole, of a definitely Socialistic policy in the administration of both home and foreign affairs. [This is the] formation of a Labour Party, ready for the the carrying into effect of the new ideas. . . .24 It is abundantly clear that it was intended that the political force within Trade Unionism was to be captured by the Party ostensibly for the protection of the principle of unionism, actually to com pass the movement and the membership for Fabian ends. The Independent Labour Party, a mere Socialist society, would be asked to confine itself to prolTIulgating Socialism in working men's ranks. The Labour Party, like Beatrice's Poor Law Commission, could recruit its members from non-Socialists even, those who would shy away from the ILP but who were nevertheless labor minded. Trade Unionism itself sought only to avail itself of the political action of the Labour Party and yet preserve its own identity. There can be no doubt that the above statement of the historians of the movement was in this case propaganda.

B. FABIANS IN TRADE UNIONISM: FOR THE PARTY The Webbs and their fellow Fabians had been beforehand in capturing the Trade Unions for the Labour Party. Before the war, Trade Unionists usually voted Liberal. Before the war's end the area of industrial organization was appropriated by Fabians to anchor thereon a part of Labour Party machinery. The Webb method was to. stratify workers-by-hand into big national amalgams. They stressed a sort of non-intercourse 1?etween the "professional groups," i.e., the unionized workers and unionized owners or employers. They rivalled the Communists in trying to infiltrate Trade Councils, those local organizations where, in a given municipality, local civil authority was represented among 24 Ibid., p. 676.

66 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 representatives of workers and owners in councils, with the aim to promote local production and to set ,local wage scales. Com munists won these over for the most part. 25 But national Trade Unions rapidly developed into large amalgamations and affiliated with the Labour Party under Fabian tutelage, which, as has been suggested, took advantage of war conditions to begin the work of building the Party. Under" Research Department" in the Fabian News, February, 1918, Fabians read: The Parliamentary committee of the Trade Union Congress has decided to cooperate with the Committee of Enquiry into Trades Councils and local Labour Parties, and has appointed F. Bramley and G. H. Stuart Bunning [Fabian] as its representatives on that Com mittee. It will be remembered that the Labour Party appointed A. Peters [in closest collaboration with Hen derson] and Sidney Webb to act in a similar capacity.

The Committee of which Egerton P .. Wake [Fabian suc cessor to Peters in the Henderson party machine] is the chairman, will issue the full questionnaire to Trades Councils and L.R. C.'s [Labour Representation Com mittees] immediately after the Labour Party Con ference. 26 Two commitees each show at least one Fabian member named if only in second place. The Enquiry was a Fabian-Labour device to develop the Party. This is an admirable example of U pene tration" by interlocking committee membership. The Fabians took over the leadership in each section. Under" Organization of Trade Councils and Local Labour Parties," 21 Fabians learned that then G. H. Stuart-Bunning (Fabian, for TUC), later to figure 25 Cf. Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 100. These remi niscences show that Cole's anti-Webb period accounts for her not knowing much about political work going on at the time.. She did not realize how Mr. Cole's talent was being used when she reports" dull" industrial organiz ing meetings as the only events that occurred in the period. Cf. her Growing Up, p. 92, where she notes that the Labour Conference of 1918 reorganized the Party and gave it "a real [Socialist] Policy." The Conference was greeted by Russian Communists through Litvinov.

26 FN, XXIX:3 (February, 1918). 21 FN1 XXIX:4 (March, 1918).

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 67 prominently on the international labor scene, had presided and that G. D. H. Cole (Fabian News never treated him as an ex-Fabian) had represented the Fabian Research Department (it had not yet gone Left and into the Labour Party domicile) when the joint meeting heard· D. Carmichael of the London Trades· Council and John Baker of the Iron and Steel Trade Conference. (This was doubtless a little group destined for amalgamation.) Here we see the Party joining the TUC to survey the possibilities of increasing assimilation of· Trade· Councils and local Labour Parties by both TUC and the Party, each represented by Fabians. These instances show the methods of penetration. Another technique toward Party development waS to encourage strati fica tion. Back in 1917, at the sixth conference on Restoration of TradeD nion Conditions held in Fabian Hall,28 ~1rs. Webb had taken occasion to allude to a cutrent report· that President Wilson had suggested repealing the Sherman Anti-Trust Law to allow, as Mr. Ernest Benn also proposed,· Capitalists to meet in agreements aimed at increased productivity and to replace competition with collaboration (liable under the Sherman Act to be termed H col lusion ").29 She contrived to give the American proposition a pejorative meaning by recalling old chartered companies and say ing that state-aided monopolies were not new. She was distinctly not in favor of any cooperation of Trade-Union-with-employer groups if this involved partnership with Capitalism on the basis of the present wage· system; she feared the loss of working-class solidarity as the possible result of their succumbing to the H temp tation" for employers and employees to unite, even on a question of tariff. Collaboration of workers' and employers' groups was th~s rej ected with little reserve, because it· impeded the aim to increase the stratification of ,yorkers throughout the social fabric.

This. was expected to produce a bloc vote. Mrs. Webb said the 28 FN, XXVIII:5 (April, 1917). England has no anti-trust laws and English businessmen make agreements on prices which it is customary to keep as· gentlemen's agreements even if it means supporting a weak and unnecessary competitor. Cf. B. M. Anderson, Economics and the· Public Welfare (Toronto: D. van Nostrand, 1949), p. 163. 29 This reference may indicate the anticipation of the Webb-Pomerene Act of ·1918, allowing combinations, specifically in exporting businesses, for price fixing and order allotment.

68 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 only advantage to workingmen in entering any association of employers and employees, besides mere recognition of their unions, might be to bring about compulsory Trade Unionism. She was emphatically suspicious of any permanent association of Capital and Labor. This may not seem consonant with the ex pressed Fabian policy of opposing class warfare which appears in Sidney Webb's thought; yet Beatrice was permeating the unions with Socialist "classlessness." Inherent in her principles was the proposition that Capitalism must disappear and the owner be re placed by management, under State Planning. After stratifica tion, came the elimination of the Capitalist, the mobilization of industry through the Party. The Party was to inspirit the State and the Party was to be made up· of workers by brain as well as workers by hand sO-all persons. Beatrice Webb stressed voca tional associations, but her use of the term" vocational group" did not connote. a perpendicular order, where collaboration of workers and owners looked toward mutual benefit and the common good through production, as it did in its matrix in Guild-Socialism.

It meant instead, the conquest of one group, the Capitalists, by the others-by all persons who worked organized with their colleagues in horizontal lines. It is very significant that the seri~s of Conferences on Restoring Trade Union Conditions was held in Fabian Hall and that the conferences heard Beatrice Webb and other Fabians. The leaders of Trade Unions believed that Fabian Socialists aimed to " restore Trade Union conditions," conditions which depend upon sound Capitalism; but itl: the above set of principles propounded by-Beatrice Webb lay the reason for the Fabian rejection of the Whitley 'Council system based upon capital-labor-government collaboration, and the warping of the unions into the Party instead. Along with assisting and encouraging the big national amalgams of Trade Union groups, the Webbs were writing over again their History of Trade Unionism, 1666-1920, with references from which transition was made to this section. E. R. Pease reviewed it when it was re-issued specially for WEA and TUC in 1920.

30 Margaret Cole, Beatrice Webb (London: Longmans Green and Com pany, 1945), pp. 35 and 123. This was not one of Beatrice's" mistakes." It led her to her love of the U.S.S.R. .

· Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 69 This founding Fabian's succinct observations will serve to show the increasingly clear Cl rticulation of the relations of the Party to the unions affiliated with it and united. under TUC. Their criticism of the latter [Trades Unions Congress] is severe; but not, we think, unjustified. The Parlia mentary Committee has lacked inspiration; it has not made the best of its great opportunity; and its con stituents have neither expected great things of it, nor provided the income and organisation necessary for ex pansion. The Labour Party has necessarily taken over most of the work [political] which the Congress used to do, yet the Congress has neither abandoned its political business, nor attempted the coordination of Trade Union activities in the industrial sphere, a work which is urgently required and which no other body can properly undertake. 31 The italics supplied indicate the two separated functions assigned to the Party and the TUC respectively, and the excerpt indicates the part the Fabians played in outlining these spheres of indus trial and political action. They must he credited with the shunt ing .off of the effectiveness of Communist subversion which gained ground only in small or ill-defin·ed areas. However, the unions lost the right to exercise political activity on their own.

Here a Fabian shows them their proper· sphere-their own cor ner. Pease indicated that "political business" had better belong to the Party. Fabians would help with both the political business of the Party and the coordination of Trade Union activities in the industrial sphere. The challenge in this criticism· was met by steady growth in Trade Union organization, growth which continued until the TUC plunged itself, with no effort to prevent or stay it on the part of Fabians, into another debacle similar to that known as " Taff Vale," when in 1926 it made a direct attempt to coerce Parliament or the Government. Incidentally, Pease termed "a piece of anthropomorphism more appropriate for a propagandist speecp.than for serious history" the statement made 3"1 FN, XXXI:5 (May, 1920). (Italics are inserted.) Cf. also, Gannett and Catherwood, Industrial and Labour Relations in Great Britain: A Symposium (New York: published by authors, 1939). The Appendix provides descriptive documents on Whitley Councils, p. 349.

70 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 by the Webbs that in the Taff Vale case " the Capitalists" 32 re garded the temporary crippling of the Trade Union Movement as well worth all it might cost them.33 Here was an old Fabian clinging to a Fabian ideal, somewhat repelled by the strategic pragmatism· of the Webbs-in this case, an appeal to an anthro pomorphic mentality. Unionization and Trade Union Congresses were, for the Webbs, means to political power; they assisted the ill-shaped and poorly-grounded unions to consolidate their' organi zation at the time when it was believed such unions were doomed to extinction in " professionalism," by encouraging the growth of TUC and the amalgamations and by establishing the pattern of affiliation of all with the Party. The Labour Year Book of 1919 is a· monument to this policy, and to Fabian penetration. Interesting indications. of Fabian activity shaping the gro\vth of the Trade Union Movement and of the latter's being warped to the Labour Party, can be gleaned from accounts of the Fabian Women's Group. Women and The Labour Party, a publication listed in the flyleaf of the Labour Year Book of 1919, had for its authors Mrs. Sidney \Vebb, Margaret L. Davies, Mary Mac Arthur, Margaret McMillan and Rebecca West. The introduction was by Marion Phillips and the foreword by Arthur Henderson, kindly but firm" Uncle Arthur." All were Fa,bians, boasting the patronage of. Henderson, the close friend of Mary MacArthur.

Later on these women were given Cole's assistance as assigned scribe and organizer-he had a knack for getting himself "adored," Margaret says. Working women were intimately affected by the change-over from war production to peace, since they were marked for replacement earlier than men as demobiliza tion was slowed down. They were most active in forwarding unionization. Women unionizers tended to be Fabians first and workers' organizers second; vice versa as regards male organizers. As far back as December, 1917, the project of compiling a history of "Women in Trade Unions " was adopted by the Fabian 32Ibid., XXXI:5 (May, 1920). Pease might well have noted that the whole of the secction on Trade Unionism of the 1920's is pure propaganda. 33 Ibid. The sentiment was possibly something Sidney did not change in a part Beatrice had written. Pease's remark contributes weight to the observation made in the preceding pages to the· effect that social science was put under levy for propaganda by Fabian researchers.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 71 Women and Mrs. Webb's niece, Barbara Drake,84 was charged. with· the report. 35 This charge coincided or was arranged to coin cide with the Fabian Research Conference which opened December 12, 1917, on "The Legal Position of Trade Unions," a field which utilized the brilliant legal skill of Fabian Henry Slesser. 86 Fol lowing this, two groups, named Fabian Research Department (mixed) and Fabian Women's Group (from the industrial sec tion) had a joint meeting under the slogan, H Equal Pay for Equal Work," in January, 1918. The Fabian Research Department also lent its assistance to the joint committee of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) Parliamentary. Committee to assist, it so happened, in codifying the amendments proposed by them to the Workmen's Compensation Act. Here we. have Fabians working with .a committee of TUC which they later decreed should. desist from political action and we note also the device of the" joint committee" or the coincident meeting. 31 These rami fications are typical of the elaboration of Fabian methods. The Women's Group and the Research Department met again in con ference in June, 1918,38 to exchange views and experiences. Five speakers from various Unions, including the Fabian and politician, Ellen C. Wilkinson of theU nion of Cooperative Employers, were heard. They came eventually to the conclusion that women should be admitted to union membership on the same footing as men, among other reasons" in order not to depress the wage scale. Cole, of the Research Department, though not presiding and present only as an observer, nevertheless assumed authority to announce and 'arrange for future meetings and the Fabian Research Depart84 At that time and still a close personal friend of Margaret Postgate, now Mrs. Cole.

85 FN, XXIX:l (December, 1917). She brought in the Report in Novem- . ber, 1920. 36 Ibid. The legal work done for the unions by Fabian Henry Slesser was very valuable to them. Cf. Slesser, Ope cit., p. 47, and LYB, 1916. 37 In March, 1918, the Fabian Research Department reported that with the affiliation of the London Trade Council and the Cooperative Union about a hundred organizations had affiliated with' this Department. Mrs. Cole says they had spent a great deal of money in industrial rather than political work. Cf. her Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 94. The Communists later gained this Department but in the end lost the Movement to the Fabians. 38 FN, XXIX:7 (June, 1918).

72 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 ment took over the secretarial responsibility for these functions. 39 When the Fabian Worrien's Group met in January, 1919,40 they were reminded by :Or. Letitia Fairfield, recently released from administrative work' for the Government during the war, that opposition to women in industry and in local government came not only from men but from married women; so "Study Circles" were devised .to educate the opposition. Among the Fabian women there arose the question of "class.". Professor Edith Morley raised the. question as to whether they, as middle-class women and forming so small a body of Socialist women, should not direct their activities toward encouraging the organization of women in professions. As Socialists they should study to eliminate inequalities and increase education among themselves in oider to penetrate social circles, but they should not dictate, she thought, to any other part of the community, and should leave to industrial organizations the problems arising from women in industry. These Fabian women, Doctor Fairfield and Professor Morley, represented in their speeches two classes and two points of view. The latter's had the merit of faintly suggesting· that women get out of industry. At this time of increasing unemploy ment Fabians were contributing to the. increase of the number of unemployed men by insisting on women's rights in industry. The effect sought was to stratify this social segment and to bring it into the Party; these Party members were aware that the " woman in the home" is lost to politics and is an unaccountable voter. It was. natural that women should raise the question of "class."

Fabians resolved their doubts. By October, 1920/ 1 when faced with unemployment and the lapse of Part 3 of the Industrial Courts Act, there was no question that women and mef! should not belong to the same unions, and the question as to class among the women had been settled by 39 This meant work for the "Young Cuckoos" in Mr. Pease's menage. These over-educated children worked late and long under the critical eye of P. Arnot, N. Ewer, and other young Guild Socialists. Sometimes in order to have a week-end off, they had to hide from the" Great Ones" who thought only of work, as M. Cole tells in her Growing Up. 40 FN, XXX:2 (February, 1919). 4'1 FN, XXXI :11 (November, 1920).

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 73 May, 1920,42 in the National Labour Party (Women's) Con ference. Then, while excising the' idea of separate unions for women, Fabians also abated the women's agitation over class dis tinction. The Party was clearly the great end and rationale: the stupid distinctions, which still exist in the mind of some people, between middle-class and working class women may be eliminated, and insomuch as that all are members of the Labour Party, and therefor.e, workers, they are all of one class working for the same object-the reconstitution of society.43 Tremendously interesting as exemplifying technique is the fact that although organized Fabian women were not eligible to partici pate in the last mentioned conference, the names of those women who were active in it were to be found in lists of Fabian Women. Not as delegates but as observers and representatives of the Society went Barbara Drake and Mrs. Stephen Sanders, among others. The chair was filled at times by two Trade Union and Cooperative women who were at the same time prominent Fabians, Miss Mary MacArthur (Mrs. Anderson) and Miss Susan Lawrence. Miss Margaret Bondfield reported from the Washington (Eight-Hour) Conference, one of the first land marks in the history of the ILO which was the creation of " Amsterdam" and" Berne," as Lorwin shows; and Mrs. Drake moved a resolution regarding education which outlined what actually became the future law on that subject. So from outside the Conference as well as from vantage points within the. Con ference, Fabian women infiltrated to bring the Conference in under the aegis of the Labour Party and to point out to conferees the peculiar kind of classlessness which Fabian Socialism incul cated.

Our intention in discussing the interweaving of unionizing and 42 FN, XXXI:5 (May .. 1920). 48 Ibid. Characteristic of the British approach to the class question was the idea of one-class. It veiled the realities of class-struggle and put English Socialism on the side of "Berne" and Amsterdam (minus-IFTU) against the Third International gestating in Europe. Cf. Lorwin, op. cit., PP. 174 339. Fabians had indoctrinated Bernstein who now was fairly reconciled with Kautsky. Cf. FN, XIV:I0 (October, 1904), where W. S. reviews R. C. K. Ensor.

74 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 politicizing activities is to illustrate Fabian effectiveness, not indeed to trace the rise of Trade Union consolidation after the war. We may, however, point out two balancing, even contradictory, ele luents: The first, political Socialism, was an incipient threat .to Trade Unionism; the second, "Labour," amalgamated the as sociated workers by hand and brain into one class exclusive only of organized owners, constituting a threat to social order. When a new direction was indicated by the announcement of conferences on " Women in the Home,"· it showed the sensitiveness of Fabians to social change, and the effect of growing unemployment. By now, however, women, whether industrially employed or at home, had be"en won to the Party as supporters and voters. Fabian literature followed these Party women into the home. When in dustrial organizing apparatus became obsolete, it was scrapped or consolidated. Women who had worked through the war· remained attached to the Pa~ty. When the Fabian Women's Group affiliated with the Joint Standing Committee of Industrial Women's Or ganization, January, 1921, Barbara Drake addressed them to advocate breaking down the "barrier between workers by hand and workers by brain," rather than on organizational or industrial questions. She was didactic: either professionalism or vocation alism would preserve class; to obliterate class was to develop the Party.

By this time, unemployment and housing had become the proxi mate problems; Trade Union activities had slowed down and the General Election was in preparation. I t was to result in the Labour Party's finding itself His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. While the Fabian women kept up the agitation for" equal pay for equal work," their group attracted thought toward cooperative stores, education, and birth control; 44 meantime, Trade Unionism marked time as National Guildsmen and the Webbs disputed styles of organization, and industry failed to absorb all the workers. But the Fabians' ,"vork,·mixing the working women of all classes in the Party. which embraced all workers had so far been well done. Even though there were two schools of thought in Fabian ism-Cole ,"vith his" anarchy" substituting" consumer interest" for the State, and the Webbs with their Statism substituting socio~ FN, XXXIV:10 (October,1923).

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Pa~ty 75 economic interests for the regal science,of politics-both schools inhered in the Party. The ,discussion satisfied the intellectuals with the feeling of a sense of free thought. In the Party, Webb's creed .was the "spirit" called Socialism: Cole's was a Socialistic set of "principles of justice as applying to the economic order" (which excluded Charity in the theological aspect of Charity). That stratification was encouraged to obviate the Capitalist and. to hasten the subjugation of a social segment, namely, the Trade Unions to the Party, was unstated but implied in all that can be learned of .Fabian activities. In spite of the fact that Mrs. Webb disagreed with Cole on It worker control," both of them agreed about the nature of the Party~a way to unite all who worked and all who had received a tincture of Socialism to induce them to vote for measures laying the groundwork for Socialism. Cole said .in defiance of Mrs.

Webb's refusal to place the term consumers in place of the State in the Socialist system then evolving: I am an unrepentant" vocationalist," believing that the basis of any effective organisation of industry for the service of the consumer must be self-government of industry, so far as its actual management is concerned, by those who work in it by hand and brain. This does not mean complete control of each industry by the pro ducers, but the actual direction by them of the processes of production-the policy of industry being determined jointly by the representatives of. consumers . and pro ducers-that is by the will of· the community, or at least by the nearest approach to it which it is possible to secure by. a representative system.45 The .words "will of the community" put Cole back into the Statism he believed he was evading. He then proceeded as a Guild Socialist to· mark the "limits" of Trade Unions as they stood; he said they lacked representation of a sufficient number of grades, were' wrongly .organized, were unimbued with the right spirit to assume the responsibility of solving industrial problems.

45 Syllabus of a lecture, FN, November, 1921. Italics are inserted. The volumes 32-35 are bound in L.C. system, together and made to include as an appendix, the syllabi appertaining to the· years thus included, in this case 1921-1924. There is therefore no pagination.

76 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 They might, he thought, supply a basis for such things as " Build ing Guilds," which he believed were the groups best equipped to assume responsibility for industrial administration. The contem porary "vice" of " Professionalism," as described, excoriated by Graham Wallas in his Our Social Heritage, was mainly" protec tive," said Cole, and was'lodged in a social system "based upon economic injustice." "The basis of any good social transforma tion must be a recognition of certain fundamental principles. of justice as applying to the economic order." Of course, Cole's " principles," meant Socialist belief and the" right spirit" regard ing property. Except for the omission of a scholastic term, " the common good," with its connotations of hierarchical order and collaboration of classes in charity, Cole defined an industrial-social structure giving the illusion of being one capable of producing " social justice." Here was the bridge from the Guild system to State Socialism, on the way toward the Cooperative Common wealth, it seemed. This the Webbs acknowledged in the History of Trade Unionism. 46 This is why the Webbs absorbed so many shocks of lese-majesty from young Cole concerning whom a par tisan of the Webbs once moved in meeting: "Resolved that Mr.

Cole be a cad!" Already in 1921, he. was expressing their long view. His "Just Price "is really price-fixing and regulation of wages; his" consumer" is the public. At best his professionally grouped owners are mere recipients ,of directives from" the com munity," ttltimately, the Party. His view on professionalism is dialectical: 46 In the Webbs' History of Trade Unionism, p. 660, we read: "The bridge between the old conception of Trade Unionism and the new was built by a fresh group of Socialists, who called themselves National Guildsmen. This group of able thinkers, largely drawn from the universities, accepted from those whom we may call the Communal Socialists the idea of the ownership of the instruments of production by the representatives of the citizen-consumers but proposed to vest the management in national associa tions of the producers in each industry-organizationswhich they declared ought to include not merely the present wage earners, but all the workers by hand and brain." The Webbs' antagonism (especially Mrs. Webb's), toward Guild Socialism is apparent in the note which appears on the same page; fully objective, it yet disparaged the movement. Leo XIII made a bridge out of the medieval guild system into modern associations and thereby created Christian Corporatism. Cf. Rerum N ovarum (NCWC: 1942), p. 29,.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 77 Professionalism under conditions based on these prin ciples will be a very different thing from the profession alism of today. A cooperative relation of producer and consumer, the economic process, will be substituted for the present antagonism. With the recognition of those fundamental principles, of which the greatest are the H Just Price," and functional self-government, profes sionalism becomes never a perfect-but the best available instrument for the administration of industry and service.41 This was the kind of expression, these the ill-articulated concepts which drew into the ranks of the Labour Party not only Socialists but many other right meaning persons who adopted a sort of eclecticism among Acquinan and papal· principles. These were the days when Anglo-Catholic· Henry Slesser could win an election preaching St. Thomas and Pius XI, as Sir Henry has narrated in his Judgment Reserved. Cole did not persist in his unrepentant vocationalism. The Webbs built a bridge from guildism to Fabian Socialism and Cole walked over it, leaving Slesser, Belloc and Chesterton on the other side.

The Party created by all this work and expanding energy did not necessarily satisfy its creators. It did permeate society with Socialism, but it was not the Order of their dreams. The Party had to go into the political arena where the slings and arrows of political fortune became too outrageous. From 1919 to 1922 politics absorbed activities and ideologi<;aldifferences took car'e of themselves. C. FABIANS IN THE HUSTINGS After 1872, voters no longer stood forth to be counted" on the hustings" while crowds or mobs shouted approval or disapproval. The hustings became, as of older times still, the " council" or the 47 Cole, Syllabus of a lecture,FN (November, 1921). Compare David Kirkwood, My Life of Revolt (London: Harrap and Company, 1935), passim. This autobiography of an ILP Clydesider brings out the difference between the shop-steward mentality and that of the William Gallacher type of Communist by illustrating real" vocationalism." It depicts the religious e~otion marking the Scots' Socialism, exemplifies the non-miscibility of the ILP spirit and the politicized British Trade Unionism, as well as the in compatibility of the" intellectuals" with the worker realists.

78 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 " confab" under the roof of some store or drawing room or " pub." The" smoke-filled" rooms in the constituencies, in societies and clubs now brought "politics" back into the hus things.48 Having seen the ideological laboratory set up in the. Class which tutored Labour Party principles and having found the pattern of penetration used to create a Party permeated with Fabian prin ciples, we turn now to the story of the development of the Party in the hustings, that is, in local political party councils and in suffragan hinterlands. It is not the purpose here to narrate British Labour's rise to power. 49 A few lines from the Labour Year Book of 1919 indi cate Fabian tentacles in the Party: The New Party Constitution, based on Sidney Webb's Labour and the New Social Order, was printed in four sections: Rules for single and undivided boroughs, for county constituencies, for local parties, and for divided boroughs. The Party was much more like a fraternity in organization than any American political party.

The party-fraternity formed an elite; the electorate which voted Labour was less rigid and less reliable, but it possessed great malleability and amenity.....,-qualitiestraceable to its sensitive social conscience. The LY/J, 1919, advertised 23 Labour Party Leaflets. Anony,.. mous except for those written by the Webbs, it is safe to say they were written by Fabians. They comprised matters discussed over and over again in Fabian circles. The" Capital Levy" was miss ing. It was good Socialism but not good politics. 4 8 Ilicidentally, the responsibility of voters to U the mob" before the hustings guaranteed a measure of control by public opinion overlooked by those who argued for widened franchise in 1832,·1867, and 1870. 49 It has been well done by Professor Carl Brand, British Labour's Rise to Power (Stanford University, California, 1941), in which is shown the effectiveness of a program of international organization in amalgamating Labour forces and producing a PaTty. The nucleus which developed the Party during the War was formed by three Fabian documents. Leonard Woolf's International Government: Two Reports (New York: Brentano, 1916) "prepared for the Fabian Research Department with an introduction by Bernard Shaw, together with a project by a Fabian Committee for a supernational authority that will prevent war"; also, the Memorandum on War Aims, and Webb's Labour and the New Social Order. Cf. NS, 12 (January 4, 1914), p. 274.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 79 G. D. H. Cole and J. S. Middleton (Henderson's henchman in organizational work) were the joint editors of the LYB, 1919. Henderson in his foreword called it the work of "Labour's Civil Service." It is noteworthy that by the time England attained to a paid Parliament she acquired a counter-parliament of unpaid public servants. Of the 42 contributors to LYE, 1919, this student finds only three or four. she cannot identify as Fabians, either at the time or later on. Some of the Fabian names were: R. P. Arnot, A. L. Bacherach, C. -D. Burns, Wilfred Brown, G. D. H. Cole, M. T. Cole, E. Davies, W.Gillies, A.Henderson, John Hodge, J. F. Horrabin, J. Katz, Barbara Keen, J. J. Mallon, SirJohn Maynard, J.W. Dixon, Monica Ewer, Marion Phillips, R. W. Postgate, E. C. Reckitt, M. B. Reckitt, H. P. Rathbone, H. H. Slesser, G. H. Stuart-Bunning, R. H. Tawney, H. Tracey, S. Webb, B.

Webb, H. G. Wells, Barbara \Vootton-names which appear ex tremely often in innumerable connections in the Party and the Unions as well as the Society.50 Channeling the forces a.nd concretizing the Party structure was the work of one man more than any other, a political genius in the practical use of this term, the Wesleyan minister, Arthur Hender son. Alone he could never have been so successful; but his labors, spearheaded the activities of the Fabian Society in this field. Closely associated as Party organizers were the Fabians, Doctor Marian Phillips, Barbara' \Vootton, Margaret Bondfield, the or ganizer of ,vomen in industry; also Arthur Greenwood, James Middleton, A. Lockhurst Scott, and Herbert l\.1orrison. All were listed consistently as Fabians except Scott who is listed as such only once. In December, 1917,51 the Rt. Hon.Arthur Henderson,M.P., ~ Most of these were colleagues in the FRD. Cole and Wells' will be called Fabians; Wells' obituary claims him for the spirit of the Society and Cole came back in 1929. While Cole was out of the Society'he continued his usual occupations of working for the Party. Wells and Cole, like Wallas, resented the Webbs rather than dissented from the Society. However, the dissent hinged upon the kind of social order they envisioned rather than a definition of Socialism; later the dissent was resolved by Cole's finding it was all a matter of timing-after the monolithic state' the breakup into subsidiary councils-" Freedom."

41 FN, XXIX:2 (January, 1918). For Henderson's Party organizing cf. M.A. Hamilton, Arthtfr Henderson, (London: Heineman, 1938), pp. 220-226.

80 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 had spoken almost prophetically: Perhaps a group system should come after the War but it would not last long and would not be such as existed on the Continent. "The hand and brain workers and the adherents of democracy will come together, perhaps under the Labour Party name" ; against them, 'he thought, more strongly organized than ever before, stood the Capitalists. (The Whitley Council system was built on professional organizations of owners and of "men "-Baldwin's word.) 52 Henderson had conceived of a highly disciplined force, the political machine, which could" get down to the roots." The new electorate had increased from eight to over sixteen million and included only two million new male voters; the rest consisted of five million married women mostly wives of working men and one million unmarried women, many of them working women. From 1917 to 1919 this electoral seg ment was canvassed in the interests of the Labour Party by candi dates whose expenses were paid by the Party, and who were sup ~lied with a packet of literature. Labour organizers insisted it should be arranged that all elections be completed in one day, and " We must run enough candidates to secure that the new electors do not joint other parties because Labour is not in the field" ; not the old 78, but S60 were needed. Although the Party intended to '52 Cf. Frank E. Gannett and B. F. Catherwood, editors, Industrial and . Labour Relations in Great Britain: A Symposium (New York: F. Gannett, publisher, 1939), pp. 349-362, tor documents on Whitley Councils. The book has articles by Miss Bondfield, Mr. Clynes, and Michael Tracey, an historian of the Labour Movement. A chart on p. 359 shows the relation 6£ the Trade Councils to the National Labour Council. The General Council of the TUC maintains a committee of Joint Consultation with Trades Councils which are local bodies, as well as a position in an advisory capacity with Trade Boards. We have seen the Fabian effectiveness in bringing the Trades Councils into the Labour Party (local and national). Cf. also, " Con ferences on the Whitley Report," FN, XXIX:2 (January, 1919). Cole and Fred Bramley and Stuart-Bunning voted against mere "Welfare Com mittees," " single round table organisation," "substituting of shop-bargaining for collective bargaining." They were against any peace in industry which was merely an individual plant's peace and not applicable on a national scale. "Be democratic but be careful" was said to spell the doom of shop steward, or workshop and loc~l ordering. The Whitley Report shows Traie Unionism in a stage of flux and shop-stewardism half developed. The Fabian answer was the Labour· Party and its substructure, national Trade Unionism.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 81 develop a constituency system, the customary machinery must be kept, that which consisted in a federation of Trade Unions, Trade Councils, local Labour Parties, Socialist Societies and Cooperative Societies: ... it is our only means of securing the money needed by a political party .... We cannot create baro netcies and· peerages. 53 We must therefore graft the new constituency system upon the old federation of organisa tions.· ... We can only run the country if our men are drawn from ranks as wide as the new constitution, that is from all classes and occupations. 54 He was not far wrong when he said: ". . . in ten years, the Co operatives, the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party will become the biggest party in the country." 55 From 1919 to 1922 the Party increased in strength numerically and by local·organisation in the constituencies; and it had assumed a viewpoint and position regarding its international responsibility which was uniquely the work of Arthur Henderson. He had been a Fabian since 1912, a Labour leader since 1910, and president of the iron founders since 1909. If the Labour Party as a political force was his creation, the Trade Unions' assumption of a place in the state was his work. The National Industrial Conference of 1919 came to pass because he, having been in the government of Lloyd George, persuaded the Trade Union representatives to meet with the employer representatives. It was he who brought in young G. D. H. Cole to write up the memorable report. advocating the Eight-Hour Act, the Minimum Wage Commission, the Na tional Industrial Council. He had the disappointment of seeing the prognostications of Smillie, Thomas· and Bevin proved true: the Government failed to carry out the promise which had brought the two groups together; 56 and the intellectual leadership of labor 53 They did create peerages in 1924, 1929 and on a large scale in 1945.

54 FN, XXIX:2 (January, 1918). 55 Ibid. Results. appeared in Ibid., XXX:1 (January, 1919). 56 Mary Agnes Hamilton, Arthur Henderson (London: Heineman, 1938), p. 215. These men were the leaders of the Miners, Railwaymen, Transport Unions, respectively. This H Triple ,Alliance" had professed cynicism regarding Lloyd George's promises. Henderson's H disappointment" was hardly unexpected by him. The fact that the Conference came abt.lut and ~ 82 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 gave scant support to a conciliar system. Not only did Henderson use the old federation of labor system, he worked with the system of the Whitley Councils, at least as a sort of experiment, with the result that unionism, as well as Party formation, received clearer articulation than either had before the War. Fabians used vVhitley Councils for the piers of "the bridge between the old conception of Trade Unionism and the new." 51 Henderson linked the Trade Unions and the Labor elements to the Labour Party and at the same time kept the latter from subversion under the repeated attempts of Communists to .unite with the Labour Party. "He could organize anything from an electoral campaign to a Red Army," 58 and he developed Labour as a political party.

It was he who placed Labour in its new relationship with Socialist and Labor international organization. He also saved from oblivion the inspiring leader who was MacDonald, "because MacDonald had the higher intellectual qualities and the informed knowledge he could not claim." 59 And he it was who recognized the aptitude of the young Arthur Green,vood. 60 Arthur Green wood, a Fabian, was secretary of the Joint Committee on Relations between Employers and Employed (\Vhitley Committee). cast ideas into the stream of public opinion was a political potential. For Henderson's purposes it was not necessary for the Government to have been expected to carry out the program devised by the Conference. The Alliance leaders were naively forthright. The intellectuals who detested professional ism did not quarrel with any method which forwarded the Party. 57 Cf. Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 660.

58 Hamilton, op. cit., p. 219. The foundation for this remark was furnished by Julius West (ne Rappaport) who, reporting back from Russia, in 1917, credited to Henderson's influence on Skobeler and Tseretelli the partial success of the last named two, in establishing order in Russia in 1917-just before the Bolsheviks captured the Revolution. FN,XXXVIII:9 (August, 1917), "Report of Our Delegate to Russia." 59 Ibid., pp. 220 f. 60 Ibid. "He made what had been, in the main, a class organization, with idealism vivid on its wings but opportunism· dominant at its center, into a national organisation united in principle and animated, more and more thoroughly, by idea. Moreover, he created a working and effective instru ment of practical democracy." Mrs. Hamilton is the author of biographies of the Webbs and of MacDonald. Her book on Henderson can be taken for a Fabian document and an original source of Fabian thought. Sometimes she seems to try to furnish doctrinaire Socialism where Henderson the" fore man " appeared to lack it.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 83 Meantime, it was the ILP which withered on the vine. At the beginning of the War, its members numbered about 30,000, six times the Fabian membership.61 It was perfectly obvious that the organization which had furnished leadership such as that of Mac Donald, Snowden, Keir Hardie, Will Crooks, Margaret Bondfield, William Anderson, Mary MacArthur, was nevertheless marked for extinction in 1919.62 Fabians intended the Labour Party to do the political work of Socialists and they removed this function from ILP .as well as from TUC. Furthermore, the ILP doomed itself to failure because of its adherence to the" Two and a .Half " International. Whether it advocated revolution in sympathy with and imitation of the Bolsheviks is disputable. Fabian Mrs. Hamilton and Clydesider David Kirkwood hold opposite views on this point. TheN ew Statesman, on April 10, 1920,63upbraided the ILP for its international preoccupations; the editor reproved its lack of imagination and its inability to sympathize with Russia without trying to imitate Russian methods. While praising MacDonald's appeal against revolution-he had recognized that nota single person at a recent conference was in favor of violence-the weekly criticized the leader's negative attitude and recalled the ILP to its function to restate'its Socialism in terms of the condi tions which existed in the country at the time, to " frame.a clear national policy, industrial as well as political." The Fabian plan was the very exemplification of this advice. Fabians had their own uses for internationalism, too.

That the connection between the ILP and the Fabian Society rested on the pre-war basis was shown· by the fact that when, in April 1918, The Abolition of the Poor Law, Tract 185, was re printed' and· the expense was divided among several agencies, one was the Joint Committee of the Fabian Society and the ILP. Out6'1 In 1945, only three ILP members were elected; in 1950, not one. 62 The' policy advanced by Fabians at the Nottingham Conference, January, 1918, of admitting to membership in the Labour Party individuals who were not Socialists, who were merely left of Liberalism, contributed to the disintegration of ILP. .Cf. Margaret Cole, Ope cit., pp. 135 f. ILP was divided internally anyway: Christian Socialists of the Clyde and doctrinaires who tended ·toward the T~ird International. Cf. Lorwin, Ope cit., pp. 138 and 166 f. 63 NS, XV (Apri110, 1920), p. 3.

84 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 side of committee connections there were personal ones. W. C. Anderson, who died in 1919, had been chairman of this Committee since 1911 and as Fabian News of March 1919 observed" though more closely identified with ILP than with our Society ... [Anderson] was always willing to act with us, and only a year ago lectured to us in 'Rebuilding the InternationaL'" But the link was to become more tenuous and the ILP was to furnish more propaganda "generals" than political "soldiers" as the decade wore on. Henderson did not confuse Socialism and Bolshevism, but he remained loyal to the Russian experiment. In 1919, at the time when the agenda was concerned with collective control of resources and increased production, Henderson had, in answer to a chal lenge, introduced the exiled Kerensky to the· Conference. In this he had manifested his gift of acute perception· as he marked the difference between the "ideal" Socialism of Kerensky and the imperial totalitarianism masquerading as Socialism that was Bol shevism. Nevertheless he bore fealty to the communist-socialism at the core of Leninism. In 1920 and 1921, the Labour Party rejected the application for affiliation with the Labour Party of the newly formed Communist Patty. This rejection was brought about by Henderson who understood· the Bolshevik double mean ing in the use of the words by.which they claimed fellowship, like " unity" and "real Trade Unions." 64 What" Uncle Arthur"

meant by unity was shown when, in 1919, the Labour Party adopted a resolution that all individuals and every organization constituting the Party must accept the constitution. The constitu tion was Webb's Labour and the New Social Order. Neverthe less, the way was not closed to individual Communist agitators entering as representatives of Trade Unions or of local Labour parties. We recall the fact that Labour's New Constitution was the em bodiment of Sidney Webb's· Labour and the N ew Social Order,' but a constitution could not create a party. Looked at "from the point of view of Arthur Henderson,. the Party can be seen assum ing its now familiar character and emerging from a stormy period in 1919, rather stronger than weaker for having shed that segment 64 Hamilton, Ope cit.,pp. 200 ft.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 85 of ILP which joined the Two-and-a-Half International of Adler and Longuetand the" pacifists" like Clifford Allen who wanted the revolution now. The Society '''vas fully aware of the rising power of political Labour, as its Report of 1919 shows. They had seen the 'apparent strength of the Coalition for what it was-un wieldy and vulnerable, a heavy foam of sentiment and fear, created by the wily manipulation of the arch-politician, Lloyd George, beneath which was a heavier mass of an opposite kind, a ground swell of popular forces. Henderson had agreed with Lloyd George that the election of 1918 should be held. He benefited by the winnowing when the Coalition with its "Coupons" garnered all the forces outside of Labour. He was to agree again in 1922 when Labour came in as the Opposition and 'he' was to precipitate the election of 1923 when Labour formed a Government. 65 Party strength by experience and the exercise of being a Party, was what, he sought and what. was attained. 66 But it surprised even ,Henderson and Webb to learn how early they might take ov~r the Government. Henderson was often favored by the "rightness"

of circumstances, as for instance when, regardless of what the international results were, he gauged the sentiment of the people regarding Ireland accurately and capitalized upon it to garner Labour strength. Working-class detestation of the system of reprisals and all that " Black-and-Tan" signified, gave the grow ing Labour Party weight and force.67 So we see that the Labour Party was largely the work of a man who was a Fabian. Its constitution was a Fabian document; its 85 Ibid., pp. 32 fi. 6S Beatrice Webb foresaw the effects in Labour Party growth of Lloyd George's Bismarck-like policies (calling all opposition unpatriotic) and she wrote in a letter to the Editor of the NS, November 30, 1918: "The National Liberals, until 1870.the most powerful party in the Reichstag-a party which had loyally supported the war with France-were wiped out in the following years. The Social Democrat Party, ... rapidly grew in power and became the only organized opposition to autocracy. The moral is obvious.~' 67 Attlee, op. cit., p. 28. "It may be noted asa factor in building the British Labour movement on broad foundations that so many of the adherents of the Catholic faith in Britain come from Ireland, where a creed of political and economic revolt has been inculcated into a Catholic popula tion. The British Labour movement owes much to these men and women.... "

86 Fabianism in the Political Life of B,.itain1919-1931 fusion with, Trade Unions and industrial workers' organizations was a skilled Fabian It bridge." Depression", unemployment, and ,deterioration of, various unions meant only gain to the Party. The controls set over industry by the Government during the war were: removed in March, 1919, rather than on the intended date in August. When Fabian Arthur Greenwood made his special Conference Report, Unemployment : A Labour Party, in 1921, it was apparent that unemployment was eroding socialistic idealism.68 An international policy of. reciproc ity in trade and the, recreation of Continental markets was advocated. By 1922, the Trade Union movement was flagging. It stood to lose more than the Labour Party, which, of course, was to miss the-funds which the unions' supplied, but to gain ,adherents fromlabor's discontent. The unions had all they could do after 1922 to exercise a little collective bargaining. With scant con cern evinced by Fabians, the Whitley Councils waned. Itsagi tation for Trade Unionism had supplied the Labour Party with an appeal which, even though it 'lost i~s efficacyamong the unions, was to infuse and ,sustain rank and file workmen as', such: The Party envisioned that workers should share in the management of industry whether owned by private capital or assumed by the state. ,The Party would have to face the decisions as to owner ship, and encompass within itself the rapidly grow~ng, cooperative mbvement~ For all decisions there' was Fabian leadership with its empiricism and gradualness. The Party would soon have to cope with the renewal of "direct action " and the political'strike.

And here again Fabians would manage to mix the unmiscible.. 68 Cf.B. M. Anaerson, Ope cit. p. 162, "Britain demonstrated [in the 1920's] what the present writer believes to be a universal economic' law,' namely,that any country can ,have heavy unemployment if it is willing and able to pay for it. . .. [The United States had recovered industrially, 1922-1923, by the operation of the law of supply and· demand.] England~on the contrary, had had no such favorable change in her labor situation. When her wages failed to resume their prewar relationship to prices, it was due primarily to the strength of the Trade Unions, which forcibly held union wages above the level which supply,and demand would have dictated, with the result that there was heavy chronic unemployment:" On the next page Anderson says that businessmen and bankers were reluctant to let wages seek a level pro portionate to,the drop in' wholesale prices-" the poor beggars get so little,"

expr~ssed their attitude.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 87 By 1923, Fabianism in the person of Arthur Henderson, who was seconded to the point of ..•• identity by··the New Statesman,69 had produced a perfected party system whose force' alert Tories would insist upon testing prematurely or preventively as part of their struggle with it. Henderson had freed his leader from 89 Cf. NS, XII (January 4, 1919), 273, "from a Labour Correspondent." This article pointed out the fact that" if the Labour Party were represented according to its strength [not an argument for proportional representation was meant], it would have 150 instead of 60 ... and Mr. Lloyd George's majority ... would be only in tens.... The distance the Labour Party has still to cover is far smaller than it appears." Reiterating the programs: To rule out particularism and sectarian self-righteousness, to convince a majority of the voting electorate of the rightness of its opinions, not to join in the Government, for, "In vain is the snare set twice." Liberal Sir Leo Chiozzo-Money (long a .Fabian) had resigned from the Cabinet. Barnes and Roberts were outside -the Party now. The perspicuity of "the Cor respondent" was remarkable: The Coalition would not allow Lloyd George to act consistently with pre-election promises. H. J. Thomas and J. R.

Clynes, leaders of the Opposition, would keep before the electorate the views of Labour, which were in part as follows: 1) Taxation according to ability to pay not by mouths rather than means; 2) 300,000new cottages, not left to speculative builders and with rising rents; 3) reorganization of local public health services, rather than a nominal ministry· of health; 4) abolition of the Poor Law, not just the Boards of Guardians; 5) abolition of compulsory military conscription, rather than a reimposed form of perpetual camps; 6) restoration of Trade Union Con ditions (" to which the nation is so solemnly pledged"); 7) compelling Capitalists' combinations to sell .. at prices brought down to legitimate ex penses of production; 8) abandonment of any design to .repress· revolutions in Russia and elsewhere; 9) an effective League of Nations, "a real super national authority imposing the world's will to peace on our own as well as . . . other governments," rather' than a mere league of allies. The N S veered away from Socialist propaganda, in terminology.

The NS was not a Labour Party organ, nor did it mention expropriation then ; but later, in March (ibid., p. 960) it did so. It is remarkable that at the election of 1918, with the great Labour gains, not only did the Asquith Liberals go into eclipse but Henderson, Webb, J. J. Mallon, R. MacDonald, R. H. Tawney, Clement Attlee, and others, strong Labour men, were defeated. The NS pointed to the need for better central planning (knowing their constituencies). Mary Agnes Hamilton thought Henderson, for ex ample, had been too busy working for others. However, it is possible that the popular mind allowed the fear of radicalism to overtake the preeminent Socialist figures and overlooked, if it did not approve outright, the funda mental structural growth of the Party.

88 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 entanglements with radical elements; and MacDonald, aided in every way by a young Fabian, Herbert Morrison, was ready to assume the Government, having been leader in Opposition since 1922, when he had replaced the Trade Unionist, J. R. Clynes. The testing came soon. Shaw, when they were hastily pre paring by a series of lectures to learn how to govern, pointed out to Fabians that the ultimate need for those governing was a governable people. "Can Anyone Govern?" he answered with ". . . people cannot govern themselves, and will not let anyone else govern them beyond a point which stops very short of the minimum of regulation needed in a modern industrial state.... " He pointed far ahead beyond Pease and Webb and Cole to the real final cause of their being as Socialists: To capture power, lodge it in an elite. With mirthful cynicism, he added, knowing that the possibly eternal state of "transition" involved a compro mise with their ideals:' What the people want is an assurance that the Labour Party, if returned to power, will misgovern as Mr.

Winston Churchill's party misgoverns, but with an out look slightly more modern than that of King Henry VIII. Once reassure the electorate on that point, and they will give Mr. Henderson a turn when they are tired of Mr. Lloyd George. 70 Of course, for Fabian Shaw this was special pleading-his idea of setting up a panel from ,vhich the people might elect parlia ments, boards, and the like governing bodies. I t is not difficult to discern in his proposal the outline of the Fabian Society, draw ing, as he suggested in his project for choosing government. officials, its own strength from among those who had local munic ipal and industrial experience, and itself setting up a panel from which a preponderant number of government officials was eventu ally drawn. The Shavian idea had some affinity with the Webb proposal to create a body based upon " functional representation," ,vhich involved con1mittecs of experts in economic questions grouped like satellites revolving about the l'/Iother Parliament.

As set forth in the Constitution for a Socialist British C01nmon wealth, the aim ,vas to supplement if not to supersede Parliament: 70 Fabian New~1 Vols. 32~35, in L. C. collection, p. 5 of inserted Syllabus.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 89 But, typified by the above quotation from the wily Shaw, the concept of "Labour" which Shaw, the W ebbs, and the New Statesman wished disseminated at the time was that of just an other political party. They were covering up the Socialism of which they boasted---.:asone would bank a fire. The ruse seemed successful in 1922, when the electorate increased the Party's power and rej ected its outstanding leaders. The Fabian R. H. Tawney, summarizing the history of British Labour, remarked in 1925: From the time the movement began to return to poli tics in the nineties, down to the explicit affirmation of the Socialist objective in the Constitution of 1918, the acceptance of-Socialist ideas by nearly all of the more active spirits and by the steadily increasing proportion of all sections of society, had been the single most im pressive fact of English politics.71 He thus makes the direct connection between the political expert and the ·ideologist, Henderson to Webb. Fabian· Socialists went directly into politics as laborites.

Members of the Fabian Society, automatically members of the Labour Party, were asked to give their names through the Society to the local Labour Parties if they were willing to stand for Parliament. Circumstances favored putting more and more man agement of the Party into the hands of the London Fabians. Any Fabian residing in a constituency where there was no local L~bourParty might join the Westminster Labour Party" Central Bran~h," \vhose secretary was at 25 Tothill Street (Fabian ad dress), and he would be transferred to the proper local when it should be formed. 12 The" active spirits" set out to "capture power." For this they needed a fiscal policy and a platform. National Finance and a Levy on Capital: What the Labour Party Intends. 73 took the position that foreign relations, consti'T1 Tawney, The British Labour Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924), pp. 150 f. 72 FN, XXIX:5 (April, 1918).

73 It is not our intention to explain the plan here, but to make some obser vations upon it. There is an arcane conflict between political Labour and Socialist ideology. C£'. Sidney Webb, National Finance and a Levy on 90 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 tutional changes, and social reforms must become subservient to the question of National Finance. The national debt absorbed all other interests. It was assumed by Mr. Webb that sharp class conflict must evolve from the divergent interests of those who live by producing through hand or brain,. and those who live by own ing. Labour, he said, faced the issue with no intent to raise class bitterness only to ask the electorate to decide how to meet a national debt of ten thousand million pounds, and not to leave the problem to a practically autocratic Cabinet and Chancellor of Exchequer. He insisted Labour must struggle to capture political power in order to cope with the debt. (Confusion of the mean ings of "Labour Party" and "labor" is inherent in Webb's statement. ) It is quite clear the Socialist idea was to utilize the war debt in order to capture political and social power. There are indications of this in the document. For example, a not too subtle contradic tion was involved in defining Labour's ends :-Austerity was de fined without being mentioned; "the nation must forego its fat,"

but" We want a rich and prosperous Exchequer, not a starved and bankrupt one." An autocratic Cabinet was to be replaced by a rich Exchequer. Furthermore, the Fabian document boasted that Socialists in Britain had no It wild" money schemes, none whatsoever, no " silver," no (( Labour Notes" [sic], no " repudia tion." They were for sound money and meant to deal· with real wealth only, wherever it could be found .. Income taxes were to continue (lowered, no doubt) but the principle of "equal sacri fice ',' could not be applied by mere income taxes. .You had to find a way to afflict Standard Oil 7·4 as sharply as the struggling doctor or the great dame who had not earned the living bestowed upon her widowhood in stocks and bonds.75 .What the Labour Party Capital: What the Labour Party Intends (London: The Fabian Society, 1919). This was a lecture given in King's Hall in May, 1918, and again in Liverpool in November. Neither the Webbs nor Shaw believed in the II votes-for-everybody" slogan. Here the appeal to the electorate is a· cam paigning device. Cf. II Postscript" to Fabian Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948), p. 222.

'1-4 One asks why the American company was singled out and not, for instance, Shell Oil. Likewise, the document is blatant about conscripting wealth and silent about conscription of labor. 75 The equal status of women was being agitated in Fabian Women's Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 91 Intends restated, with a less constructive attitude, How to Pay for the War 16 which had set forth the extent of it nationalisation " the Fabian Research Department proposed in 1916: Development of the Post Office, not as a mere service or as a supplementary agency where private business did not care to invest, but as a source of revenue and a government monopoly; railway and canal (and docks) transport were to be developed into public services for the profit of the Exchequer; coal to be. nationalized for cheaper and wider distribution; a state insurance department ,was to be set up along with the H revolution" in income tax adjust ment and the Capital Levy. The dual purpose of the Capital Levy is explicit in this document: Primarily for repayment of the debt, as H literally a part of National Defence," owners must cede ten percent of their" capital value" that is, of their fortune. And with a captivating· romanticism (a Shavian touch, it would seem), the motivation was given, "in order to secure the rest against being held for ransom by a conquerer, not to say looted by an invader." Labour Party control of the Debt meant control of. the Exchequer and the reduction of the moneyed or the stock-owning classes to Labour control : Every owner of property must be called upon to make a statement of all his property, and to realize one tenth of its value for the State, whether by selling such portions of it, or by finding the equivalent out of his already severely taxed income, in return for the conces sion of being allowed to retain his lands, houses and. se curities intact. We may as well make this colossal sacricircles. The story of this movement would make a rewarding study, especially in connection with the two bills of disparate philosophical infor mation recently before the Congress of the United States.

18 Sidney Webb, editor, and R. P. Arnot, J. Bacon, G. P. Blizard, Emil Davies, W.Gillies, J. W. Nixon, and" a large number of friends in different branches of administration who have lent their help on points within their own experience, but whose names.cannot conveniently be recorded," H ow to Pay for the War: Being Ideas Offer.ed t~ the Chancellor of the Exchequer by the Fabian Research Department, published by the Fabian Society at the Fabian Bookshop, 25 Tothill Street, Westminster, and by Allen and Unwin, London, 1916. The" Great One" edited the work supervised by the exacting Arnot and turned out by the young workers in "the Movement" numbering Margaret Postgate and G. D. H. Cole. Mrs. Webb warned Margaret to mind her work and not have ideas about G. D. H.

92 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 flce as easy as we can by calling up only 1 percent in each of the ten years [after the Peace].77 Then, there was a purpose secondary to mere debt paying; this was the liquidation of large savings: Since the hope is not always realized that the rich will usefully invest incomes (to reap the" reward of abstinence," a principle here rejected with scorn by Socialists), the State should not depend upon them. In an expression lacking consonance with that Christian thinking which considers that the rich make a contribution to society and that their savings enrich national assets, Arnot, Davies, Gillies and others agreed that" such large savings by a wealthy class have an inherent evil; they increase and perpetuate a functionless, tribute- " levying class of rentiers, which is already a dangerous element in the State." 78 The rentiers could have felt but little security after the sacrifice of a tenth of their fortunes (not "incomes" which were taxed separately from" fortunes ").

It is not our purpose to evaluate this Fabian scheme nor to worry out their contrivance for future care for the encouragement of the fine arts and the finding of new capital. (The State, of course, would provide new capital for· investment and stimulation for creative work.) There was a core in this philosophical hodge podge which almost symbolically centered upon coal. The prin ciples of production for need, of the " just price," of distributive justice to producers and equitable reward for entrepreneurs in the coal-producing industry, were continuously asserted in Fabia~ writ~ngs which concomitantly reported deplorable' conditions in the coal fields. Socialism, deprived of the coal question, would have '1'1 Ibid., p. 264. The emphasis is original. The admission of the idea of converting the capital levy into a surtax is an admission of Fabian doubt as to whether their objective was a rich Exchequer or to liquidate a class.

'18 Ibid., p. 270. While pretending to save the ninety percent rights of this group, their hidden purpose was to eliminate them. Shaw evaluates the matter as of 1949 as follows: "In England ... I am being beggared by surtaxes called Capital Levies to humbug the' Labour Left (which ought to know better)." Cf. G. B. Shaw, "Ireland Eternal and External," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 183 (February, 1949), pp. 63-64~ That outside the "direct actionists" there was a "left" to "humbug'~ is evinced by the fact of Fabian Shaw's continued faith in Labour. In the same article, he opines that Ireland will be united by the North [sic] when a Labour Government comes to power there.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 93 lacked one of its more potent arguments. It loomed large in the life of English people, and evoked many of the Socialist slogans without dissent. It exemplified better tha~ any other industry the demand for production for need .and not for price, and for wages to enable the miners, termed in Socialist parlance the" producers," to raise their living· standard, hence their "right to have a voice in the policy of the operators-owners. According to the Fabian spokesmen, the political power held by owners should be gained for themselves by producers, and the effort to do so was counte nanced with the assumption that more 'would thus accrue to " the community." From the pattern· created by the coal mining dilemma came the pattern for the monolithic State; for . . . every accession of capital value should be shared with the Government, which was long since declared to be-though our Chancellors of the Exchequer seem habitually to forget it-the sleeping partner .in every undertaking, and the only righteous heir to every incre ment due to the progress of the nation in population and wealth.79 Although Webb speaks of sharing increment with the State, the concurrent drive for "nationalisation" left no doubt that ex propriation was envisioned. The British utilitarian did not speculate about a "withering " State-Fabians knew that the Labour Party possessed as .its dowry from the Trade Unions a new check upon the executive, the Partner-Government. It was not yet time· to emphasize the point that the Party intended to con trol services by substituting for owners, the State. .The power of labor (not the Party) might one day excel that of the State. That \voulddepend upon the relations of indigenous Trade Unions and the Socialistic Labour Party. It was not discussed. But the " inevitability" of gradualism ,vas understood. In any case, Webb's hearers and readers could have no excuse for not compre hending that Fabians intended to abolish Capitalism. They might also have reasoned that· the fate of trade unionism was dubious~ 79 The Capital Levy, Fabian Tract I88, p. 13. Italics are inserted. It is not highly pertinent to ascertain here if the Coalitionists had really subscribed to this doctrine in their platforms. It is denied by Spender that nationaliza tion of the mines was promised. "Rationalisation" was the burden of the Sankey Report; and "amalgamation" of the Samuel Report.

94 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 It should be recalled that the Fabian Society's best gift to the Labour Party, Sidney Webb, became a member of the Party Executive during the war. The above-mentioned statement about the Capital Levy came out· during the war. In. 1923, as Chairman of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party, Webb delivered the address which appeared as Fabian Tract 207, The Labour Party on the Threshold. so Benign, jovial, almost pseudo-papal, the future Lord Passfield intended to produce a· harmonious unity and to fit the new party into the political scheme of things without arousing fears. Anyone could see that no party could digest "direct actionists" and " inevitable gradualists," but the Fabian Society which boasted it had "no orthodoxy" Sl .would try to do so. In June, 1923, Webb drew the attention of the Conference to the curve which Labour returns produced:. 62,698 votes in 1900; 323,195 in 1906; 505,690 in 1910; two and a quarter million in 1918; four and one-quarter million in 1922. A clear majority was indicated for 1926. Questions arose: Could Labour supply the responsible leadership? Did Labour have a .foreign policy?

One question was not spoken: Could Labour present a united front? Webb, however, answered this one<succinctly: Although unlike the Liberals andU nionists, labor leaders had no " years of success in the making of profit" to their credit, in the Consumers' Cooperative Movement (wooing these by faint praises) and·" the highly complicated work of Trade Unions" they had shownbusi ness training and experience. On the other hand, from Liberal Unionist benches had come the "most egregious blunders in Political Economy," and the Treasury had evinced no genius in 'finance or law or "knowledge of international affairs or in that instinctive wisdom we call statesmanship.'" .Untrammeled by the demand for documentation Webb went on. From forty years' scrutiny, he said he could predict that Labour would be at least as competent as the contemporary ministers. These last had produced "immoral treaties" of peace and here after five years, they had· achieved no organization of Europe as a commercial whole,. no unified 'Continental transport system. They ignored 80 Sidney· Webb, The Labouf' Party on the Threshold (London: Fabian Bookshop, June, ·1923).

8'1 Cf. Clement Attlee, Ope cit., p. 30.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 95 economics and morality. He implied that Labour Party politicans were above reproach at least on the scale of values where morality means "nature of things." "I confess to the simple faith that morality, like economics, is part of the nature of things ... whenever we fail to take into account the nature of things our calculations ... are brought to nought." 82 He had not spoken the underlying truth that British Socialism meant to become the planning centre for the distribution of the raw materials of the Norld, and that its trade union members were to contribute their self-sacrifice to thecause. 83 This criticism" of ministers seemed designed to furnish guidance to future Labourites in office, to act "not on what We presume to be our own rights but on what we discern to be the common interests of the world," for nations are" in a very real sense members of one another." The Labour Party stood, he said, for a policy' of mutual service, not a policy of the deliberate pursuit of profit for self. So a united front of workers-by-hand-and-by-brain was to be developed on the level of international affairs, and it called for self-effacement on the part of organized workers.

On foreign policy, Labour was ready with several studied proposals to reassert English leadership and to warn France against a single :further step in her "fatal aggression policy"; to accept the willing reparations offered by Germans for mines and buildings (the ILP of Glasgow rejected all reparations) and compensation for damage by German bombs and torpedoes (there was a large segment of Labour which was adamant against any cooperation with the Germans who had submarined merchant men) ; to make a real league of nations which would function with the effectiveness of the International Postal Union; with some little deference to political particularism, to work for unhampered intercommunication by suppressing passports and customs. 82 Webb's philosophy was explained in terms of J'the nature of things" and his best witness was always" any instructed person." ·83 Cf. G. D. N. Worswick, The Raw Materials Controls (London: Fabian Society, 1943), a pamphlet; also, H. Laski, Socialism as Internationalism (London: Fabian Research Society and Victor Gallancz, 1949). He would separate state and nation and create" functional federalism," and he would demand ever so "gently that Trade Unions and professiomll groups surrender national interests (self-interest) even as states should surrender sovereignty.

96 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Should the League become efficient as the Postal Union, it was most reasonable to demand "a unified railway and canal ad ministration from Astrachan to Algeciras "; to urge upon govern ments " a common policy of education in internationalism, instead of the false history and economics taught in the name of patriot ism." 84 This was a platform which Trade Unions were not likely to invent without guidance or the Fabian inspiration of the Labour Party. It introduced a dream into economics, that dull regent science usurper of the realm of regal politics. Since the rest of the program, purely domestic, interested Labour men of all ranks and was explosive to the point where Webb must apply the brakes of " gradualism "-there was" reaction" on all sides in 1923, and a wage-war-the Fabian thesis connected the national debt and the wage-war. The debt problem, however, lay partly in the inter national field. "I am not sure," said the chairman, "that there may not be some truth in the suggestion that it is not so much national particularism as the private interest of international Capitalism that is today the main obstacle to such a foreign policy as I have outlined/' 85 Webb substituted, really, "the private 8·4, It does not seem to have occurred to any 14 instructed person," as Webb would say, to reflect that patriotism is a part of the 14 nature of things"

coming utider the cardinal virtue of Justice. 85 In 1931, the moral picture of the financial or economic world was described by the Supreme Pontiff in QA, more clearly than by Webb in 1923. (Cf. On Reconstructing the Social Order [Washington: NCWC, 1942], p. 38.) Pius XI marks the degradation of free enterprise-its transformation into economic dictatorship: 1) supplanting the free market, 2) allowing itself to become absorbed in ambition for power, 3) reducing the supreme arbitress, the queenly State to slavery, having induced her to become partial to economic aims to the neglect of all other proper aims. The Pope thus describes that evil which Webb calls" national particular ism" when depicting internal national decay. The Pontiff marks out in the international sphere, two "streams from the one fountainhead," greedy individualism: 1) "economic imperialism" (States which are bound in thrall to monopolies wage economic wars against other States) and 2) "a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance whose country is where profit is."

Webb seems to see the same picture. He proposes to invest the two "streams" with Socialism. Under this Socialism, the State should become servile to economic ends favoring at first, her own nationals; and then she Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 97 interest of international [Socialism]" to bridge the gap from foreign to domestic issues. Then he went on to remind his listeners of a selected group of facts: There was the wave of wage reductions and unemployment; there was retrenchment in social services and reluctance on the part of government to expend moneys on Housing, Education, the Trade Boards' Act, and the like. The situation was the work of the " Geddes Ax." It was currently asserted that high taxes necessitated these repressions. This, according to Webb, meant that the poor and ill and the wage earners were to be " made to pay for the war." (This was as bad as his anthropomorphic use of the term it capitalist" noted above.) The Labour Party, he declared: . . . must go on asserting that there can be no financial security, indeed no complete restoration of industrial prosperity in this country, so long as one million pounds have to be taken out of the product of labour each work ing day, before either wages are paid or profit is made, merely to pay interest on the war debt.86 The Fabian proposal was restated-the Capital Levy. In 1919, the Fabians entertained a notion that perhaps £100 might be exshould sally forth to reduce other States and bring them under the yoke of Socialistic imperialism. It is intended that this should be a happy condition of things; and a cartoonist might be inspired to sketch the elfish figure of Webb high on some "fountainhead" dropping a harmless dye into the headwaters of both "streams" to indicate that their beds are preempted for Socialism when the waters of capitalism shall have dried up.

Without an understanding of the above point, it is impossible to see the consistency of the Socialist stand against internationalization of the Ruhr in 1919 and in 1950. Developing the doctrine of his predecessor, Pius XII points out the danger that the" working class" may make the same" mis takes" as capital in "withdrawing ... the management of means of pro duction from the personal responsibility of the private owner [individual or company] and transferring this management to the responsibility of collective, nameless groups ... [a situation to which) a Socialist mentality would accommodate itself very easily.... The same danger arises when one insists that paid workers in an enterprise should have the right of economic co management, especially when the exercise of this right depends . . . on organizations managed outside the enterprise." Cf. Text of Papal address to Congresses of Social Studies and Christian Social Union, NCWC News Service release June 5, 1950.

88 Fabian Tract 207, pp. 8 f.

98 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 empted from the Capital Levy; now, in 1923, a War Debt Redemption Levy on fortunes above £5,000 was suggested " graduated according to ability to pay." No graduation had been outlined in the 1919 plan. In 1923, the absolute attitude toward a Capital Levy was being modified for political purposes. Yet, such a levy was the "indispensable step to any stable economic order in this country." It is remarkable how succinct and polite, how notably elevated into the realm of the " secondary passions," as Lord Olivier had said in the Essays (" Moral"), was this sug gestive· appeal to the "have-nots" against the "haves," in an ugly era. The economics in this argument was simply erroneous. Under neath the argument was the assumption of judgment that the wealthy intended to retain their" power over other people's lives" as well as their riches, and so they stood in the way of social reform. 87 The assumption of the right of the working class to appropriate fortunes and eliminate a class was not· made here as in the plan of 1919. And before the conclusion of his statement of aims, in 1923, Webb had changed the class-levelling proposal to some proposals for surtaxes. Done in the interest of gradual ism, this indicates that socialist-labor's adventure across the boun daries of social and into political life was affecting the Labour Party's principles. A socialist society could expound class levelling doctrine careless of results; but a political party must have the votes-if it is to win office-of the rentier class, which might be induced to accept surtaxes to "pay for the war" but could not be expected to endorse a levy designed to eliminate their class.

Webb proclaimed that in the face of the bankruptcy of the " governing class" which he declared had no programme and no solution for the triple problems of rising trustification, the in~ fluence of wealth on the press-a "sinister" dominance-and unemployment, the Labour Party offered the "luxury" of a pro gram consistent with principles. To repeat, his Labour and the New Social Order had expounded both programme and principles 87 Fabian Tract 188, p. 7. It was admitted that the numbers of the wealthy class hardly changed. Some became richer and the individualsmaking up the group changed.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 99 but the lecturer knew well that within the ranks of those who made up the annual conference there were those who disputed the "inevitability of gradualness"; there were irresponsible· persons whose emotions sprang from some particular grievance, dabblers in the theory of violent revolution, strivers for power beyond legal restraints; there were authoritarians who would wipe out local government, and syndicalists who would destroy centralized authority. The self-interest or class-interest which would tear apart a party made up of workers "of hand and brain" had to be canalized.ss There must be a united Labour Party. Like Karl Marx, writing the" Inaugural Address" for the warring factions in the first International, to supply common ground, 8~ Webb found a few common propositions if not principles upon which to base his party as it came face to face with its destiny.

Misappropriating a biblical phrase, as Fabians often do, Webb ended the speech which hecame Tract 207, appealing to "the spirit that giveth life." He said this was the spirit of faith in their proposals, "spirit," in his readers to meet opponents in debate, "spirit . . . in which . . . we give our own lives," "in fellowship" and "for fellowship." He concluded, "We must remember that the founder of British Socialism was not Karl Marx but Robert Owen, and that Robert Owen preached not class war but "the ancient doctrine of human brotherhood . . ." and he cited in confirmation William Morris'· Dream of . John Ball, "fellowship is heaven ... that shall live ... while many a man's life upon the earth . . . shall wane." It is doubtful if listeners touched by this rhapsodic peroration (the lulling repe titious cadences have here been elided) recalled that the argument indicated that "vocational organisation," was made synonymous with "industrial democracy" and indicated not less but more government; 90 that it I meant the development of Consumers' 88 There was no word for splinter parties then, save "groups." Each of these splinter potentials will appear further on in connection with the political scene.

89 Lorwin, op. cit., pp. 36-40. &0 The confusion of terms here causes the peculiar waywardness which characterized the Fabian ,philosophical gait up to the Webbs' trip to Russia in 1932. They habitually confused" government" and" society"; and they saw no problem in a quasi-syndicalism in industry and a State in which 100 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Cooperatives as widely as possible as an integral part of Socialism; that it meant greater power for Trade Councils, and more bureauc racy in Whit~hal1 in connection with mines and rails and especially electricity, " in the name of freedom." To lodge power in councils and bureaus seen1ingly means no abuse of authority, but Tract 207 prepared for the era of government by decree. Webb made polit ically adroit reference to the recent violation of habeas corpus in the case of conscientious objectors and the Labour Party's fight against Irish deportations. He cleverly pointed out the inadvisa bility of violence as it was currently demonstrated not in England, . where it was just as endemic, but in America (they had read about "goons"), and in Italy, where "property," he said, was "against the popular cause." With no violence, no undue civil restraint, there must also be no lack of research and" inspiring vision." But-he applied the brake of gradualism-there must be on Labour's part no commitment" to new or additional projects, or to the details of refortns, if these belong more appropriately to a stage of greater freedom and less responsibility." This was a warning to the ILP not to demand Socialism .. now. Then came an encouraging word to these ardent fighters: " The whole· nation has been imbibing Socialism without realizing it! It is now time for the subconscious to rise into consciousness ..." in a united spirit. 91 It was clear that on the threshold of power Labour's principal problem was self-unity, and details of reform must await better opportunity. Webb supplied the Party with a mystique.

We have not analyzed Labour and the New Social Order. It supplied working ideas to functional documents like the Address of 1923. Webb himself put it to work, flattering the ego of Labour's would-be leaders, anchoring chauvinism (anti-French) in political international idealism which he justified by the promise of international economic ameliorations,· preparing British Social ism to assurne leadership by invoking " spirit," so as to appeal to government was not the creature of Society but Society itself. The Co operative means social action at the level of economic interest of the community. That the monolithte, planning State could tolerate independent co operatives is impossible. They batten in the margins of Capitalism or of industrial democracy, unless the latter is politicized. 91 Webb, Fabian Tract 207, p. 12. Italics are inserted.

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 101 the invidious (with a warning to move slowly). "Spirit" he defined as infused Socialism,· something needed to fuse its hetero geneous sections and to make it acceptable to the masses; some of whom were hysterical after the war and prone to dabble in spiritism; 92 some again were frustrated by Manchester Economics and edging toward syndicalism; and the rest, mentally parched by Positivism, were preparing political measures to produce dreams of great socio-economic developments on the international level. "It calls for warmth in politics," Webb said, "for none of the cynicism that saps the life of leisure." The" still undeveloped Science of Society" must be developed by research and dissemi nation of all the science that exists.93 No Labour Party, the great Fabian asserted, can govern save with the best Political Science of its time; it cannot of· its nature be plutocratic and use pretended solutions of social problems merely to further its political triumph-referring to liberal Tories; nor autocratic and force the adoption of its whims-referring to the fanatical Socialists. Unchanging in policy, it must perpetually develop finer measures as means to Labour's ends, those of democratic cooperation, production unlimited by price and profit, equality in education. "If Law is the Mother of Freedom, Science, to the Labour Party, must be the Parent of Law." 94 There can be no doubt that Mr. Webb knew full well, as his hearers did not, that the "transition" .during· which "Science" ruled before its off spring, L~w, could come to power and produce Freedom, would be long and would be accompanied by eclipse of economic liberty.

92 cf. Hobhouse, Ope cit., p. 280. Pelmanism also was advertised in the NS, notably by L'Estrange Malone. (NS, 13, passim.) Mrs. Hobhouse was Beatrice Webb's sister. She inspired the latter to devote attention to prison reforms because of the sad experience of conscientious 'objectors during the war. 93 There should be no misgivings regarding the controls which the science of society would produce. A check on the sociological executive was to be found in the political legislative. This might be checkmated by the TUC, but all would be unified, all checkmates cancelled out, in the.Party which would be Socialist,comprising all who labor by hand or brain. ~4 The idea of social amelioration by legislative measures, i.e., U progress" through" telic" action, was very old by this date among American sociolo gists. Cf. H. W. Schneider, History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946).

102 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 The events of 1931 would underscore the meaning of "transi tion." But in 1923, it satisfied an unhappy mass of voters to hear of science, law and freedom. 95 D. PENETRATION INTO HIGH ECONOMICS AND THE LOWLY COOPERATIVES " Workers by brain" were drawn into the Labour Party about the same time that a great myth arose, the myth that research, especially the Webbs' (and Dalton's) research, produced an in fallible guide to " Law" created by "Science." The Webbs had adopteJ Veblen's denigration of the "leisure classes"; and in the early 1920's they met and mingled with the prophets of the new economics spontaneously generating in a London where Marx was too faintly praised to be condemned. So it came, about that the penetration of the area co-opted by Cooperation signalized the permeation of economics by utilizing the field occupied by Keynesian liberal economics. A. C. Pigou reviewed in the Economic lournal,The Consumer CoOperative Movement, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, March, 1922.96 Even though he probably did not intend to be so, Professor Pigou was devastating. He revealed an immense gap in the philosophy of Webbism although he made obeisance dutifully toward the kiosk of secular Socialism in which the image of the Webbs was en shrined.91 95 A study of the dis~ppearance of the numerous splinter Socialist societies, seen in a comparison of, for example, the LYB, 1916, with that of 1931, would supply a typical example of Fabian penetration and amalgamation.

96 A. C. Pigou, "Mr. and Mrs. Webb on Consumers' Cooperation," The Economic Journal, XXXII (March, 1922), 53-57. The list of editors and contributors to this organ of the Royal Economics Society is at least one third Fabian. The book was to serve to warp cooperatives into the Labour Party. The review serves to illustrate the more real warping in of 'contem porary economists while it gives a brief picture of the planned institution which even the Webbs must have thought Utopian but calculated to snare the cooperative movement (Owenism) into the Labour Party. The method here is a little complicated but necessary for brevity : (1) Pigou's review is very serviceable to picture the Soviet machinery visible' under the Webbs' prose; (2) it is criticized as it is reported to show penetration and important effects of the presence of Fabianism in fields where economics and politics meet. 91 This figure of speech is not overdrawn. It recalls the Wellsian' Samurai Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 103 Pigou spoke of the Webbs' service to social science. which,he remarked, ecqnomists even of opposing schools respected, at the very moment in which he revealed an unbridgeable chasm between the· work and objective truth or science: Clear arrangement, lucid narrative, mastery of detail, he commends-then, boldness of generalization. Should not boldness of generalization be replaced in this sequence by " careful interpretation of data" if science is to emerge from the use of method? This is the chasm; and it is a description of the method of the great Fabians-data piled upon data critically evaluated, followed by bold generalizations having scant relation to the data.'98 There is another gap between the data attached to its appended conclusions and the real value of the work: " It is not necessary to. agree with the author's conclusions or analyses [and Pigou does not 1 in order. to recognize the high service that they have rendered, and are still rendering to social science." Certainly, it can be agreed that science in its narrow sense is served by accumulated and categorized data. But the fallacious implication here ·is that "social science" gains from work in which the conclusions and analyses are not warranted by the data-something which is a philosophical absurdity unless social science is itself a misnomer for a method which allows its adherents to proceed by the seven league boots of Spencer and ignore his "dropped stitches." 99 (Both figures are those of James McCosh concerning Spencer who was Beatrice's only philosophical tutor.) Without categorizing, Pigou revealed three tendencies in the Webbs' thought moving toward sovietism: 1) Their absolute andWallas' admiring conception of the Japanese attitude of looking to military generals for "that unbought effort of the mind by which alone man becomes at once. the servant and the master of nature." Cf. G. Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, Third Edition (New York: A. Knopf, 1921), p.214.

98 Cf. Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, pp. 156-166, where she notes the deception of those whO steered her visitation of U.S.S.R., m~rkr.j the sordid features of communized life of which she disapproves, then launches into the boldest generalizations, all commendatory. Objectivity having been simulated to perfection, the gap between the conclusion and the data is unnoticeable. 99 Cf. James McCosh, Herbert Spencers PhilosoPhy asCulminated in His Ethics (New York: Scribner's, 1885), p. 19.

104 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 distinction between production for use and production for profit which Pigou considered" plausible" but" in the main illusory,'~ and which conditioned their omission of the consumers' coopera tives of Irish and Continental farmers from their study; 2) their contradictions. about democrac) -they find that constitutionally the cooperative movement grows more democratic because ad mission of large numbers of persons is not precluded by any shareholding but is favored by individual capacity, i.e., capacity got from purchasing, and they evince belief' that complete democ racy of ownership and control is becoming possible at the same time that they praise the condition whereby permanent salaried officers replace elected committeemen. Then they find growing between this hired executive' and the yeasty growth of numbers of cooperators, "a characteristic organ of British political democ racy, the representative assembly," 100 at a place intermediate between the electorate and the executive.10l They find it desirable that the Cooperative Union which summons and manages the Cooperative Congresses should become "explicitly a federation of consumers' societies only, instead of embracing, as it now does, association of workers organized as producers," a possible reference to their basic principle that Trade Unions should separate from consumers' societies. Pigou, on the other hand, holds that consumers' associations should frankly ally themselves with producers' organizations, these "weak' but socially valuable forms of work people's effort."

All these dichotomies-of profit· from its social reference, of masses from elective executives, of producers' from consumers' organizations-would not make a soviet system of thought with out being fitted into the apparatus which the Webbs envisioned. This apparatus Pigou described without giving his opinion of it: They fix the" twofold form of voluntary association" (coopera tive commonwealth) together with the " obligatory association of citizens" (Pigou' thinks this means Local Government; it could 1'00 The history of American independence shows that for this assembly to acquire democratic control, or control for the democracy, may take a revolu tion. 1'01 In Soviet history, this "assembly" stage is one upon which the party line is delivered from executive to masses, because of the ubiquitous party..

Fabians and the Rise of the Labour Party 105 mean State) into "organic connection" (this cannot mean con tiguity or juxtaposition but functional potentiality), with the " equally ubiquitous organisation of the producers by hand or by brain." (Pigou thinks this means" Trade Unions and Profes sional Associations"; it must mean the Party, otherwise it could not be singular and Hubiquitous"; and besides, in the Webbs' apparatus the people are all in one or the other of the Cooperative sectors already.) The relationship which the Webbs assign to these three. constructs is not that of free associations of coopera tors subordinated along with their local civil authority to the State ~hose surveillance is properly limited, but they envision a mesh ing of cooperative society and civic order under the Party through its "organic connection." It is the Party which mobilizes the "producers by hand and by brain" and activates the whole through the civil or " involuntary association" (local commissar) intergeared with the twinned but separated "voluntary. associa tion" represented in "assembly "-or in two assemblies.

The W ebbs in modest understatement said that perhaps in this constitution was to be found the obliteration of Capitalism at last. They hid an intermediate step in the formula: This set-up was to " contribute the greater part of the New Social Order that is destined very largely to supersede the present Capitalistic sys tem." 102 In that intermediate step was the great deception for, as Shaw pointed out, the Fabians' Socialism was destined never to produce r-eal or ultimate Socialism, and he used the figure of parallel lines which seemed to meet but never should.loa Professor Pigou pointed out some elementary assumptions with which he found himself in disagreement with the authors of The Consumers' Cooperative Movement. In the gap between this body of assumptions and reality, possibly, may be discovered the meaning of the otherwise silly words " very largely" in the above '1~2 We have seen in another place how Edward Pease noted the anthro pomorphousness of the Webbs' criteriology and their propagandistic tendency.

The writer was about to remark upon the integrity of purpose thus evinced in Pease but recalled that it was he who, to Shaw's chagrin, II roped in" the Trade Unions to get their money in order to elect Fabians to Parliament. 1~3 Cf. Shaw, "Postscript" to Fabian Essays, Jubilee Edition (London: Allen and lInwin, 1948), p. 222. Lenin and Stalin admitted postponing real Communism.

106 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 quotation. There is the hidden step in the formula. There were four main assumptions : 1) The. possibility of finding adequate capital under voluntary cooperation where there is large risk; 2) the assumption that there is no danger that the State may inhibit experiment; 3) the assumption that increased production frotTI cooperation could result without the existence of a "fringe of private producers upon whom the variable part of the demand could be thrown" ; and 4) the assumption that all economists then conceded that Capitalists abstract in the form of rent all but the worst of the instruments of production. Pigou also found highly debatable their conclusion that the highest· possible amount of the highest possible development of individual personality is the only reason for the effort to create ideal socio-economic' constructs and for their mesh-geared ordination-"this machinery." But he con ceded the usefulness of exposing the nature of cooperation, i.e., their "practical intention," and the value of their well-timed H emphasis," whatever that means. The best that could have been said was that the work served an exploratory aim; the worst, that it propagandized Soviet socio-political machinery and irresponsi bly left to fate the human materials which did not fit into the three-gear mechanism, in which the State as well as Capitalism has ceased to exist. Pigou represents the liberal mind which, for the sake of the by-products, tolerated both an anthropomorphic inter pretation of life and propaganda for a Socialistic order. It was the Fabians' best service to the' cause' of British Socialism that they were well received in highly respectable circles such as the Economic lournal served.

The Party secured anchorage in lofty and lowly organization, in wide sympathies with workers and narrow schools of indoctrina tion. That it was ready as a party to take its place in the old two party field was due to the work of the Fabians. That it was, unlike a real political party, a Socialist<party, based upon a secu lar creed, put a burden of anomalismupon the Labour Party which destroyed its political character. The ensuing struggle to keep faith with its plighted membership brings this out.