Introduction

2 The Founder of the movement was a sort of benign comet in the London sky out of America. Cf. William l(night, "Memorials of Thomas David son," in T he Wandering Scholar (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1907). In this volume as contributors of Memorials appear the names of Percival Chubb, Felix Adler, Havelock Ellis, Willianl James, Wyndhatn R. Dunstan, and others. Davidson was a Rosminian philosopher and persona grata (ibid., p. 126) as "visiting student" at the court of Leo XIII. Cf. also, Morris Cohen, "Thomas Davidson," The Encyclopedia of the Social Scienc.es,III :10. "He tried to establish. a religious basis for democracy . . . pluralistic, in dividualistic ... subjectivistic." (The titles alone of Rosmini's works indi cate the rise of the idea of State intervention for Social Justice.) 3 Edward R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society, 2nd Edition (Lon don: The Fabian Society, 1925).

3 4 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 more, when both were on an excursion connected with spiritism. pease and Podmore arranged a j oint meeting of the two groups at which Davidson read his paper, H The New Life."· At a second meeting the novelist Hubert Bland appeared. He was destined to perennial treasureship up to his conversion to Catholicism. At the third meeting, by previous arrangement,a resolution expressing common agreement upon their aim to reconstitute society, H to secure the general welfare and happiness," was unanimously adopted; but the organization discovered no other unanimity. Whether the methods to' be adopted toward the agreed ends should be material or spiritual could not be decided. At best a sort' of philosophical monism emerged ; their ends should be material and their means secular. Among the members, Percival Chubb, Have-. lock Ellis, and William Clarke stood for forming an H Order."

Sharing the ethical and cultural bent of Davidson, they actually planned a " common life" like that lived by religious; but by the fifth meeting, theniaterial' side" advocating life in the world had won. Adopting a socialist creed, they resolved to-live in the world, pursuing their avocations and jOining other societies. It-was Podmore's idea that in allusion to the tactics of Hanni1;>al's patient vanquisher, the Society so formed should be called Fabian. T~eaforesaid resolution concerning the aim to reconstitute society now beca~e the basis-of their organization. A plan was -formu~ lated to penetrate civic and social units and to find -means-to dis seminate contemporary social ideas; concentrating - on concrete objectives rather than on doctrines. The twin organization, Nuova Vita, or The Fellowship of the New Life, existed independently until -1898.15 Ramsay· MacDonald, 1.F. Oakshott, Corrie Grant, 4 The Index Association of Boston published Davidson's-New York Lee..; ture to the Fellowshfp of the New Life, The Moral Aspects of the Economic Question (Boston, 1886). The Fabians, it would seem, were slow to grasp his point of dissent with them: -U There are few more curious examples of the irony of human nature than this, that, while men are, everywhere, shouting and struggling for individual liberty and independence,-they are· quietly sub mitting to a division of labor [economics divided from culture] whose in~ fallible tendency is to render them helpless cogs in th~ great economic machine, creatures without 'liberty -and without independence" ,(p. 3).

15 Davidson held a Summer School of the Cultural Sciences at Keene, New York, in the Adirondacks ;he also carried on the Educational Alliance on the lower east side of New ' York, and 'lectured to his group' called "The Introduction 5 Havelock Ellis and his wife, were identified with it and wr~te for its organ, Seedtime. Between 1884 and 1886, much transpired to give the Society character: It learned that of " twosocialisms "it was distinguished from H. M. Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation in that it eschewed violence or militant action; that while it had in view the advance of Socialism in England, it intended to become part of the world socialist movement in order to reshape it. Fabianism encouraged the Marxist SDF while it also absorbed thepreach-' ments of Henry George, who had lectured in London in 1881. On March 16, 1884, Bernard Shaw, because he was a member of the Zetetical( debating) Society, in search of a debate, as he him self relates, appeared among the Fabians. He was already a follo.wer of Hyndman and a devote of Das Kapital. James Lecky had introduced him to the Zetetical devotees of Phonetics exer cised in discussion of Mill, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Malthus, and Ingersoll. On September 5, Shaw contributed the second great Fabian Tract, "A Manifesto," -not to be the last. Hence forth, .Shaw was the soul of the organization as Sidney and Beatrice Webb were later to be the brain. Shaw responded to this student's suggestion that such was the relationship that he, indeed, discovered the genius of Sidney Webb and brought him to the languishing Society but that Webb di.d more jhan an.y other to bring out Bernard Shaw, the born actor.6 Hi tories, lecture courses, tracts, even'the Webbs' famous Trade Un onism as later Breadwinners." At Glenmore Summer School, T. H. Gre n, John Dewey, W. J. Potter, W. T. Harris, H. D. Lloyd, Brother Aga ias [sic], A. N.

Alcott, and others lectured. Cf. Knight, OPt cit., pp. 55 fl. jAmong the stu dents was Morris Cohen. Fabianism has never stood alone, and this has been -its str ngth rather than its weakness. It appears like a plant grown as a perfect en ity by chemurgy but always needing something upon which to climb the con ours of which it would alter materially. In 1889, for example, it stood with the Progressives and offered the London Programme; in 1907, it lent gui~'.ng principles to the. Metropolitan Radical Federation. These small beginni. gs patterned the experience of the Society in connection with the William orris followers, the Hyndman Federation. the ILP, the Labour Represent tion Committee, and the Labour Party. , 6 Since' letters received from Fabians will not bepubli~hed, no further documentation will be possible.

6 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 their tract on " the new [Russian] civilisation," were enlivened by a contribution from Shaw. Pease says that the platform was "unqualified Shaw," and that although they had set out to recon struct society, they did not know how to go about it. The mani festo· clarified some principles but did not suggest means. The Fabians groped in the same blind way as most of their contem poraries 7 to find a science in the social studies, for they believed " science" must be the key to perfect action. The one unifying tenet was the monistic approach to the problem of society, and Fabians, according to their Shavian Manifesto, stood for" spread ing " their opinions and discussing " consequences." ( It is impor tant to note that they· did not pretend to know what consequences to expect in advance.) Ten underscored items in the ensuing brief statement of the platform indicate characteristic points of future agitation: Wealth enjoyed was dishonor; forgone, misery. All must labor. Access to Land and Capital was the individual's birthright independent of any other private person's will; " farm ing out" Land and Capital had created Class. Nationalization of Land was a public duty. Capital's presumed encouragement to Invention had been discredited by nineteenth century experience.

Competition made inevitable the practices of adulteration, dis honesty, and inhumanity;. but it secured for the public the most satisfactory products; hence, the State should compete with every business-and, operate upon a non-profit basis. Taxes should be direct, and no "proceeds" should be held back to replenish the public treasury. Exhibiting what was to be a characteristic note, fan1ily and fiscal matters were mingled. The State should compete 7 At ·this time Nationalist Clubs were rising in every direction in the United States. They were based on the socialistic nationalization plans of Edward Bellamy, novelized in his Looking Backward, and Equality. The organ of the American Fabian Society founded by W. D. P. Bliss, The American Fabian, upon completing its fifth year, ceased to appear and passed its editorial torch to the Bellamy societies in January, 1900. Cf. The Ameri can Fabian, V:2 (January, 1900); in the Library of Congress, HX1.A3, 7-11, no more published.

Clydesiders, too, were reading Bellamy while Londoners read George. This is easily verified in the lives of Kirkwood, MacDonald, Tillett. A Fabian, W. A. Peacock, said. in The Clarion, 1:7 (January, 1929),9, that Blatch ford's Merrie England had more influence toward Socialism than Morris' News From Nowhere or George's Progress and Poverty.

Introduction 7 especially with Parents, ensuring children against tyranny while seeing to it that they be provided with a happy home. (The State should compete in and with the home.) The sexe~ should have equal political rights since men no longer needed protection from Women. 8 No privileges should appertain to relatives of distin guished public servants. H The State should secure a liberal Education and an equal share in the National Industry to each of its units." 9 Finally, this platform declared that the establ1shed Government· had no right to be called the State. Better a civil war than another century of such suffering as the preceding cen tury had brought! 10 In January 1885, Shaw led the Society into .public notice when he represented it at the meeting of the Indus trial Remuneration Conference, at which Arthur J. Balfour, in an address, compared Henry George and Karl Marx to the dis paragement of the former, while Shaw in some agreement with both George and Marx said that all landlords were burglars. 11 So we see that early the attitudes on family, State, and property were set within a frame of reference of materialism.

In March of 1885, a generation before the creation of the fan10us Royal Commission on the Poor Law which occasioned Mrs. Webb's emergence into active leadership, the Society set up a committee to study poor law administration. When joiners 8 The jocular quality of these early. writings passed over to The Clarion rollicking with the rallying cry, "Boots and Spurs!" Margaret Cole char acterizes her own life in "the movement" and in "Zip," the organization preceding the New Fabian Research Bureau, as "fun and games in Politics." She excoriates Shaw, however, as a mere mountebank. Cf. her Growing Up Into Revolution (London: Longmans Sons and Company, 1949). 9 Pease, op. cit., pp. 2 f. 10 Pease wrote in 1924that Shaw had remained consistently devoted to these principles. This attitude toward the Government sprang from an unqualified conviction that it represented and served only the moneyed class.

11 Cf. Pease,. op. cit., pp. 2 £. Balfour made one with this group much as Asquith, Lloyd George and Haldane consorted with the Webbs in the early days of agitation. In fact, Balfour was appointed by Webb in 1924, to head an investigating committee. (Ibid.) Shaw wrote his equation into a play in 1918, Heartbreak House, where the burglar and the businessman perish to gether in an air raid by jumping into a cache-trench full of the explosive inventions of the old "navigator." The latter had advised all present to "learn navigation," meaning, of course, to learn tactics of social control.

8 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 came, there was sympathetic' work laid out for them. In May of the same year, Sidney Webb, Sydney Olivier, both of the Colonial Office, and Harold Cox, M.P., editor of the Edinburgh Review, joined the Fabian Society. Mrs. Annie Besant had joined in April. A disciple of Malthus, she was a friend of the professed atheist, Charles Bradlaugh. A year later, Graham Wallas joined, and William Clarke, who had dropped out came back, bringing to the aggregate thought, however late, attraction toward the feeling of the American transcendentalists and a devotion to Mazzini. Wide diversity of membership opinion increased with every meet ing. The Fabian group outgrew Podmore's dwelling and delighted themselves, among other places, in Mrs. Charlotte M. Wilson's " simplified" menage.'12 This hostess remained with the Society all her life but her energies were devoted to the Anarchistic Movement headed by Prince Kropotkin. She edited Freedom, from which we shall have occasion to quote criticism of Webb Shaw Socialism. Among the Fabians there were some respectable elderly ladies and many university-trained young persons.

Thus it appears the Society had acquired its type-set by 1890. The seven essayists were now within the fold: Shaw, Webb, Olivier, Wallas, Mrs. Besant,. Clarke, and Bland. Webb and Pease went to America in 1888, returning in 1889 in time to help Shaw get out the first edition of Fabian Essays in Socialism. Shaw's work as editor was meticulous. Pease called it "excel lent." The Prefaces to succeeding editions make Fabian-~ocialist ideological history. Especially noteworthy, however, is the edition of 1948 with a " Postscript" by Shaw appraising the Society.13 They were to devote themselves to research, education, penetra tion, permeation. Already" penetration" as well as "research " 12 It was to become characteristic of Fabian women to do, or insist all women should do, all their own housework. In 1949 an exposition of this principle was made in FN where Fabian women showed no sympathy what ever with the servantless middle class women who were complaining of over work. Cf. FN, 60:5 (May, 1949). Mrs. Cole gives as the reason for limiting her family the political and social services she felt called upon to perform. However, the Cole menage uses all the servants found necessary in upper middle-class domestic arrangements. Cf. Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, pp. 103-105.

13 Cf. Infra, pp. 651' f., where this is discussed.

Introduction 9 had commenced.14 The Socialism which Shaw inculcated in 1889 was built upon a democracy which from the Lincolnian formula, dropped the phrase "by the people.'-' Shaw had been through "Bloody Sunday" in 1887.15 He had marched, to Trafalgar Square with the demonstrators protesting infringement of free speech. The experience, he declared, taught him how Napoleons and Cromwells are made and what produces bludgeons and bar ricades.16 He had come definitely to the conclusion that the people must be governed by carefully selected leaders.11 William Morris, who had been through that experience with Shaw and Annie Besant, agreed with Shaw.1s For them, government was" educa tion" in the sense of governess-ing. In 1889, Webb, Wallas, and Olivier were permeating the Fabians themselves with Positivism, London variety.19 All members were expected to be cognizant of the tenets of Ricardo, Jevons, Cairnes, and Marshall. 20 All of them knew their John Stuart Mill. However, Webb alone knew and was the first to announce that Mill had died a Socialist.21 In 14 Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamilton, Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), pp. 34 f.

15 Cf. Francis Williams, Fifty Years' March (London: Odhams, 1950), pp. 61 f. 18 Cf. G. B.' Shaw, II Sixty Years of Fabianism" in Fabian Essays (Lon don: Allen and Unwin, 1948), p. 207. He later claimed the Society rescueQ Socialism and Communism" from the barricades" and from the II pseudo democracy of the Party System." He admired Cromwell. 17 Cf. Francis Williams, Fifty Years' March (London: Odhams, 1948), p. 129; also, Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw (London: Collins, 1942), pp. 81 f. 18 Pease's HistorYI unless otherwise indicated, is the source of the story up to 1915 as outlined here. 19 Cf. Helen M. Lynd, op. cit., p. 405. Shaw attributed the inclusion of Positivism and the resultant State.,..aided Capitalism to Olivier's influence, particularly. Cf. G. B. Shaw, II Fabian Failures and Successes," Fabian Quarterly, 41 (April, 1944), 2. For the position of Cairnes and Mill, et al., in British thought, see Lynd, op. cit., pp. 35, 99, 105.

20 The best description of the intellectual climate of early Fabianism comes from Shaw, again. Cf. Pease, op. cit., Appendix I, " Memoranda by Bernard Shaw," pp. 273 f, where one reads, "Mill's Essay on Liberty was much more the Bible of English Individualism than Das Kapital ever was of English Socialism." Also," Cairnes denunciationof the idle consumers of rent and interest was frequently quoted and Marshall's Economicsof Industry was put into our book boxes as a textbook." Ibid., p. 273. 21 Both Pease and Shaw in the former's History, pp. 21 and 274 respec10 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 the person of Webb was gathered the legacy of Owen, Bentham, and Mill. He was to train the· new electorate in "municipal" action.22 Typified by the work of Webb, Susan Lawrence, Herbert Morrison and A. Emil Davies, the effectiveness of Fabians in reorganizing London would make a special study and produce a specimen of their methods. 23 Through the 1890's the pattern of growth was the same as in the preceding decade-growth through the small political unit, the municipality, and within its historical structure; in other words, not in creating new patterns but in bursting through the old was the Fabian plant-like extension into the socio-political fabric of British life, to take place. Municipal ownership of some utilities was already well-advanced. The Fabians of the 1890's pointed out that municipal management was more desirable than control o~ all industry by a centralized state, while they taught that Fabian Socialism was to come by ballots, not by revolution. Although they agitated concerning the business of London, London was a difficult place to begin. A village would accept " municipalisation "

without an ideological struggle. Londoners wondered if mo nopolistic graft were not preferable to Socialism with its submer gence of. the individual. If Mill had died a Socialist he had not burnt his books. If the boroughs were Benthamite in sentiment, in London it was Mill. To resolve the ideological conflict pragtively, show that Webb cites Mill often against Mill's followers, to illustrate the failure of Mill to undo the individualistic teaching of Mill's Political Economy. "It is probably due to Webb more than any other disciple that it is now generally known that Mill died a Socialist .... The only other prominent Socialist who can be claimed by Mill as a convert was, rather unexpectedly, William Morris . . . as Mill had clearly given his verdict against the evidence [in stating that the worst evils of Communism are but dust compared with the evils of Commercialism]." 22 Lansbury, a "pure" Socialist, turned away from municipal action as he moved in ideology toward Lenin's Communism and Internationalism. But as a front-bencher, he became more Fabian; he worked with strict Fabians in their Commonwealth Group headed by W. G. Pole. Cf. George Lansbury, My Life (London: Constable and Company, 1928), passim.

23 But it does not follow that what can be done with the assent of the electorate on a small· scale is feasible on an international or even on a national scale. Pease shows the relation of municipalization to socialism and the dif ference between provincial town municipalization and that of London which the Fabians developed. Cf.Pease) op. cit.} pp. 82 f.

Introduction 11 matically, Sidney Webb brought out Facts for Londoners. Mean while, the Reverend S. D.Headlam produced his Christian Socialism. Fabians approved the latter's conclusions but rejected his premises; so henceforth their Social Gospel need not be Christian and Mill and Bentham were reconciled in Webb. Al though their activity was focused on decentralized political enti ties,24 Facts for Londoners became H Facts for England" on the way to becoming facts for the world-not just for Leeds or for Manchester. Following the Dock Strike, which the Society viewed almost as a laboratory experiment,25 there appeared" Tract No.9." It was meant to be a parliament bill legislating an eight-hour day when feasible. (The spirit of gradualism appears.) They had demon strated sympathy with workmen without conniving with the prin ciple of direct action and they concretized the problem in a bid for legislation on hours of labor.

The Essays went on their successful way. In them Shaw ex plained the" Economic Basis" and the hoped-for" Transition" to Social Democracy. He grafted Jevons' system onto Ricardo's as found in Henry George. Clarke previsioned the growth of Trusts in the twentieth century placing himself squarely among those who welcomed simplification as a means toward State con trol. Trustification might be deplored, but as a means to nationali zation it offered a' method ready to hand. The Essays slighted 24 Cf. Martin Ray Adams, Studies in the Literary Backgrounds of English Radicalism (Lancaster, Pa.: Franklin and Marshall College Studies, 1947). This shows the hundred years' connection of "liberal" thought with French Revolutionary ideology, and the link is tangible---Parr to Bentham. In Fabianism there is a concretizing and emergence out of literary backgrounds of liberal socio-economic agitation, exemplified in the breach with Davidson.

Shaw wrote that" the fellow" returned but once and got short shrift from the Society he founded. 25 Individuals like Mrs. Besant, but not the Society officially, worked with and for the Dockers, and Tom Mann; a Fabian, relied on members as friends. By 1906, Mann had joined himself with those who lined up with Lloyd George to "dish the Webbs." He dio not acquiesce in Beatrice's plan to make" our little home" the center of intellectual leadership of Labour. The turning point is shown exactly on page 116 of Beatrice Webb's Our Partnersht'p (New York: Longmann and Sons Company, 1948). Cf. also, Ibid., pp. 460 and 122.

12 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 the rising Trade Unionism and disparaged Cooperatives. Pease, the idealist, thought in 1924 that Annie Besant's " puerile" essay, untouched as it was by Shaw-unlike the other essays-had been the farthest afield with its design for state industries for the un employed: besides the social care it provided,. here was a method likely to lead to the State's superseding private enterprise in in dustry.26 Bland's" The Outlook" foresaw the time when Liberal and Tory would be united against" the dispossessed." Pease was hesitant in 1924 to declare that Bland's foreboding would never materialize. In the 1890's, fortified by a brilliant lecture series in which the dry periods of Webb on the Eight-Hour Bill, of Bernard Bosanquet on Individualism and its social antithesis, of Mrs. Besant on the School Board,21 were vivified by Olivier on Zola, Robert Morris on Gothic Architecture, Sergei Stepniak on Tolstoi, Bland on Socialist Novels, and Shaw on Ibsen, the Fabians launched a campaign of propaganda for reform and a drive into Tory and Union preserves for membership. The drive was spearheaded by the Essays.

As to organization and growth: Henry M. Hutchinson, M.P., financed the "Lancashire Campaign." Fabians reached and preached to the working-class liberals, and procured collaboration from S.D.F. everywhere, as also from Cooperatives and Radical Clubs; but especially was assistance forthcoming from the Co operative Union and the National Reform Union. Local Fabian Societies sprang Up.28 But these were absorbed into the Inde26 Pease could not foresee, as England was undergoing a temporary re action to the near-victory of 1919-1924,that his hope for 1928-1929would be deferred to 1945. Pease at 92 assisted in the Jubilee of the Labour Party. Cf. The broadsheet, The Labour Press Service (London Labour Party pub lication issued free to the Labour Press), December 1949, p. 4. 27 They were admittedly ignorant articles but they did the movement no harm. Indeed they served to attract the attention of uncritical persons to elements in society usually taken for granted or overlooked. This sharpened attention gave new aspects to familiar things and raised questions which Fabians answered with socialism in such a way as to produce the social stratification they were beginning to devise.

28 Cf. Williams, op. cit., Index, p. 381. He gives the Society the credit denied it by other writers of Trade Union mentality. Cf. also, Mrs. Cole's Growing Up Into Revolution} p. 207. The locals were revived by her efforts.

Introduction 13 pendent Labour Party (founded in 1893), which incorporated the ideas but disagreed with the.. methods of F~bianism. The process of absorption was later reversed. After· this campaign,Annie Besant, converted to Buddhistic Theosophy,29 detached herself, her political machine and press, and her power to put into effective words the thought of. others, from the Society. (She later re turned.) But these were days of too rapid growth to miss even a colorful member. And Fabians created other means of publicizing their views. In March, 1891, Fabian News was founded with Bland and Pease· as editors. The Annual Reports had been pub lished since 1890. In 1895 Oxford acquired a Fabian local unit. There were four University groups by 1900, and some colonial units. so The year 1891 was marked by the resignation of Webb from Civil Service to be elected by his own party, the Progressives, to the London County Council. It also mark"ed the success of the It Newcastle Programme," 31 achieved by infiltration into editorial offices of newspapers (Massingham in The Star, then and later in the Daily Chronicle, and Webb in both), and the mutual recog nition of their respective talents by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter,. one of eight daughters of an indulgent father who left them an inheritance in Canadian railway stock.

c. R. Attlee's The Labour Party in Perspective. (London: Gollanz, 1937) also outlines the preparations made in the composition of English social thought from Owen .through Bentham and Mill to Morris. 29 Shaw had given her a book on Theosophy, to review for Contemporary Review at the bitter end of their notorious liaison. 80 By 1924 all the university locals had become Labour Clubs. Cf. FSAR (1924), 8. (Fabian Society Annual Reports are designated FSAR, here after.) 81 A program to placate Liberals, the" Newcastle Programme" was Glad stonian regarding Ireland, free traders, Little Englanders and the new im perialists. Fabians endorsed it to " permeate" the Liberal Party and promote housing schemes, then called" socialist." Cf. Lynd, Ope cit., pp. 226 f. Pease, Ope cit., pp. 111 f, has Shaw's story of how he and" Mr. Beale" moved the programme at a meeting of about ten Fabians and how the Press reported it as a "revolutionary break-away."

It was in 1892 that the ILP was" set up" in The Clarion offices. Cf. R. B. Suthers, "Birth of The Clarion," Labour Press Service (December, 1949), p. 7. He" set up" seven chairs he had borrowed to seat the men who met to form the Manchester ILP a year before the National ILP was created in Bradford.

14 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 By 1892, London liberalism was sufficiently penetrated with Fabianism that J. Keir Hardie could be elected to Parliament as an Independent Labour Candidate. A new Election Manifesto by Shaw had already forecast the idea of a Labour Party but had advised support at present for those candidates of either party who favored the working classes. In the confusion caused by antipa thies involving Liberal Unionism or Home Rule the Fabian proj ect prospered. When the air cleared it was discovered that the Liberal Party was captive to Fabianism; even the Liberal Party's peculiar Leasehold Enfranchisement Association had been cut away from it. "Pure" Socialists like L. MacNeill Weir, author of The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald, and George Lansbury, the father of " Poplarism" (a term for the system of "outdoor" poor relief Lansbury inaugurated in Poplar), detested cooperation with Liberals. The Clarion, which claims to have laid down the plan for creating the Labour Party and capturing" the Move ment" for Socialism in its office in 1892, likewise protested against partnership with the Liberals. It was Socialist Blatchford whose famous " fourth clause" kept the ILP free from political entanglements, especially with Liberals. Despite the design to keep ILP out of politics, to accent Socialist-labor's independence, and preserve it free to inculcate Socialism, " pure" Socialists and gradualists continued to permeate liberalism. Webb, foreseeing that the solution of the Irish question was likely to be postponed, said the striking outcome of the election was "the defeat of mere Gladstonianism"; the election had a "collectivist com plexion." The Liberals were destined for defeat, Webb warned, unless they devoted themselves to raising the living standard of the degraded populations: In the present state of Parliament legislative measures were hopeless; it would be well to give "Home Rule" to London. In the words reported in Fabzan News, he pointed out how the Government might achieve reforms without" appealing to a busy House of Commons to pass special bills." 82 The Budget was the key; they could shift five or six millions in duties on the breakfast table onto" those who received rent and interest." 33 Among other reforms, he urged the eight82 Fabian News, II :10 (December, 1892), Vots. 1-13.

83 Ibid. These are points to bear in mind when considering the great debate Introduction 15 hour day for Government employees, and a minimum wage. The election of 1892, concerning which these words of Webb are a cotnmentary, is a very important marker· in Fabian progress. After that there was always a Fabian on the London County Council cooperating with the Labour Bench and with the Trade Union Progressive Party led by John Burns until its demise in 1914. Socialists like Snowden and Lansbury disapproved of this cooperation with Trade Unionism and with the Progressive Party, respectively. Yet they remained Fabians, being pragmatists. As the Society grew, its developing methods furnished interest ing and instructive data. Selected items from the record to be found in the London Fabian Society's Fabian News, specifically the volume for lS91-1903, give evidence of this method. Under "What Members are Doing" 34 Bruce Wallace, an honorary nlinister of a Congregational Church,35 held a conference every Sunday afternoon. The religious service lasted fifteen minutes; then canle a lecture, questions and reply, and "Keir Hardie, J. W.

Martin, H. B. Holding, Ben Tillett, and other Fabians, are among the lecturers." Further on, Totn Mann, it was reported, had been appointed Secretary to the London Refonn Union, "founded on the 28th of October by a number of M.P.'s, L.C.C.'s, and others. of the election of 1923, "Protection." Only vaguely the ideas of British So cialists were shaping toward "control" of trade by "cooperative" world buying. The constitutional feature of this suggestion is important : Webb here suggested rule by administrative boards and bureaus. In 1932, he will be found to be severely critical of rule by "acts in council." In 1950, rule by decree would be the accepted mode of administration. Cf. Marguerite A. Sieghart, Government by Decree (London: Stevens, Steve,ns and Sons, Ltd., 1950) . 34Pabian News, 11:9 (November, 1892). Parallel usage arises in U. S. today. 35A characteristic list of Protestant ministers who were very prominent Fabians and publicists or members of Parliament would include besides Arthur Henderson (MacDonald also filled a pulpit on occasion), John Clifford and S. D. Headlam (both deceased, 1923), Clifford Allen and William Mellor whose great activity is noted by Mrs. Cole, Ope cit. (eight references in index), James Adderly, G. C. Binyon (who like Clifford wrote to identify Christianity and Socialism), Ramsden Balmforth, James Kerr, M.P., J. C.

Hamilton, I. Massingham and Ben Spoor, M.P. (ordained but not practic ing) , Henry Carter, Richard Lee, C. Jenkinson, and the chairman of the Canterbury House of Laymen, as well as Lord Paramoor, editor of the Laws of the Church and Clerg'yy'.

16 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Sidney Webb is a member of the Executive Committee." 36 Under" Fabian Organizer in Lancashire," W. H. Utley (the father of Freda Utley) ". . . . will be glad if members of the F. S. who can arrange lectures for Cooperative Societies, Liberal Clubs, etc., in the North will communicate with him through the London Office." Throughout 1891-1892, the activities of W. S. de Mattos, a convinced collectivist, were notable-lecturing, campaigning, and recruiting. The same article on what members were doing showed anxiety and underlined the conviction that gradualism was in . order: "Many Fabian Societies seem to be in danger of neglecting the educational work, which should be their principal object, in .order to devote themselves exclusively to working as a political party." 37 The locals in "the provinces" were to tend to their social knitting.

Penetration in churches, in ad hoc committees, by itinerant lec turers to specified groups, went forward. The locals were properly corrected. Under "Local Fabian Societies"· in the supplement of 1892,38 nine typical activities appeared as follows: 1) The Fabians joined with the Trades Council in a joint manifesto aimed at "free and efficient education "-this was at Ashton-Under Lyne; 2) in Clifton and. Bristol they worked with strikers. The fact that this activity was in behalf of the girls engaged in con fectionary work and the alum workers shows the inclusiveness and detail of the Society's evolving plan. Continuously thereafter the organizing of women workers we'nt on, as a glance at Fabian News will show. 3) It was notable that women members opened French language or elocution classes (shades of the Zetetical Society!) which lent themselves to Fabian techniques. 4) Glas gow's local group imitated Webb's Facts for Londoners with Facts for Glasgow. This illustrates the point in the Marxist criti cism that Fabianism was " gas-and-water socialism." It also illus36 In 1896 Fabians had tried to permeate the International Socialist Work ers and Trade Union Congress, held in London. They inculcated their policy of "political-toleration," yet cooperated in the expulsion of the Anarchists.

Pragmatic and eclectic as they were, they were typically British. 37 The ILP became the politicizing agency, the fateful decision to go into politics having been made in 1892. But Fabians made up about two-thirds of the membership of ILP. 88 FN, Supplement (December, 1892).

Introduction 17 trates Glasgow's tendency to seek independence from London. S) In Glasgow, as in the initial plans in London, music and litera ture sections were formed-a" spiritual" endeavor. 6) At Hull they took up "the unemployment question" and action was to have been taken by the Labour Members of the Town Council " in the direction of an immediate proceeding with necessary public works." 39 7) Bad news from Manchester hadto be faced: The Society' there was already moribund because it had adopted a rule excluding any official of Conservative, Liberal, Liberal Union, or National 'League Parties. The local was chided for its lack of insight into the meaning of "penetration." 8) Election returns were .listed showing ILP and Fabian Society acting together; defeats and successes in contests for Parliamentary seats. 9) As ever, there is evidence of work within another group's framework: It was reported that the Liberal Party had broken a promise that the Labour Party should have the next vacancy for Halifax; the Fabians appealed for money and announced, "The best known London Fabians. have promised to aid with their persuasive oratory, and the Liberals will learn once .more that Fabians will fight whenever they are not allowed to permeate." ,40 Further more, Fabians invaded upper bourgeois literature: H. W. Mas singham, Shaw, and Webb formed a symposium in the Fortnightly Review on "What Mr. Gladstone Ought To Do." 41 William Clarke wrote for The Contemporary, "The Limits of Collecti vism." 42 It was apparent that Gladstone, the Tory-hearted "Liberal," epitomized that liberalism which Fabians were in the act of scrapping. "Collectivism" was the replacement which they offered; it was not Marxian but English. They did not say but 39 Idem. Italics inserted.

4() FN, II: 12, p. 46. Whereas Locals might be warned to eschew political activities, the London parent Society acted in a political manner, freely. 41 Ibid., p. 47. 42 He also wrote'" The Fabian Society" in the New England Magazine, X:l (March, 1894), pp. 89-99: "No visitor to the British Capital will mingle long in the political life of London before he will hear of the Fabian So ciety." He lists (ibid., p. 90) "Miss Willard, one of America's ref()rmers" as a member. Written for New England the article stressed the cultural and religious attainments of its members. The sentence quoted above is as true of 1950 as of 1894.

18 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 they were soon to exemplify that for them only Socialism would do, nor as yet did they give great emphasis to the abolition of Capitalism; but they were set for total social control of the economic order through the politic~l. There is a tendency in telling the story of Fabianism to note prolninent or recurrent writers but an idea of the momentum of the movement is lost by so doing. New names of writers, lecturers, members, appear in each issue of Fabian News. Obituaries note the passing of efficient workers known to the Society but never theretofore to fame in print. This is important; there were great leaders and able followers. They formed an "Order" in the sense of being at least like a religious" congregation," whether they said so or not.43 Work which bore fruit in 1906 was com menced in 1893. "The Strange Death of Liberal England" II is perhaps not too strange or inexplicable when one knows that Sidney Webb supplied the intimate knowledge of each department and Bernard Shaw the devastating prose, which manifested in the pages of Fortnightly the fact that the Liberal Government were not, as Campbell-Bannerman had hoped they would be, "the best employers of labour in the country." 45 The third party was scarcely in the field when it began to undermine both other parties and to tend toward becoming the One-Party. H. M. Massingham of the Daily Chronicle revolted against Fabianism and turned bitterly upon the Fabians. 46 He returned to the fold, however.

Pease and Shavv came very near being excluded from the Brad ford Convention of 1893 which created the national ILP-de signed to capture Labour for Socialism-but they insisted on re43 There is an accidental relation of the Fabian II Order" to Plato's concept of the consecration of political leaders to the people's interests. 44 George Dangerfield, The Strang.e Death of Liberal England, overlooks Fabianism and R. C. K. Ensor, himself a Fabian, says their influence is over rated. Cf. Lynd, Ope cit., p. 402. The correctness of the estimate is open to doubt. 45 This is the expression of Mr. Campbell-Bannerman cited in Pease, Ope cit., p. 114. We must use the plural fonn for II Government," as in British usage. 46 He returned to write for the N S when already there were rumors in NS that it was to acquire The Nation, in 1923. In fact, he came back earlier. Cf. Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership(New York: Longmans Green) 1948, p. 333.

Introduction 19 maining. Permeation of ILP went on with a will until the Labour Representation Committee, designed to free Trade Unions from ILP domination in 1900, formed the outright political party in 1903. 41 Trying to make themselves heard in Parliament, the Trade Unions lent themselves to manipulation by Fabians, and to inoculation. with socialism from both ILP and Fabian societies. ILP and the Fabian Society had been over-represented on the L.R.C. by a construction given the constitution of the Trade Union Congress; and the Fabians, having th~ stronger political bent took the ascendency when the Party was formed. There was a fringe of voters of the Liberal ticket who thought primarily of labor-of workers. Fabians induced a slow "growing up" in Socialism among Liberals as .~~ the unions. Although everyone spoke of the Liberal Party as dead after 1895, in 1905, the Liberals were back in office. Then, when the Ministry was formed, every member was found to have perused Webb's" Intercepted Letter" which had appeared on their desks embodying the Trade Union stand ards of hours and wages, urging graduated and differentiated income taxes and compulsory arbitration in labor disputes,48 also proposing wages boards for agriculture. 49 The Liberals were in office but they were no longer free. It had been very difficult to persuade the Liberal Party to adopt a reform platform as Mrs. Webb narrates in Our Partnership. 50 But now, in place of the party, stood the plan, and, activating the party machine, there was the bourgeois confidence throughout England 47 The ILP, it is said, absorbed the personnel of most local Fabian So cieties. "Absorption" sometimes in reverse became" permeation/' A typical case in point is that of Ben Turner. Cf. About Myself, 1863-1950 (London: Humphrey Toulman, 1930), p. 166. Turner's local Fabian Society became ILP but he deplores (p. 162) ILP antagonism toward the leaders (mostly Fabians) and its peculiar social ethics (birth control, etc.). He also detested Fabian collaboration with Liberals.

48 This was an "error " Fabianism recovered from earlier than its United States exponents did.. Fabians have always stood for party or government control of Trade Unions. "Governance" would be a better word than con trol, implying an inner control. Mechanically, or as an apparatus, the unions are autonomous. 49 This is important. Agriculture as a way of life is remote from the thinking of State-planning advocates of industrial democracy. 50 Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership, p. 296.

20 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 in the mitigated H socialism" of Lloyd George.51 In the race to capture Trade Unionism for the "Movement" or for Socialism, the Fabians had overtaken ILP because two-thirds of the ILP membership were Fabians, according to.Pease. The ensuing years of Conservative Government passed in research and education rather than permeation on the part of Fabians. The Society became an information bureau by pub lishing a study of the Local Government Act of 1894 (30,000 copies), and also one on the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897 (120,000 copies). Making the best of existent legislation, they disclosed ways of developing better housing and means of in creasing actual " compensation "-in other words, to make the law work. Meantime, they developed their unique device, the book box circulating library. The Society numbered many barristers and solicitors and profited by their free services, as an occasional obituary notice in the Fabian News indicates, and as the life story of Sir Henry Slesser demonstrates. 52 The numerous editions. and steady sales of tracts describing the workings of the London County Council, London Vestries, Metropolitan Borough Councils and local housing authorities, signify the permeation of the new bourgeoisie with socio-political education, and the rising habit of laying history under tribute~ Fabianism may not claim to have created the demand for such education; but the perspicacity which gauged it and supplied it was to their credit. Political Science, once taught· as the fruit of thought found in Plato, Hobbes, Bent ham, and Mill, must now instruct voters in the means of using 51 Much has been said of the drab and mirthless statistics of "Webbism."

(Dean Inge is known to have complained that under Fabianism they would all die of boredom.) Shaw bluffed uproariously when he launched into Jevons' economics (Pease, op. cit., p. 276) ; together they had all but sung "To Your Tents, 0 Israel"; Sidney was" rollicking" when he wrote the "Letter" of 1906. At least it can be said that when they relaxed they were most effective: Jevons' system fastened upon Ricardo's formed the nearest approach to an economic platform which Fabianism had until they adopted Marshall and Keynes. II To Your Tents" was an indictment of Liberal Government, a summons and a plan to put candidates in the field to stand for Trade Unions. The" Letter" concretized or cast into political projects partial Fabian objectives. 52Cf. Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Slesser, Judgment Reserved (London: Hutchin son and Company, 1941).

Introduction 21 government to deal with strikes, trusts, tramways, wages and poverty. So, when the Fabians in the person of Sidney Webb acquired a legacy from Henr~i' Hutchinson, the sponsor of the Lancashire campaign to develop Fabian locals, and when later they received one also from his daughter, they, Sidney Webb acting as sole agent, founded the London School of Economics and Political Science. The mind of the school was Sidney Webb. Designedly, it was not a Fabian project but was cut off as a separate entity to proceed upon its own course toward H the best science which could be obtained." Its history and influence afford material for another study. It boasts famous teachers besides the Webbs-Tawney, Beveridge (the latter's father-in-law), and Laski-all Fabians. Suffice it to say that in a generation from its foundation it was supplying many new Fabians as well as the old members with youthful "brains and political science," in Shaw's words; and The Clarion was to note in 1929 that the "New Fabians" were graduates of this school, pupils of Laski and bed fellows of Communists. H:arold Laski, Fabian teacher and pub licist, preached the aim of " Society's New High Priests" to har monize " the experts" and" plain men," and" harness" effort to " the profounder idealism of ordinary men and women" 53 and his proteges from· the University of London also were welcomed to the Society and the Party by The Clarion.54 Nothing more exciting than J. Ramsay MacDonald's demand ing the .recall of Tract No. 70 in which Shaw had talked of Fabians " throwing their weight" in elections (ILP wanted slower political action), than Olivier's going to Jamaica as Colonial Secre tary,55 than Shaw's becoming Vestryman for St. Pancras, and Wallas'being elected to the School Board, occurred in the years 1894 to ·1898. But each of these items had a far-reaching sig nificance: MacDonald's anti-Shaw spirit was to persist until 1931 53 The Clarion, II ;12 (December, 1930), 349. For such expressions Laski is said to have a " spiritual" trait. He wrote to this student that he deplored being compared with Berdyaev as a reviewer whom she cited had done, and that he was a neo-Marxist and no mystic.

lS4lbid., 11;6 (June, 1930), 175. 55 He stayed there until 1913 when he became Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. In 1924, he was Minister for India. It is important as far as space will allow, to note the positions of public trust held by Fabians.

22 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 and after. Olivier, as Lord Olivier, was to advance from the West Indies to India. The Shaw story needs no retelling. Professor Wallas was to have an historic quarrel with Webb 56 over State aid to Catholic schools, and to project other of his ideas far into the formation of early twentieth century thought, and into the Ameri can thought-stream. The Society had been surprised by the Boer War. The ILP stood out immediately against the war, consistently with their com mon Socialism, but the Fabians, acting in the Society's defense, in self-preservation evaded the issue. But discussion created an hiatus between the" Old Gang," as the Webb-Shaw coterie was called, and the "left wing." Both the MacDonalds resigned, although daughter Ishbel was again to be found active in the Society in the 1920's. Mrs. Pankhurst, J. F. Green, G. N. Barnes, Pete Curran, Walter Crane (he had designed the cover for the first edition of Fabian Essays), H. S. Salt, G. Hobson, and Will Crooks stayed with the group-at least for a while longer. Shaw wrote Fabianism and Empire to explain their view.51 The Webbs then agreed with the "Limps " (Liberal Imperialists, namely, Haldane, the Asquiths and Grey, among others). They were not against the war. Seeing no more liberalism in Dutch farmers than in mining companies, they were beginning to evolve theories about letting natives and native law be as found. Fabians were working to penetrate the" Limps" and to turn certain Tories and TV C people toward Socialism, and the war brought no abatement of their efforts.

Two clear effects of discussion about the Boer War were im portant: First, the conscious purpose of the Fabians to make the working class pay less attention to Party matters than to their own social condition-to induce them to leave politics to the Party; second, the calling forth of another of Shaw's succinct manifestos expressive of the Fabian consensus on Socialism and British Im56 Beatrice writes in Our Partnership, p. 340, " Sidney thinks the Educa tion Bill [ensuing one of 1906 reversing 1902 which placed expenses for de nominational schools upon local authorities] a harsh measure.... [But] as we belong neither to the Church [sic] nor to the Catholics, we have no place in either of the movements of the country against it." 5'1 Margaret Cole, Beatrice W,ebb, pp. 84 f.

Introduction 23 perialism. 58 The thesis of this document was startlingly original prescinding from the spirit of law under which the Papal Bulls of the sixteenth century had been written. It was realistic and, from one point of view, just : No nation any more than an in dividual has the right to use its territory without reference to the interests of its neighbours; the very comprehensive right to trade includes right to stable government which might be supplied by the interested nation if a native government fails; the value of a state lies not in romantic nationalism but in the quality of its civiliza tion; and "a Great Power is charged with the interests of civiliza tion. 59 Responsible imperialism must take the place of World Federation in the case, for example, of the African gold mi~es which should "in theory" be internationalized. Realistically, Shaw stated that China was being partitioned because " The state which obstructs international civilization will have to go." In the light of what is to follow, tracing Fabian behaviour regarding Ger many as it affected home politics, it is very important to note that Shaw insisted that German State organization of foreign trade in contrast with British laissez-faire proved-according to this Fabian document-that the application of State Socialism to the consular service was possible (i.e., a commonwealth of world co operatives might be geared at the consular level) ; and to think otherwise was to doubt the survival of Britain in the age of Powers. The italicized words spell fascism and imperialism. 60 58 Pease, Ope cit., p. 135. Shaw developed principles later embodied in the League Mandates and United Nations Trusteeships. Not" aggression" but a sort of international "eminent domain" covers his ideas on the" white man's burden." Cf. Lord Olivier, Imperial Trusteeship, Fabian Tract No.

230, 1929. Here· Trusteeship aims at leaving intact the native political order and social-economic practices, e.g., in land ownership. Fabian literature on the subject leaves blank the question of industrializing colonial populations, developing private property and suffrage. Cf. H. Finer, The TVA; Lessons for International Application, (Montreal: for ILO), 1944. 59 An interesting parallel is found in Burckhardt, who speaks in Force and Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 1943), p. 117, of the" sovereign right of civilization to conquer and subdue barbarism which must . . . bow to the moral principles of the civilized state." 60 Pease, Ope cit., p. 138. Shaw's thought is always in advance of Fabian conclusions and Socialist implications. Lansbury's advocacy of these prin ciples together with the. idea of boycotting states which did not adhere to 24 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 There followed an advocacy of universal military training, a living wage, super-annl1ation grants, grants in aid for housing, new edu cational machinery; and then, H The moral of it all is that what the British Empire wants most urgently in its government is not Con servatism, not Liberalism, not Imperialism, but brains and political science."

The Society. devoted itself to Education which was suffering from the incrustation of its non-conformist history and the un reflecting approval of Gladstonian Liberals; and Sidney Webb almost singlehandedly produced the plan and the bill·which Arthur Balfour got through Parliament. 61 It provided for the control of all elementary schools by local authorities. Only in 1906 was the State feeding of school children begun. It is indicative of the working 'policy of Fabianism· that they opposed as impracticable the feeding program sponsored by the Social Democratic Feder ation until they had won on the point of local control. In 1907, a plan for raising election· funds was successfully laid. This was the nearest approach to innovation at the time when H. G. Wells 62 was agitating to remodel the Fabian Society along more militant Socialist lines. Hitherto only a few Fabians like Conventions on conditions of labor was an echo of the Commonwealth Labour Group founded by Fabians H. Guest, Tom Johnston, Harry Snell and advised by E. F. Wise, U the expert adviser to the Russian Cooperatives" toward "a scientific system of controlling all imports." Cf. Lansbury, Ope cit., pp.

269-272. 61 Cf.· Margaret Cole, Beatrice Webb (London: Longmann Green and Company, 1945), p. 83. Sidney Webb lost his place in the inner councils of the Liberal Party because he.advocated the" dual system" which the Liberals believed favored Roman Catholic schools. Webb stood for U variety" and the" door open to new and unthought of experiments" and he judged from the United States' pattern of parochial schools that non-support would not close them. 62 Cf. "The Episode of Mr. Wells," Pease, Ope cit., Chapter IX, pp. 163 184. Lewis L. Lorwin states in Labor and Internationalism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), p. 65, that" the Fabian .Society was founded by Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells." He is in slight error on this point. Cf. Labour Press Service (London: Labour Party, December, 1949) which commemorates the foundation of the Party as of 1900, taking the Labour Representation Committee as the root of the Party.

Everything in this news service tends to glorify ILP and to relegate the Fabian Society to an inconspicuous corner of the Party's history.

Introduction 25 Will Crooks, for Labour, and Sir L. G. Chiozza Money, a Liberal (then a member of the Fabian Execu:tive Committee), had been elected to Parliament, having been given the Society's special"as sistance. Mr. Arthur Henderson, a Fabian and Secretary of the Labour Party Executive, became. Chairman of the Party in the House of Commons. Politics and learning were brought together by Fabians. In 1904, Graham Wallas had dropped his membership in the Society but not from the faculty of the LSE. He maintained his friendship with members and again lectured to the Society in 1922. He disagreed on tariffs with Shaw, and on education with Webb. Active younger members. included Henry W. Macrosty who wrote the bill adopted as the" Eight Hour Law," and Henry Slesser who drafted· many labor measures. Macrosty also wrote studies on state arbitration, the living wage, monopolies, and trust control and was a member of the Royal Economics Society. In his project for the revival of agriculture he anticipated the Liberal Government's reforms which were interrupted by war in 1914.

Land development and Poor Law reforms were a1gitated by Mr. Lansbury of Poplar and he had for collaborator Joseph Fels, the famous American soap maker and Single Taxer. 63 Lansbury's 64 ardour for redevelopment of marginal lands and rehabilitation of urban unemployed was admirable. He called himself " a Capital~ ist, a Socialist propagandist and a talking Christian." His daughter "Daisy married Raymond Postgate. 65 There was also Joseph F. Oakshott, formerly of the Fellowship of the New Life, 68 Cf. Lansbury, Ope cit., pp. 10 and 99-109. The Fabian effort to capture Fels or some of his money is told in Beatrice's Our Partnership, p. 291, edited by Barbara Drake (her niece) and Margaret Cole. The story was told this student by the American historian, Miss Elizabeth Kite, who was Mrs. Mary Fels' companion and one of the" dowdy Americans" as Beatrice describes them-to former Quakeress Kite's amusement. The latter became a Catholic after seeing Shaw's Candida that year, 1904. Fels was listed as a Fabian in Fabian News of the time. He preferred working with Lansbury.

64 Lansbury, Ope cit., "p. 13. 65 Lansbury was invidiously critical of Fabian intellectuals in 1928. They had kept him out of office in 1924 on account of his "Poplarism" which he explains convincingly in his Autobiography (ibid., pp. 129-169). But in 1929 he was on the front bench in Parliament and working closely with Fabians.

26 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 and John W. Martin who transferred his activities to NewYork. 66 The "Fabians mixed sociological drives and political issues. Listing Fab,ian interests, e.g., milk, liquor, pensions, pawnshops, bakeries, slaughterhouses, fire insurance, transportation, aU of which were studied with a" view to municipalization, there must not be omitted their rebuke administered to victims of the Mal thusian phobia. They proved statistically that the birth rate in Britain was dropping (six out of 120 marriages practised no family restriction) on account of" voluntary family limitation. It was one of two projects Fabians boasted most about in their history. (The other was the Poor Law Minority Report of 1909.) Although the research was made among themselves and probably represents a middle-class cross section only, its importance is obvious. Socialist and self-admitted Capitalist Lansbury for one raised a very large family. Fabian Ben Turner writing About Myself 67 expostulates against the Socialist habit of mixing these social matters with Trade Union politics or Party programmes.

But under the Socialist creed of Fabians, any protestants who appear need not form a new church. It was Fabian practice to evade respon"sibility on the part of the Society by notice that the Fabian Tracts represented their author's views, and not official views of .the Society, but nothing in their history indicates they could have published a Catholic response on the birth control question. To close the discussion on developments of the Fabian third decade there follows a list of names of some members acquired by the close of this period. These several famous names are to be found in Pease's History of the Fabian Society. The accent upon literary pursuits and interest in the humanities is obvious: Aylmer Maude, Arnold Bennett, Laurence Irving, Edgar Jepson, Reginald Bray, Stanton Coit, H. H. Fyfe, A.· R. Grage ( J:he New Age), G. M. Trevelyan, R. C. K. Ensor, Edward Garnett, G. B. Clark, Constance Smedley, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Snowden, George Lansbury, Herbert Trench, Jerom~ K. Jerome, Edwin Pugh, Spencer Pryse, A. C. Brock, Mrs. G. B. Shaw, and Holbrook Jackson.

66 Pease, op. cit., p. 138. 67 Cf. Ben Turner, Ope cit., p. 162, Introduction 27 Among the activated groups of the time, "Nursery," Biology, Local Government, and Arts, the most important w~" the Women's Group. Backing Mrs. Pankhurst were Mrs. C.M. Wilson, Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Pember Reeves, Emma Brooke, and others like Millicent Murbley, Doctor Letitia Fairfield, May Morris and Professor Edith Morley. 68 Not only Suffrage but Women's Rights, .. equal wages, for women and men, and related problems figured on the agenda of the Women's Group. The Society was going through a period of exuberan{:e and stress. From' 1906 to 1914, organizational planning came to a head, only to be stopped by the war. Local· groups and university groups annually sent delegates to the Conference of Fabian Societies. The principal stress felt in this Pan-Fabian gathering was the position of this Society of Socialists in relation to the Parties called Labour and Liberal. The Webbs had returned from a world tour in 1912 with money from a steel firm in Bombay to found the Social Science Department of the London School of Economics, and with plans for creating an independent Socialist Party from the Fabian nucleus.69 What was envisioned 68 FN, XIX:9 (August, 1908) lists 13 Fabian women who had gone to jail "for the Suffrage Cause." . That Beatrice Potter Webb repudiated Mrs.

Pankhurst's movement in its early stages, 1889, represented a stage in the conflict of civilization taking place in her, the conservative and bourgeois against the new Socialism. That she repudiated this error has significance because of other matters which she did not repudiate. Beatrice did not join the Society until 1893. In 1908 she wanted to lead the " Nursery," not to be reckoned with the "Old Gang," and in 1912 she was elected to the Execu tive. Cf. Margaret Cole, op. cit., p. 35. Beatrice calls her anti-suffragist action "my false step" in her autobiography, My Apprenticeship (London: Longmann Green and Company, 1926), p. 341. The tendency of Beatrice Potter Webb to follow as a religion something that she decided to like is ·evidenced in her partiality for" old" Fabians against the new" young men" in 1912-1915. It throws light on her affection for Russia in 1932. It will not be. inapropos perhaps to mention here her concern with political ethics, a concern which did not trouble Sidney. Cf. Keith Hutchinson, " Apostles of the Fabian Dream," a review of Beatrice Webb's Our Partnership, edited by Margaret Cole and Barbara Drake, in The New York Times Book Review, LIII :113 (March 28, 1948). "He [Sidney] did what he thought was right with none of the qualms that Beatrice suffered when zeal for the cause led her to slip below her own high standards of political morality."

69 Margaret Cole,.Beatrice WebbJ p. 110.

28 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 was the capture of the Labour Movement for Socialism and for a "new order" (Webb's) through politics. The war in 1914 interrupted their two tentative plans which were, first, to affiliate . the Labour Party and the British Socialist Party; and second, to create the Joint Socialist Council by which Sidney Webb hoped to solve the terminological difficulties found among British, French, and Belgian Socialists. Ten years later this hope re mained unfulfilled. Peasewrote again in 1924: H The project for Socialist Unity therefore awaits the happy time when war shall have ceased"; the war of Socialist semantics had not ceased. Incidentally, only the ILP, of all the English Socialistic groups, as in the case of the :Boer War, criticized the prosecution of World War 1. The year 1906 had witnessed the aroused interest of Mrs. Beatrice Webb, a member since 1893. Wells and the Suffragists seemed to challenge her. She lectured upon her own upbringing in.

the " Faith I Hold," a· series in which Hobson and several others participated, but her first great contribution was made in 1909, after the findings of the Poor Law Commission made necessary the famous Minority Report. To judge by the account giv~n by Edward Pease, this' supplied the bridge between the palliative measures recently adopted to relieve the distress of unemploy ment,. and the distant attainment of perfect Socialism. Supplying a bridge to an ill-defined Socialism was an element of many future patterns made by Fabians. Mrs. Webb created a separate or ganization in The National Committee to Prevent Destitution. 70 Such a committee could glean assistance from organizations which would have no truck with Socialism. This demonstrates the. fact that the Webbs cared not by what doctrinaire logic or absence of philosophy an end was gained. A remark of G. B. Shaw is appropriate and significant here: " The Webbs [had] no time for 70 Cf. M. A. Hamilton, Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), p. 199. They" roped in" persons whose names disguised the Labour Party backing and the steps to Socialism: Balfour, Churchill, Gilbert Murray, Sir Oliver Lodge. They failed because of John Burns and the Liberals but the roads were made ready for Socialists to travel into the Labour Party and along 'with it.

The Committee to Prevent Destitution used bicyclists to deliver literature; The Clarion did likewise up to its last expiring.

Introduction 29 argybargy as between Marx's Hegelian metaphysics and Max Eastman's Cartesian materialism." 11 Fabianism was then headed into its storm and stress period. 72 In 1912 Mrs. Webb founded Fabian Research. It embodied in an agency the methods and objectives of Beatrice. She had a genius for the grubbing research which was to be the work of this agency. In 1915 she tried to rescue the Research Committee from the Guild Socialism and Syndicalism with which it had become in filtrated. After the war it became' the Labour Research Depart ment which a little later became Communist. 13 In the war years and some time after, the" young cuckoos," as Mrs. Cole terms them, Margaret Postgate (later Mrs. Cole), G. D. H. Cole, Raymond Postgate and other well-known young Socialists \vorked in the Fabian headquarters. Impudent youngsters, they still· moved in awe and in fear of "the Great Ones," the Webbs and Mr. Pease. 14 '11 Bernard Shaw, "Essay on the Webbs," in Sidney and Beatrice Webb's The Truth About Soviet Russia (London: Longmann Green and Company, 1942), p. 14.

12 A very interesting reaction of Fabianism upon Americans is found in Fabian Anarchism, A Fragmentary Exposition of Mutualism, Communism, and Freeland by Alexander Horr, editor of Freeland, published by Freeland Publishing Company, 1814 Webster Street, San Francisco, California (Jan uary, 1911). The author and founder is an anarchist who borrowed a tone of Fabianism for his Spencer-based philosophy and Kropotkin-based anarchism. 13 Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 121. When the New Fabian Research Bureau was formed in 1932 Mrs. Webb gave it her blessing. Having renounced gradualism in 1932 and resigned in 1936, she was willing, nevertheless, to lend the name Fabian to the new organization, N.F.R.B., which later rejoined and rejuvenated the old Society. Those who. imagine the Society was moribund by 1930 overlook the fact that with characteristic zeal The Clarion trumpeted" Fabians to the Rescue" when" Zip," the So cjety for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda, was formed in 1931. Cf." Re porters Notebook," The Clarion, 111:7 (July, 1931), p. 195.

14 Cf. Mrs. Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 71. The literary erudi tion of these young persons was remarkable as a perusal of this book will show. The correlation between a very high and worldly literacy and ideological Socialism is demonstrated often. When this literacy becomes spiritual in a religious sense, it leaves Socialism behind, as witness Bland, Slesser, Knox, and Chesterton. Of her sister, Mary Playne', Beatrice wrote "presently she will be a veritable saint. Will she end in the Catholic 30 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 In 1913 Shaw, the Webbs, and D. H. Harben founded the New Statesman, extant as the New Statesman and N ation.15 Again, - like the London School of Economics, it was a separate entity, although it published prominent Fabians' viewpoints. Its editors in-chief have been to date: Webb to 1922; Clifford Sharp to 1931 ; Kingsley Martin having for colleague R. S. Crossman-all Fab ians. (Serial Record reports that no editors' names are given.) Robert Dell, correspondent from Germany in the 1920's and as consistent a contributor as Bensusan or Lloyd, was a former mem ber of the Fabian Executive. Supplements_bearing the reports of Committees of Inquiry upon Land problems and Rural Develop ment and upon the Control of Industry (studies of many a sug gested or experimental method) were published by this organ.

Pease tells of a storm of criticism arising over " control of in dustry," noisy with counter-proposals. It was comparable with the Wells episode of a decade before. Fabians played a large part in warding off from English Socialism George Sorel's syndicalism. Sorel's· followers argued for organization of the state on the basis of Trade Unions (basing the franchise not upon the home and geo graphy but upon the shop and economics) ; and, while working for collective bargaining and against the" servile state," syndicalists urged control of industry by P'roducers (i.e., workmen) rather than. by Consumers, to whom, they asserted, Capitalists truckled. Syndicalists thus opposed two things which by now were clearly Fabian-approved, consumer cooperatives and state agency in behalf of consumers. However, these were not the Fabian Society'S only opponents. Hilaire Belloc, suspicious that the" Servile State" was implied in the Minority Report, carried into the fray his ideal of the self sufficient producer, the peasant. Belloc foresaw that "industrial democracy" would destroy agriculture as a way of life. Then Tom ]\1ann , nominally a Fabian, came back from Australia and captured about all the working class attention with his· fervid new proletarianism heightening the self-consciousness of Trade Church?" Cf. Our Partnership, p. 340. On this page, also, Beatrice speaks of the need for" an Order" to give society light and leadership.

75 Massingham joined the NS staff in 1923. The Nation was incorporated with the NS in 1931.

Introduction 31 Unionism. Thus, during the years 1910-1915, Fabianism had to meet the impact of several attacks upon its program while, presag ing the conflicts of incongruities of 1931, militant Suffragists and South Wales miners made demands upon the Labour Party which would have wrecked its program· of cooperation with the Liberals for Irish Home Rule had it yielded. Syndicalism together with the new Guild Socialism advocated by A. R. Grage and G. D. H. Cole, who were connected with the New Age and the Oxford Fabian local respectively, stood out against the idea of a Labour Party. Orage and Cole also urged a "reform" of the Fabian Basis. This was done after the War. Cole left the Society in 1915 although he continued to work in the Fabian Research Bureau until after the War, and in the 1920's he wrote for the New Statesman. In the 1930's and 1940's he is found back in the fold.76 Another famous socialist, S. G. Hobson, left the Society in 1910, fighting with his native Quaker intuition and his platonic political idealism for a genuine Socialist Farty. Trade Unionism and Fabianism had, he said, rejected the "larger concept of in dustrial democracy." 77 Fabianism withstood the stress, fastened as it was upon the growing Labour Party. But the movement lost the" spiritual" Russian contact it might have had in Hobson-a 76 G. D. H. Cole, Fabian Socialism (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1942). Shaw answered a query of the present writer regarding Guild Socialism to the effect that it was no longer a schism since he, Shaw, had demonstrated that it was not hostile to but an integral part of .Fabianism.

Mrs. G. D. H. Cole remarked in a reply to this student that Guild Socialism never was orthodox. To compare Cole's Fabian Socialism with his com mentary on the Labour Party's manifesto of 1949, Labouys Second Term, Tract No. 273, "... written for ~he Fabian Society ... and offereij for discussion to the Labour Movement," is to find no satisfactory definition of Socialism and to find Cole verbosely critical of deviations from U only Social ism will do" but arriving at the same conclusions that the compromisers have perforce accepted already. Cole's writings appeared in both the NS and the New Age, in the 1920's; he was the author of numerous articles on industrial questions and the Labour Party's programme for Unemployment. His return to the Fabian Society, his dalliance with 110sleyism and final joining with Bevin against Mosley, are hailed by The Clarion, "G. D. H. Cole States a Comeback," 26 n.s. (June, 1926), 14.

77 S. G. Hobson, Pilgrim to the Left (New York: Longmans Green and Company, 1938), p. 40. Hobson had caught the (North) Russian reform ideal.

,32 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 sort of eastern " mystique "-as well as the earthy practical feel ing found in Guild Socialism and evoked from the western Middle Ages. Fabianism supplied the anomalous bridge between Trade Unionism and a Socialistic new. order, as Mrs. Webb later stated. Edwin Pease found Fabianism in 1915 to be "the dominant principle in political progress." 78 Still collectivist, it had not lost its identity in any other movement. It hated the" idle rich," the anarchy of competition, the "insidious" licensed monopoly. It ainled to abolish 'poverty by the "reconstruction of society." Why Are So Many Poor? was still the theme song. The evident class partisanship needs no further demonstration. There was revolt in some circles hardly to be called reaction:. e.g., in Freedom,79 a London monthly, we read: It were tragedy to throw off, the slavery of capitalism only to rush . . . into the slavery of Fabian Bureauc racy. The frightful mess that Webbism would make of life under its system of a modified state capitalism is a disaster one does not care to think of. No more poetry, no more romance, no more cakes qnd ale under the regime of these tight-lipped superior nonentities. Just as their industrial organization would make us obedient machine-like agglomerations of soulless units, so their marriage market would reduce us to the likeness of marionettes, whose strings would be pulled by eugenic cranks ....

The rest is unquotable here, and Rabelaisian regarding Shaw. It illustrates the antagonism Fabianism aroused in those who tried to resist being managed and the juxtaposition if not fusion of politics and social problems usually found in Fabian Socialism and here reflected in the words of critics. The range of Fabian energies embraced family relations and relations within the family of· nations, equally. In the light of present-day developments, it must be noted that in 1916 there appeared as a Fabian Society publication the work of L. S. Woolf, International Government. 80 Fabians following 78 Pease, Ope cit., p. 255. 79" What is Slavery," Freedom, XXVIII :301 (May, 1914), 33. 80 L. S. Woolf, International Government (New York: Brentano's, 1916).

Introduction 33 the Socialist ethic, stood for pacifism but compromised on total draft for total war; and by professed internationalism they advo cated a supranational government, one which must invest the vacuum found where international anomy had dissolved forces governing brotherly relations among sovereign states. The plan in Woolf's book bears comparison with Wilson's League of Nations and with the present United Nations organization. Possibly it has greater likeness to the latter. After 1919, through the date span of this study there was always a Fabian in the person of Stephan Sanders, C. Delisle Bums, or Philip Noel-Baker in the Interna tional Labour Organization or in the League of Nations secre tariat at Geneva. The deliberately anonymous International Labour [sic] Organisation of 1931, published by Allen and Unwin, is, judging from internal criticism, the work of some of these persons, here mentioned.

Having traced the story of Fabianism and illustrated its main characteristics, we turn to sketch the framework in which its action is particularly to be studied, the political scene in Britain, 1919-1931. Subtitle: Two reports prepared .by the Fabian Research Department with an introduction by George Bernard Shaw, together with a project by a Fabian Committee for a Supranational Authority that will prevent war. For· the Fabian Socialists, the supranational government of H one world" replaced· that concept of the brotherhood of nations which is inherent in Natural Law (cf. Pius XII, Christmas Messageo! 1944. Washington: NCWC, p. 9, where reference is made to the natural-law basis of society of nations and the U equal right of its own sovereignty" belonging to each State). Since Fabian philosophy abscinds from the Natural Law, it may be said to produce anomy because it dissolves the basis of adhesion of States in brotherhood; the divine basis discernible in Natural Law is replaced by an artificial device, U sovereign equality" in a supranational world. For a mod ern meaning of anomy cf. Sebastian de Grazia, The Political Community: A Study o! Anomy (University of Chicago Press, 1948).