The History of the Fabian Society
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Title: The History of the Fabian Society
Author: Edward R. Pease
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY ***
The History of the
Fabian Society
By
Edward R. Pease
Secretary for Twenty-five Years
With Twelve Illustrations
NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Preface
The History of the Fabian Society will perhaps chiefly interest the
members, present and past, of the Society. But in so far as this book
describes the growth of Socialist theory in England, and the influence
of Socialism on the political thought of the last thirty years, I hope
it will appeal to a wider circle.
I have described in my book the care with which the Fabian Tracts have
been revised and edited by members of the Executive Committee. Two of my
colleagues, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, have been good enough to
revise this volume in like manner, and I have to thank them for
innumerable corrections in style, countless suggestions of better words
and phrases, and a number of amplifications and additions, some of which
I have accepted without specific acknowledgment, whilst others for one
reason or another are to be found in notes; and I am particularly
grateful to Bernard Shaw for two valuable memoranda on the history of
Fabian Economics, and on Guild Socialism, which are printed as an
appendix.
The MS. or proofs have also been read by Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mrs. Bernard
Shaw, Sir Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, W. Stephen Sanders, and R.C.K.
Ensor, to each of whom my cordial thanks are due for suggestions,
additions, and corrections.
To Miss Bertha Newcombe I am obliged for permission to reproduce the
interesting sketch which forms the frontispiece.
E.R.P.
THE PENDICLE,
LIMPSFIELD,
SURREY,
_January_, 1916.
Contents
Chapter I
The Sources of Fabian Socialism
The ideas of the early eighties--The epoch of Evolution--Sources of
Fabian ideas--Positivism--Henry George--John Stuart Mill--Robert
Owen--Karl Marx--The Democratic Federation--"The Christian
Socialist"--Thomas Davidson
Chapter II
The Foundations of the Society: 1883-4
Frank Podmore and Ghost-hunting--Thomas Davidson and his circle--The
preliminary meetings--The Fellowship of the New Life--Formation of
the Society--The career of the New Fellowship
Chapter III
The Early Days: 1884-6
The use of the word Socialism--Approval of the Democratic
Federation--Tract No. I--The Fabian Motto--Bernard Shaw joins--His
first Tract--The Industrial Remuneration Conference--Sidney Webb and
Sydney Olivier become members--Mrs. Annie Besant--Shaw's second
Tract--The Tory Gold controversy--"What Socialism Is"--The Fabian
Conference of 1886--Sidney Webb's first contribution, "The
Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour"
Chapter IV
The Formation of Fabian Policy: 1886-9
The factors of success; priority of date; the men who made it--The
controversy over policy--The Fabian Parliamentary League--"Facts for
Socialists"--The adoption of the Basis--The seven Essayists in
command--Lord Haldane--The "Essays" as Lectures--How to train for
Public Life--Fabians on the London School Board--"Facts for
Londoners"--Municipal Socialism--"The Eight Hours Bill"
Chapter V
"Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign: 1890-3
"Fabian Essays" published--Astonishing success--A new presentation
of Socialism--Reviewed after twenty-five years--Henry
Hutchinson--The Lancashire Campaign--Mrs. Besant withdraws--"Fabian
News"
Chapter VI
"To your tents, O Israel": 1894-1900
Progress of the Society--The Independent Labour Party--Local Fabian
Societies--University Fabian Societies--London Groups and Samuel
Butler--The first Fabian Conference--Tracts and Lectures--The 1892
Election Manifesto--The Newcastle Program--The Fair Wages
Policy--The "Fortnightly" article--The Intercepted Letter of 1906
Chapter VII
"Fabianism and the Empire": 1900-1
The Library and Book Boxes--Parish Councils--The Workmen's
Compensation Act--The Hutchinson Trust--The London School of
Economics--Educational Lectures--Electoral Policy--The controversy
over the South African War--The publication of "Fabianism and the
Empire"
Chapter VIII
Education: 1902-5, and the Labour Party: 1900-15
Housing--"The Education muddle and the way out"--Supporting the
Conservatives--The Education Acts of 1902 and 1903--Feeding School
Children--The Labour Representation Committee formed--The Fabian
Election Fund--Will Crooks elected in 1910--A Fabian Cabinet
Minister--Resignation of Graham Wallas--The younger generation: H.W.
Macrosty, J.F. Oakeshott, John W. Martin--Municipal Drink
Trade--Tariff Reform--The Decline of the Birth-rate
Chapter IX
The Episode of Mr. Wells: 1906-8
His lecture on administrative areas--"Faults of the Fabian"--The
Enquiry Committee--The Report, and the Reply--The real issue, Wells
_v_. Shaw--The women intervene--The Basis altered--The new
Executive--Mr. Wells withdraws--His work for Socialism--The writing
of Fabian Tracts
Chapter X
The Policy of Expansion: 1907-12
Statistics of growth--The psychology of the Recruit--Famous
Fabians--The Arts Group--The Nursery--The Women's Group--Provincial
Fabian Societies--University Fabian Societies--London Groups
revived--Annual Conferences--The Summer School--The story of
"Socialist Unity"--The Local Government Information Bureau--The
Joint Standing Committee--Intervention of the International
Socialist Bureau
Chapter XI
The Minority Report, Syndicalism and Research:
1909-15
The emergence of Mrs. Sidney Webb--The Poor Law Commission--The
Minority Report--Unemployment--The National Committee for the
Prevention of Destitution--"Vote against the House of
Lords"--Bernard Shaw retires--Death of Hubert Bland--Opposition to
the National Insurance Bill--The Fabian Reform Committee--The "New
Statesman"--The Research Department--"The Rural Problem"--"The
Control of Industry"--Syndicalism--The Guildsmen--Final
Statistics--The War
Chapter XII
The Lessons of Thirty Years
Breaking the spell of Marxism--A French verdict--Origin of
Revisionism in Germany--The British School of Socialism--Mr. Ernest
Barker's summary--Mill _versus_ Marx--The Fabian Method--Making
Socialists or making Socialism--The life of propagandist
societies--The prospects of Socialist Unity--The future of Fabian
ideas--The test of Fabian success
Appendix I
A. On the History of Fabian Economics. By Bernard Shaw
B. On Guild Socialism. By Bernard Shaw
Appendix II
The Basis of the Fabian Society
Appendix III
List of the names and the years of office of the ninety-six
members of the Executive Committee, 1884-1915
Appendix IV
Complete List of Fabian publications, 1884-1915, with
names of authors
Index
Illustrations
_Frontispiece, from a drawing by Miss Bertha Newcombe in 1895_
The Seven Essayists
Mrs. Annie Besant, _From a photograph_
Hubert Bland, _From a photograph_
William Clarke _From a photograph_
(Sir) Sydney Olivier, _From a photograph_
G. Bernard Shaw, _From a photograph_
Graham Wallas, _From a photograph_
Sidney Webb, _From a drawing_
* * * * *
Edward R. Pease, _From a photograph_
Frank Podmore, _From a photograph_
Mrs. Sidney Webb, _From a photograph_
H.G. Wells, _From a photograph_
The History of the Fabian Society
Chapter I
The Sources of Fabian Socialism
The ideas of the early eighties--The epoch of Evolution--Sources of
Fabian ideas--Positivism--Henry George--John Stuart Mill--Robert
Owen--Karl Marx--The Democratic Federation--"The Christian
Socialist"--Thomas Davidson.
"Britain as a whole never was more tranquil and happy," said the
"Spectator," then the organ of sedate Liberalism and enlightened
Progress, in the summer of 1882. "No class is at war with society or the
government: there is no disaffection anywhere, the Treasury is fairly
full, the accumulations of capital are vast"; and then the writer goes
on to compare Great Britain with Ireland, at that time under the iron
heel of coercion, with Parnell and hundreds of his followers in jail,
whilst outrages and murders, like those of Maamtrasma, were almost
everyday occurrences.
Some of the problems of the early eighties are with us yet. Ireland is
still a bone of contention between political parties: the Channel tunnel
is no nearer completion: and then as now, when other topics are
exhausted, the "Spectator" can fill up its columns with Thought
Transference and Psychical Research.
But other problems which then were vital, are now almost forgotten.
Electric lighting was a doubtful novelty: Mr. Bradlaugh's refusal to
take the oath excited a controversy which now seems incredible. Robert
Louis Stevenson can no longer be adequately described as an
"accomplished writer," and the introduction of female clerks into the
postal service by Mr. Fawcett has ceased to raise alarm lest the
courteous practice of always allowing ladies to be victors in an
argument should perforce be abandoned.
But in September of the same year we find a cloud on the horizon, the
prelude of a coming storm. The Trade Union Congress had just been held
and the leaders of the working classes, with apparently but little
discussion, had passed a resolution asking the Government to institute
an enquiry with a view to relaxing the stringency of Poor Law
administration. This, said the "Spectator," is beginning "to tamper with
natural conditions," "There is no logical halting-place between the
theory that it is the duty of the State to make the poor comfortable,
and socialism."
Another factor in the thought of those days attracted but little
attention in the Press, though there is a long article in the
"Spectator" at the beginning of 1882 on "the ever-increasing wonder" of
that strange faith, "Positivism." It is difficult for the present
generation to realise how large a space in the minds of the young men of
the eighties was occupied by the religion invented by Auguste Comte. Of
this however more must be said on a later page.
But perhaps the most significant feature in the periodical literature of
the time is what it omits. April, 1882, is memorable for the death of
Charles Darwin, incomparably the greatest of nineteenth-century
Englishmen, if greatness be measured by the effects of his work on the
thought of the world. The "Spectator" printed a secondary article which
showed some appreciation of the event. But in the monthly reviews it
passed practically unnoticed. It is true that Darwin was buried in
Westminster Abbey, but even in 1882, twenty-three years after the
publication of the "Origin of Species," evolution was regarded as a
somewhat dubious theorem which respectable people were wise to ignore.
In the monthly reviews we find the same odd mixture of articles apposite
to present problems, and articles utterly out of date. The organisation
of agriculture is a perennial, and Lady Verney's "Peasant Proprietorship
in France" ("Contemporary," January, 1882), Mr. John Rae's "Co-operative
Agriculture in Germany" ("Contemporary," March, 1882), and Professor
Sedley Taylor's "Profit-Sharing in Agriculture" ("Nineteenth Century,"
October, 1882) show that change in the methods of exploiting the soil is
leaden-footed and lagging.
Problems of another class, centring round "the Family," present much the
same aspect now as they did thirty years ago. In his "Infant Mortality
and Married Women in Factories," Professor Stanley Jevons
("Contemporary," January, 1882) proposes that mothers of children under
three years of age should be excluded from factories, and we are at
present perhaps even farther from general agreement whether any measure
on these lines ought to be adopted.
But when we read the articles on Socialism--more numerous than might be
expected at that early date--we are in another world. Mr. Samuel Smith,
M.P., writing on "Social Reform" in the "Nineteenth Century" for May,
1883, says that: "Our country is still comparatively free from
Communism and Nihilism and similar destructive movements, but who can
tell how long this will continue? We have a festering mass of human
wretchedness in all our great towns, which is the natural hotbed of such
anarchical movements: all the great continental countries are full of
this explosive material. Can we depend on our country keeping free from
the infection when we have far more poverty in our midst than the
neighbouring European States?" Emigration and temperance reform, he
thinks, may avert the danger.
The Rev. Samuel (later Canon) Barnett in the same review a month earlier
advocated Free Libraries and graduated taxation to pay for free
education, under the title of "Practicable Socialism." In April, 1883,
Emile de Lavelaye described with alarm the "Progress of Socialism." "On
the Continent," he wrote, "Socialism is said to be everywhere." To it he
attributed with remarkable inaccuracy, the agrarian movement in Ireland,
and with it he connected the fact that Henry George's new book,
"Progress and Poverty," was selling by thousands "in an ultra popular
form" in the back streets and alleys of England. And then he goes on to
allude to Prince Bismarck's "abominable proposition to create a fund for
pensioning invalid workmen by a monopoly of tobacco"!
Thirty years ago politics were only intermittently concerned with social
problems. On the whole the view prevailed, at any rate amongst the
leaders, that Government should interfere in such matters as little as
possible. Pauperism was still to be stamped out by ruthless deterrence:
education had been only recently and reluctantly taken in hand: factory
inspection alone was an accepted State function. Lord Beaconsfield was
dead and he had forgotten his zeal for social justice long before he
attained power. Gladstone, then in the zenith of his fame, never took
any real interest in social questions as we now understand them. Lord
Salisbury was an aristocrat and thought as an aristocrat. John Bright
viewed industrial life from the standpoint of a Lancashire mill-owner.
William Edward Forster, the creator of national education, a Chartist in
his youth, had become the gaoler of Parnell and the protagonist of
coercion in Ireland. Joseph Chamberlain alone seemed to realise the
significance of the social problem, and unhappily political events were
soon to deflect his career from what then seemed to be its appointed
course.
The political parties therefore offered very little attraction to the
young men of the early eighties, who, viewing our social system with the
fresh eyes of youth, saw its cruelties and its absurdities and judged
them, not as older men, by comparison with the worse cruelties and
greater absurdities of earlier days, but by the standard of common
fairness and common sense, as set out in the lessons they had learned in
their schools, their universities, and their churches.
It is nowadays not easy to recollect how wide was the intellectual gulf
which separated the young generation of that period from their parents.
"The Origin of Species," published in 1859, inaugurated an intellectual
revolution such as the world had not known since Luther nailed his
Theses to the door of All Saints' Church at Wittenberg. The older folk
as a rule refused to accept or to consider the new doctrine. I recollect
a botanical Fellow of the Royal Society who, in 1875, told me that he
had no opinions on Darwin's hypothesis. The young men of the time I am
describing grew up with the new ideas and accepted them as a matter of
course. Herbert Spencer, then deemed the greatest of English thinkers,
was pointing out in portentous phraseology the enormous significance of
Evolution. Professor Huxley, in brilliant essays, was turning to
ridicule the simple-minded credulity of Gladstone and his
contemporaries. Our parents, who read neither Spencer nor Huxley, lived
in an intellectual world which bore no relation to our own; and cut
adrift as we were from the intellectual moorings of our upbringings,
recognising, as we did, that the older men were useless as guides in
religion, in science, in philosophy because they knew not evolution, we
also felt instinctively that we could accept nothing on trust from those
who still believed that the early chapters of Genesis accurately
described the origin of the universe, and that we had to discover
somewhere for ourselves what were the true principles of the then
recently invented science of sociology.
One man there was who professed to offer us an answer, Auguste Comte. He
too was pre-Darwinian, but his philosophy accepted science, future as
well as past. John Stuart Mill, whose word on his own subjects was then
almost law, wrote of him with respectful admiration. His followers were
known to number amongst them some of the ablest thinkers of the day. The
"Religion of Humanity" offered solutions for all the problems that faced
us. It suggested a new heaven, of a sort, and it proposed a new earth,
free from all the inequalities of wealth, the preventable suffering, the
reckless waste of effort, which we saw around us. At any rate, it was
worth examination; and most of the free-thinking men of that period read
the "Positive Polity" and the other writings of the founder, and spent
some Sunday mornings at the little conventicle in Lamb's Conduit Street,
or attended on Sunday evenings the Newton Hall lectures of Frederic
Harrison.
Few could long endure the absurdities of a made-up theology and a
make-believe religion: and the Utopia designed by Comte was as
impracticable and unattractive as Utopias generally are. But the
critical and destructive part of the case was sound enough. Here was a
man who challenged the existing order of society and pronounced it
wrong. It was in his view based on conventions, on superstitions, on
regulations which were all out of date; society should be reorganised in
the light of pure reason; the anarchy of competition must be brought to
an end; mankind should recognise that order, good sense, science, and,
he added, religion freed from superstition, could turn the world into a
place where all might live together in comfort and happiness.
Positivism proposed to attain its Utopia by moralising the capitalists,
and herein it showed no advance on Christianity, which for nineteen
centuries had in vain preached social obligation to the rich. The new
creed could not succeed where the old, with all its tremendous
sanctions, had completely failed. We wanted something fresh, some new
method of dealing with the inequalities of wealth.
Emile de Lavelaye was quite correct in attributing significance to the
publication of "Progress and Poverty," though the seed sown by Henry
George took root, not in the slums and alleys of our cities--no
intellectual seed of any sort can germinate in the sickly, sunless
atmosphere of slums--but in the minds of people who had sufficient
leisure and education to think of other things than breadwinning. Henry
George proposed to abolish poverty by political action: that was the new
gospel which came from San Francisco in the early eighties. "Progress
and Poverty" was published in America in 1879, and its author visited
England at the end of 1881. Socialism hardly existed at that time in
English-speaking countries, but the early advocates of land taxation
were not then, as they usually are now, uncompromising individualists.
"Progress and Poverty" gave an extraordinary impetus to the political
thought of the time. It proposed to redress the wrongs suffered by the
working classes as a whole: the poverty it considered was the poverty of
the wage workers as a class, not the destitution of the unfortunate and
downtrodden individuals. It did not merely propose, like philanthropy
and the Poor Law, to relieve the acute suffering of the outcasts of
civilisation, those condemned to wretchedness by the incapacity, the
vice, the folly, or the sheer misfortune of themselves or their
relations. It suggested a method by which wealth would correspond
approximately with worth; by which the reward of labour would go to
those that laboured; the idleness alike of rich and poor would cease;
the abundant wealth created by modern industry would be distributed with
something like fairness and even equality, amongst those who contributed
to its production. Above all, this tremendous revolution was to be
accomplished by a political method, applicable by a majority of the
voters, and capable of being drafted as an Act of Parliament by any
competent lawyer.
To George belongs the extraordinary merit of recognising the right way
of social salvation. The Socialists of earlier days had proposed
segregated communities; the Co-operators had tried voluntary
associations; the Positivists advocated moral suasion; the Chartists
favoured force, physical or political; the Marxists talked revolution
and remembered the Paris Commune. George wrote in a land where the
people ruled themselves, not only in fact but also in name. The United
States in the seventies was not yet dominated by trusts and controlled
by millionaires. Indeed even now that domination and control, dangerous
and disastrous as it often is, could not withstand for a moment any
widespread uprising of the popular will. Anyway, George recognised that
in the Western States political institutions could be moulded to suit
the will of the electorate; he believed that the majority desired to
seek their own well-being and this could not fail to be also the
well-being of the community as a whole. From Henry George I think it may
be taken that the early Fabians learned to associate the new gospel with
the old political method.
But when we came to consider the plan proposed by George we quickly saw
that it would not carry us far. Land may be the source of all wealth to
the mind of a settler in a new country. To those whose working day was
passed in Threadneedle Street and Lombard Street, on the floor of the
Stock Exchange, and in the Bank of England, land appears to bear no
relation at all to wealth, and the allegation that the whole surplus of
production goes automatically to the landowners is obviously untrue.
George's political economy was old-fashioned or absurd; and his solution
of the problem of poverty could not withstand the simplest criticism.
Taxation to extinction of the rent of English land would only affect a
small fraction of England's wealth.
There was another remedy in the field. Socialism was talked about in the
reviews: some of us knew that an obscure Socialist movement was stirring
into life in London. And above all John Stuart Mill had spoken very
respectfully of Socialism in his "Political Economy," which then held
unchallenged supremacy as an exposition of the science. If, he wrote,
"the choice were to be made between Communism[1] with all its chances,
and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices,
if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a
consequence that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now
see it almost in inverse proportion to labour, the largest portions to
those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work
is almost nominal, and so in descending scale, the remuneration
dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable until the most
fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on
being able to earn even the necessities of life; if this or Communism
were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism
would be but as dust in the balance."[2] And again in the next
paragraph: "We are too ignorant, either of what individual agency in its
best form or Socialism in its best form can accomplish, to be qualified
to decide which of the two will be the ultimate form of human society."
More than thirty years had passed since this had been written, and
whilst the evils of private property, so vividly depicted by Mill,
showed no signs of mitigation, the remedies he anticipated had made no
substantial progress. The co-operation of the Rochdale Pioneers had
proved a magnificent success, but its sphere of operations was now
clearly seen to be confined within narrow limits. Profit-sharing then as
now was a sickly plant barely kept alive by the laborious efforts of
benevolent professors. Mill's indictment of the capitalist system, in
regard to its effects on social life, was so powerful, his treatment of
the primitive socialism and communism of his day so sympathetic, that it
is surprising how little it prepared the way for the reception of the
new ideas. But to some of his readers, at any rate, it suggested that
there was an alternative to the capitalistic system, and that Socialism
or Communism was worthy of examination.[3]
The Socialism of Robert Owen had made a profound impression on the
working people of England half a century earlier, but the tradition of
it was confined to those who had heard its prophet. Owen, one of the
greatest men of his age, had no sense of art; his innumerable writings
are unreadable; and both his later excursions into spiritualism, and the
failure of his communities and co-operative enterprises, had clouded his
reputation amongst those outside the range of his personality. In later
years we often came across old men who had sat at his feet, and who
rejoiced to hear once more something resembling his teachings: but I do
not think that, at the beginning, the Owenite tradition had any
influence upon us.
Karl Marx died in London on the 14th March, 1883, but nobody in England
was then aware that the greatest figure in international politics had
passed away. It is true that Marx had taken a prominent part in founding
the International at that historic meeting in St. Martin's Town Hall on
September 28th, 1864. The real significance of that episode was
over-rated at the time, and when the International disappeared from
European politics in 1872 the whole thing was forgotten.
In Germany Marxian Socialism was already a force, and it was attracting
attention in England, as we have seen. But the personality of Marx must
have been antipathetic to the English workmen whom he knew, or else he
failed to make them understand his ideas: at any rate, his socialism
fell on deaf ears, and it may be said to have made no lasting impression
on the leaders of English working-class thought. Though he was resident
in England for thirty-four years, Marx remained a German to the last.
His writings were not translated into English at this period, and Mr.
Hyndman's "England for All," published in 1881, which was the first
presentation of his ideas in English, did not even mention his name.
This book was in fact an extremely moderate proposal to remedy
"something seriously amiss in the conditions of our everyday life," and
the immediate programme was no more than an eight hours working day,
free and compulsory education, compulsory construction of working-class
dwellings, and cheap "transport" for working-class passengers. It was
the unauthorised programme of the Democratic Federation which had been
founded by Mr. Hyndman in 1881. "Socialism Made Plain," the social and
political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation (undated, but
apparently issued in 1883), is a much stronger document. It deals with
the distribution of the National Income, giving the workers' share as
300 out of 1300 millions sterling, and demands that the workers should
"educate, agitate, organise" in order to get their own. Evidently it
attracted some attention, since we find that the second edition of a
pamphlet "Reply" by Samuel Smith, M.P., then a person of substantial
importance, was issued in January, 1884.
At the end of 1883 Mr. Hyndman published his "Historical Basis of
Socialism in England," which for some time was the text-book of the
Democratic Federation, but this, of course, was too late to influence
the founders of the Fabian Society.
We were however aware of Marx, and I find that my copy of the French
edition of "Das Kapital" is dated 8th October, 1883; but I do not think
that any of the original Fabians had read the book or had assimilated
its ideas at the time the Society was founded.
To some of those who joined the Society in its early days Christian
Socialism opened the way of salvation. The "Christian Socialist"[4] was
established by a band of persons some of whom were not Socialist and
others not Christian. It claimed to be the spiritual child of the
Christian Socialist movement of 1848-52, which again was Socialist only
on its critical side, and constructively was merely Co-operative
Production by voluntary associations of workmen. Under the guidance of
the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam[5] its policy of the revived movement was
Land Reform, particularly on the lines of the Single Tax. The
introductory article boldly claims the name of Socialist, as used by
Maurice and Kingsley: the July number contains a long article by Henry
George. In September a formal report is given of the work of the
Democratic Federation. In November Christianity and Socialism are said
to be convertible terms, and in January, 1884, the clerical view of
usury is set forth in an article on the morality of interest. In March
Mr. H.H. Champion explains "surplus value," and in April we find a
sympathetic review of the "Historic Basis of Socialism." In April, 1885,
appears a long and full report of a lecture by Bernard Shaw to the
Liberal and Social Union. The greater part of the paper is filled with
Land Nationalisation, Irish affairs--the land agitation in Ireland was
then at its height--and the propaganda of Henry George: whilst much
space is devoted to the religious aspect of the social problem. Sydney
Olivier, before he joined the Fabian Society, was one of the managing
group, and amongst others concerned in it were the Rev. C.L. Marson and
the Rev. W.E. Moll. At a later period a Christian Socialist Society was
formed; but our concern here is with the factors which contributed to
the Fabian Society at its start, and it is not necessary to touch on
other periods of the movement.
Thomas Davidson[6] was the occasion rather than the cause of the
founding of the Fabian Society. His socialism was ethical and individual
rather than economic and political. He was spiritually a descendant of
the Utopians of Brook Farm and the Phalanstery, and what he yearned for
was something in the nature of a community of superior people withdrawn
from the world because of its wickedness, and showing by example how a
higher life might be led. Probably his Scotch common sense recoiled from
definitely taking the plunge: I am not aware that he ever actually
proposed that his disciples should form a self-contained community. In a
lecture to the New York Fellowship of the New Life, he said, "I shall
set out with two assumptions, first, that human life does not consist in
material possession; and second, that it does consist in free spiritual
activity, of which in this life at least material possession is an
essential condition." There is nothing new in this: it is the common
basis of all religions and ethical systems. But it needs to be
re-stated for each generation, and so stated as to suit each
environment. At the time that I am describing Davidson's re-statement
appealed to the small circle of his adherents, though the movement which
he started had results that he neither expected nor approved.
I have now indicated the currents of thought which contributed to the
formation of the Fabian Society, so far as I can recover them from
memory and a survey of the periodical literature of the period. I have
not included the writings of Ruskin, Socialist in outlook as some of
them undoubtedly are, because I think that the value of his social
teachings was concealed from most of us at that time by reaction against
his religious mediævalism, and indifference to his gospel of art. Books
so eminently adapted for young ladies at mid-Victorian schools did not
appeal to modernists educated by Comte and Spencer.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The words Communism and Socialism were interchangeable at that
period, e.g. the "Manifesto of the Communist Party," by Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, 1848.
[2] "Political Economy," Book II, Chap. i, Sec. 3.
[3] William Morris attributed to Mill his conversion to Socialism. See
J.W. Mackail's "Life," Vol. II, p. 79.
[4] No. 1, June, 1883, monthly, 1d.; continued until 1891.
[5] Born 1847. Founded the Guild of St. Matthew 1877 and edited its
organ, the "Church Reformer," till 1895. Member of the English Land
Restoration League, originally the Land Reform Union, from 1883. Member
of the London School Board 1888-1904; of the London County Council since
1907.
[6] See "Memorials of Thomas Davidson: the wandering scholar." Edited by
William Knight. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907. Thomas Davidson was born
in Aberdeenshire in 1840 of a peasant family; after a brilliant career
at Aberdeen University he settled in America, but travelled much in
Europe. His magnetic personality inspired attachment and admiration in
all he came across. He lectured and wrote incessantly, founded Ethical
Societies and Schools, and published several volumes on philosophical
subjects, but his achievements were scarcely commensurate with his
abilities. He died in 1900.
Chapter II
The Foundations of the Society: 1883-4
Frank Podmore and Ghost-hunting--Thomas Davidson and his circle--The
preliminary meetings--The Fellowship of the New Life--Formation of
the Society--The career of the New Fellowship.
In the autumn of 1883 Thomas Davidson paid a short visit to London and
held several little meetings of young people, to whom he expounded his
ideas of a Vita Nuova, a Fellowship of the New Life. I attended the last
of these meetings held in a bare room somewhere in Chelsea, on the
invitation of Frank Podmore,[7] whose acquaintance I had made a short
time previously. We had become friends through a common interest first
in Spiritualism and subsequently in Psychical Research, and it was
whilst vainly watching for a ghost in a haunted house at Notting
Hill--the house was unoccupied: we had obtained the key from the agent,
left the door unlatched, and returned late at night in the foolish hope
that we might perceive something abnormal--that he first discussed with
me the teachings of Henry George in "Progress and Poverty," and we found
a common interest in social as well as psychical progress.
[Illustration: _From a copyright photograph by Fredk. Hollyer, W_.
FRANK PODMORE, ABOUT 1895]
The English organiser or secretary of the still unformed Davidsonian
Fellowship was Percival Chubb, then a young clerk in the Local
Government Board, and subsequently a lecturer and head of an Ethical
Church in New York and St. Louis. Thomas Davidson was about to leave
London; and the company he had gathered round him, desirous of further
discussing his suggestions, decided to hold another meeting at my rooms.
I was at that time a member of the Stock Exchange and lived in lodgings
furnished by myself.
Here then on October 24th, 1883, was held the first of the fortnightly
meetings, which have been continued with scarcely a break, through nine
months of every year, up to the present time. The company that assembled
consisted in part of the Davidsonian circle and in part of friends of my
own.
The proceedings at this meeting, recorded in the first minute book of
the Society in the handwriting of Percival Chubb, were as follows:--
"THE NEW LIFE"
"The first general meeting of persons interested in this movement was
held at Mr. Pease's rooms, 17 Osnaburgh Street, Regent's Park, on
Wednesday the 24th October, 1883. There were present: Miss Ford, Miss
Isabella Ford [of Leeds], Mrs. Hinton [widow of James Hinton], Miss
Haddon [her sister], Mr., Mrs., and Miss Robins, Maurice Adams, H.H.
Champion, Percival A. Chubb, H. Havelock Ellis, J.L. Joynes, Edward
R. Pease, Frank Podmore, R.B.P. Frost, and Hamilton Pullen.
"The proceedings were begun by the reading of Mr. Thomas Davidson's
paper 'The New Life,' read by him at a former assemblage, and after
it of the Draft of a proposed constitution (Sketch No. 2). [This has
not been preserved.]
"A general discussion followed on the question as to what was
possible of achievement in the way of founding a communistic society
whose members should lead the new higher life foreshadowed in the
paper just read. The idea of founding a community abroad was
generally discredited, and it was generally recognised that it would
not be possible to establish here in England any independent
community. What could be done perhaps would be for a number of
persons in sympathy with the main idea to unite for the purpose of
common living as far as possible on a communistic basis, realising
amongst themselves the higher life and making it a primary care to
provide a worthy education for the young. The members would pursue
their present callings in the world, but they would always aim to
make the community as far as practicable self-contained and
self-supporting, combining perhaps to carry on some common business
or businesses.
"It was eventually arranged to further discuss the matter at another
meeting which was fixed for a fortnight hence (Wednesday, 7th
November). Mr. Podmore consented to ask Miss Owen [afterwards Mrs.
Laurence Oliphant] to attend then and narrate the experiences of the
New Harmony Community founded by [her grandfather] Robert Owen.
"It was suggested--and the suggestion was approvingly received--that
undoubtedly the first thing to be done was for those present to
become thoroughly acquainted with each other. A general introduction
of each person to the rest of the company was made and the business
of the meeting being concluded conversation followed,"
On November 7th, the second meeting was held, when a number of new
people attended, including Hubert Bland, who, I think, had been one of
the original Davidson group. Miss Owen was unable to be present, and a
draft constitution was discussed.
"A question was then raised as to the method of conducting the
proceedings. The appointment of a chairman was proposed, and Mr.
Pease was appointed. It was suggested that resolutions should be
passed constituting a society, and, as far as those present were
concerned, designating its objects. Some exception was taken to this
course as being an undesirable formality not in harmony with the free
spirit of the undertaking, but meeting with general approval it was
followed.
"After some discussion ... the following resolution was proposed and
agreed to:--
"That an association be formed whose ultimate aim shall be the
reconstruction of Society in accordance with the highest moral
possibilities"
A Committee consisting of Messrs. Champion (who was not present), Ellis,
Jupp, Podmore, and Chubb, and, failing Champion, Pease was appointed to
draw up and submit proposals, and it was resolved for the future to meet
on Fridays, a practice which the Society has maintained ever since.
The meeting on November 23rd was attended by thirty-one people, and
included Miss Dale Owen, William Clarke, and Frederick Keddell, the
first Secretary of the Fabian Society.
H.H. Champion[8] introduced the proposals of the Committee, including
the following resolution, which was carried apparently with unanimity:--
"The members of the Society assert that the Competitive system
assures the happiness and comfort of the few at the expense of the
suffering of the many and that Society must be reconstituted in such
a manner as to secure the general welfare and happiness,"
Then the minutes go on, indicating already a rift in the Society: "As
the resolution referred rather to the material or economic aims of the
Society and not to its primary spiritual aim, it was agreed that it
should stand as No. 3, and that another resolution setting forth the
spiritual basis of the Fellowship shall be passed which shall stand as
No. 2."
It proved impossible to formulate then and there the spiritual basis of
the Society, and after several suggestions had been made a new committee
was appointed. Resolution No. 1 had already been deferred.
The next meeting was held on December 7th, when only fifteen were
present. Hubert Bland occupied the chair, and Dr. Burns-Gibson
introduced a definite plan as follows:--
"THE FELLOWSHIP OF NEW LIFE
_Object_.--The cultivation of a perfect character in each and all.
_Principle_.--The subordination of material things to spiritual.
_Fellowship_.--The sole and essential condition of fellowship
shall be a single-minded, sincere, and strenuous devotion to the
object and principle."
Further articles touched on the formation of a community, the
supplanting of the spirit of competition, the highest education of the
young, simplicity of living, the importance of manual labour and
religious communion. Nine names were attached to this project, including
those of Percival Chubb, Havelock Ellis, and William Clarke, and it was
announced that a Fellowship would be formed on this basis, whether it
was accepted or rejected by the majority. These propositions were
discussed and no decision was arrived at.
Up to this point the minutes are recorded in the writing of Percival
Chubb. The next entry was made by Frank Podmore, and those after that by
Frederick Keddell.
We now arrive at the birthday of the Fabian Society, and the minutes of
that meeting must be copied in full:--
"Meeting held at 17 Osnaburgh Street, on Friday, 4th January, 1884.
"Present: Mrs. Robins, Miss Robins, Miss Haddon, Miss C. Haddon,
Messrs. J. Hunter Watts, Hughes, Bland, Keddell, Pease, Stapleton,
Chubb, Burns-Gibson, Swan, Podmore, Estcourt, etc.
"Mr. Bland took the chair at 8.10 p.m.
"After the minutes of the previous meeting had been read and
confirmed Dr. Gibson moved the series of resolutions which had been
read to the Society at the previous meeting.
"Mr. Podmore moved as an amendment the series of resolutions, copies
of which had been circulated amongst the members a few days
previously.
"The amendment was carried by 10 votes to 4.
[Presumably the 4 included Burns-Gibson, Chubb, and Estcourt, who
signed the defeated resolutions.]
"Mr. Podmore's proposals were then put forward as substantive
resolutions and considered seriatim.
"Resolution I.--That the Society be called the Fabian Society (as Mr.
Podmore explained in allusion to the victorious policy of Fabius
Cunctator) was carried by 9 votes to 2.
"Resolution II.--That the Society shall not at present pledge its
members to any more definite basis of agreement than that contained
in the resolution of 23rd November, 1883.
"Carried unanimously.
"Resolution III.--In place of Mr. Podmore's first proposal it was
eventually decided to modify the resolution of 7th November, 1883, by
inserting the words 'to help on' between the words 'shall be' and the
words 'the reconstruction.'
"Resolution IV with certain omissions was agreed to unanimously,
viz.: That with the view of learning what practical measures to take
in this direction the Society should:
"_(a)_ Hold meetings for discussion, the reading of papers,
hearing of reports, etc.
"_(b)_ Delegate some of its members to attend meetings held on
social subjects, debates at Workmen's Clubs, etc., in order that such
members may in the first place report to the Society on the
proceedings, and in the second place put forward, as occasion serves,
the views of the Society.
"_(c)_ Take measures in other ways, as, for example, by the
collection of articles from current literature, to obtain information
on all contemporary social movements and social needs.
"Mr. Bland, Mr. Keddell, and Mr. Podmore were provisionally appointed
as an Executive Committee, to serve for three months, on the motion
of Mr. Pease. A collection was made to provide funds for past
expenses: the sum collected amounting to 13s. 9d."
It appears that Mr. Bland on this occasion acted as treasurer, though
there is no record of the fact. He was annually re-elected treasurer and
a member of the Executive Committee until he retired from both positions
in 1911.
Thus the Society was founded. Although it appeared to be the outcome of
a division of opinion, this was scarcely in fact the case. All those
present became members, and the relations between the Fabian Society and
the Fellowship of the New Life were always of a friendly character,
though in fact the two bodies had but little in common, and seldom came
into contact.
* * * * *
A few words may be devoted to the Fellowship of the New Life, which
continued to exist for fifteen years. Its chief achievement was the
publication of a quarterly paper called "Seedtime,"[9] issued from July,
1889, to February, 1898. The paper contains articles on Ethical
Socialism, the Simple Life, Humanitarianism, the Education of Children,
and similar subjects. The Society was conducted much on the same lines
as the Fabian Society: fortnightly lectures were given in London and
reported in "Seedtime."
In 1893 we find in "Seedtime" an Annual Report recording 12 public
meetings, 4 social gatherings, a membership of 95, and receipts £73.
During this year, 1892-3, J. Ramsay Macdonald, subsequently M.P. and
Secretary and Chairman of the Labour Party, was Honorary Secretary, and
for some years he was on the Executive. In 1896 the membership was 115
and the income £48.
The most persistent of the organisers of the New Fellowship was J.F.
Oakeshott, who was also for many years a member of the Fabian Executive.
Corrie Grant, later a well-known Liberal M.P., H.S. Salt of the
Humanitarian League, Edward Carpenter, and his brother Captain
Carpenter, Herbert Rix, assistant secretary of the Royal Society,
Havelock Ellis, and, both before and after her marriage, Mrs. Havelock
Ellis (who was Honorary Secretary for some years), are amongst the names
which appear in the pages of "Seedtime,"
Mild attempts were made to carry out the Community idea by means of
associated colonies (e.g. the members residing near each other) and a
co-operative residence at 49 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury; but close
association, especially of persons with the strong and independent
opinions of the average socialist, promotes discord, and against this
the high ideals of the New Fellowship proved no protection. Indeed it is
a common experience that the higher the ideal the fiercer the
hostilities of the idealists.
At Thornton Heath, near Croydon, the Fellowship conducted for some time
a small printing business, and its concern for the right education for
the young found expression in a Kindergarten. Later on an Ethical Church
and a Boys' Guild were established at Croydon.
Soon afterwards the Fellowship came to the conclusion that its work was
done, the last number of "Seedtime" was published, and in 1898 the
Society was dissolved.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by G.C. Baresford, S.W._
HUBERT BLAND, IN 1902]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Frank Podmore, M.A.--b. 1856, ed. Pembroke College, Oxford, 1st
class in Science, 1st class clerk, G.P.O. Author of "Apparitions and
Thought Transference," 1894, "Modern Spiritualism," 1902, "The Life of
Robert Owen," 1906, etc. D. 1910.
[8] Mr. Champion took no further part in the Fabian movement, so far as
I am aware. His activities in connection with the Social Democratic
Federation, the "Labour Elector," etc., are not germane to the present
subject. He has for twenty years resided in Melbourne.
[9] See complete set in the British Library of Political Science, London
School of Economics.
Chapter III
The Early Days: 1884-6
The use of the word Socialism--Approval of the Democratic
Federation--Tract No. 1--The Fabian Motto--Bernard Shaw joins--His
first Tract--The Industrial Remuneration Conference--Sidney Webb and
Sydney Olivier become members--Mrs. Annie Besant--Shaw's second
Tract--The Tory Gold controversy--"What Socialism Is"--The Fabian
Conference of 1886--Sidney Webb's first contribution, "The Government
Organisation of Unemployed Labour."
The Fabian Society was founded for the purpose of "reconstructing
society," based on the competitive system, "in such manner as to secure
the general welfare and happiness." It is worth noting that the word
"Socialism" had not yet appeared in its records, and it is not until the
sixth meeting, held on 21st March, 1884, that the word first appears in
the minutes, as the title of a paper by Miss Caroline Haddon: "The Two
Socialisms"; to which is appended a note in the handwriting of Sydney
Olivier: "This paper is stated to have been devoted to a comparison
between the Socialism of the Fabian Society and that of the S.D.F." The
Society, in fact, began its career with that disregard of mere names
which has always distinguished it. The resolutions already recorded,
advocating the reconstruction of society on a non-competitive basis with
the object of remedying the evils of poverty, embody the essence of
Socialism, and our first publication, Tract No. 1, was so thorough-going
a statement of Socialism that it has been kept in print ever since. But
neither in Tract No. 1 nor in Tract No. 2 does the word Socialism occur,
and it is not till Tract No. 3, published in June, 1885, that we find
the words "the Fabian Society having in view the advance of Socialism in
England." At this stage it is clear that the Society was socialist
without recognising itself as part of a world-wide movement, and it was
only subsequently that it adopted the word which alone adequately
expressed its ideas.
At the second meeting, on 25th January, 1884, reports were presented on
a lecture by Henry George and a Conference of the Democratic Federation
(later the Social Democratic Federation); the rules were adopted, and
Mr. J.G. Stapleton read a paper on "Social conditions in England with a
view to social reconstruction or development." This was the first of the
long series of Fabian fortnightly lectures which have been continued
ever since. On February 29th, after a paper on the Democratic
Federation, Mr. Bland moved: "That whilst not entirely agreeing with the
statements and phrases used in the pamphlets of the Democratic
Federation, and in the speeches of Mr. Hyndman, this Society considers
that the Democratic Federation is doing good and useful work and is
worthy of sympathy and support." This was carried nem. con. On March 7th
a pamphlet committee was nominated, and on March 21st the Executive was
reappointed. On April 4th the Pamphlet Committee reported, and 2000
copies of "Fabian Tract No. 1" were ordered to be printed.
This four-page leaflet has now remained in print for over thirty years,
and there is no reason to suppose that the demand for it will soon
cease. According to tradition, it was drafted by W.L. Phillips, a
house-painter, at that time the only "genuine working man" in our ranks.
He had been introduced to me by a Positivist friend, and was in his way
a remarkable man, ready at any time to talk of his experiences of
liberating slaves by the "Underground Railway" in the United States. He
worked with us cordially for several years and then gradually dropped
out. The original edition of "Why are the many poor?" differs very
little from that now in circulation. It was revised some years later by
Bernard Shaw, who cut down the rhetoric and sharpened the phraseology,
but the substance has not been changed. It is remarkable as containing a
sneer at Christianity, the only one to be found in the publications of
the Society. Perhaps this was a rebound from excess of "subordination of
material things to spiritual things" insisted on by the Fellowship of
the New Life!
The tract had on its title page two mottoes, the second of which has
played some part in the Society's history. They were produced, again
according to tradition, by Frank Podmore, and, though printed as
quotations, are not to be discovered in any history:--
"Wherefore it may not be gainsaid that the fruit of this man's long
taking of counsel--and (by the many so deemed) untimeous delays--was
the safe-holding for all men, his fellow-citizens, of the Common
Weal."
"For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently,
when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but
when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your
waiting will be in vain, and fruitless."
It has been pointed out by Mr. H.G. Wells, and by others before him,
that Fabius never did strike hard; and many have enquired when the
right time for the Fabians to strike would come. In fact, we recognised
at that time that we did not know what were the remedies for the evils
of society as we saw them and that the right time for striking would not
come until we knew where to strike. Taken together as the two mottoes
were first printed, this meaning is obvious. The delay was to be for the
purpose of "taking counsel."
Tract No. 1, excellent as it is, shows a sense of the evil, but gives no
indication of the remedy. Its contents are commonplace, and in no sense
characteristic of the Society. The men who were to make its reputation
had not yet found it out, and at this stage our chief characteristic was
a lack of self-confidence unusual amongst revolutionaries. We had with
considerable courage set out to reconstruct society, and we frankly
confessed that we did not know how to go about it.
The next meeting to which we need refer took place on May 16th. The
minutes merely record that Mr. Rowland Estcourt read a paper on "The
Figures of Mr. Mallock," but a pencil note in the well-known handwriting
of Bernard Shaw has been subsequently added: "This meeting was made
memorable by the first appearance of Bernard Shaw."
On September 5th Bernard Shaw was elected a member, and at the following
meeting on September 19th his first contribution to the literature of
the Society, Pamphlet No. 2, was read. The influence of his intellectual
outlook was immediate, and already the era of "highest moral
possibilities" seems remote. Tract No. 2 was never reprinted and the
number of copies in existence outside public libraries is small: it is
therefore worth reproducing in full.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY
17 Osnaburgh Street, Regent's Park
Fabian Tract No. 2
A MANIFESTO
"For always in thine eyes, O liberty,
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee."
London:
George Standring, 8 & 9 Finsbury Street, E.C. 1884.
A MANIFESTO
THE FABIANS are associated for spreading the following opinions held
by them and discussing their practical consequences.
That under existing circumstances wealth cannot be enjoyed without
dishonour or foregone without misery.
That it is the duty of each member of the State to provide for his or
her wants by his or her own Labour.
That a life interest in the Land and Capital of the nation is the
birthright of every individual born within its confines and that
access to this birthright should not depend upon the will of any
private person other than the person seeking it.
That the most striking result of our present system of farming out
the national Land and Capital to private persons has been the
division of Society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no
dinners at one extreme and large dinners and no appetites at the
other.
That the practice of entrusting the Land of the nation to private
persons in the hope that they will make the best of it has been
discredited by the consistency with which they have made the worst of
it; and that Nationalisation of the Land in some form is a public
duty.
That the pretensions of Capitalism to encourage Invention and to
distribute its benefits in the fairest way attainable, have been
discredited by the experience of the nineteenth century.
That, under the existing system of leaving the National Industry to
organise itself Competition has the effect of rendering adulteration,
dishonest dealing and inhumanity compulsory.
That since Competition amongst producers admittedly secures to the
public the most satisfactory products, the State should compete with
all its might in every department of production.
That such restraints upon Free Competition as the penalties for
infringing the Postal monopoly, and the withdrawal of workhouse and
prison labour from the markets, should be abolished.
That no branch of Industry should be carried on at a profit by the
central administration.
That the Public Revenue should be levied by a direct Tax; and that
the central administration should have no legal power to hold back
for the replenishment of the Public Treasury any portion of the
proceeds of Industries administered by them.
That the State should compete with private individuals--especially
with parents--in providing happy homes for children, so that every
child may have a refuge from the tyranny or neglect of its natural
custodians.
That Men no longer need special political privileges to protect them
against Women, and that the sexes should henceforth enjoy equal
political rights.
That no individual should enjoy any Privilege in consideration of
services rendered to the State by his or her parents or other
relations.
That the State should secure a liberal education and an equal share
in the National Industry to each of its units.
That the established Government has no more right to call itself the
State than the smoke of London has to call itself the weather.
That we had rather face a Civil War than such another century of
suffering as the present one has been.
It would be easy in the light of thirty years' experience to write at
much length on these propositions. They are, of course, unqualified
"Shaw." The minutes state that each was discussed and separately
adopted. Three propositions, the nature of which is not recorded, were
at a second meeting rejected, while the proposition on heredity was
drafted and inserted by order of the meeting. I recollect demurring to
the last proposition, and being assured by the author that it was all
right since in fact no such alternative would ever be offered!
The persistency of Mr. Shaw's social philosophy is remarkable. His
latest volume[10] deals with parents and children, the theme he touched
on in 1884; his social ideal is still a birthright life interest in
national wealth, and "an equal share in national industry," the latter a
phrase more suggestive than lucid. On the other hand, he, like the rest
of us, was then by no means clear as to the distinction between
Anarchism and Socialism. The old Radical prejudice in favour of direct
taxation, so that the State may never handle a penny not wrung from the
reluctant and acutely conscious taxpayer, the doctrinaire objection to
State monopolies, and the modern view that municipal enterprises had
better be carried on at cost price, are somewhat inconsistently
commingled with the advocacy of universal State competition in industry.
It may further be noticed that we were as yet unconscious of the claims
and aims of the working people. Our Manifesto covered a wide field, but
it nowhere touches Co-operation or Trade Unionism, wages or hours of
labour. We were still playing with abstractions, Land and Capital,
Industry and Competition, the Individual and the State.
In connection with the first tracts another point may be mentioned. The
Society has stuck to the format adopted in these early days, and with a
few special exceptions all its publications have been issued in the same
style, and with numbers running on consecutively. For all sorts of
purposes the advantage of this continuity has been great.
* * * * *
On January 2nd, 1885, Bernard Shaw was elected to the Executive
Committee, and about the same time references to the Industrial
Remuneration Conference appear in the minutes. This remarkable
gathering, made possible by a gift of £1000 from Mr. Miller of
Edinburgh, was summoned to spend three days in discussing the question,
"Has the increase of products of industry within the last hundred years
tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers or to that of
the working classes, whether artisans, labourers or others? And in what
relative proportions in any given period?"
The second day was devoted to "Remedies," and the third to the
question, "Would the more general distribution of capital or land or the
State management of capital or land promote or impair the production of
wealth and the welfare of the community?" The Fabian Society appointed
two delegates, J.G. Stapleton and Hubert Bland, but Bernard Shaw
apparently took the place of the latter.
It met on January 28th, at the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly. Mr. Arthur J.
Balfour read a paper in which he made an observation worth recording:
"As will be readily believed, I am no Socialist, but to compare the work
of such men as Mr. (Henry) George with that of such men, for instance,
as Karl Marx, either in respect of its intellectual force, its
consistency, its command of reasoning in general, or of economic
reasoning in particular, seems to me absurd."
The Conference was the first occasion in which the Fabian Society
emerged from its drawing-room obscurity, and the speech of Bernard Shaw
on the third day was probably the first he delivered before an audience
of more than local importance. One passage made an impression on his
friends and probably on the public. "It was," he said, "the desire of
the President that nothing should be said that might give pain to
particular classes. He was about to refer to a modern class, the
burglars, but if there was a burglar present he begged him to believe
that he cast no reflection upon his profession, and that he was not
unmindful of his great skill and enterprise: his risks--so much greater
than those of the most speculative capitalist, extending as they did to
risk of liberty and life--his abstinence; or finally of the great number
of people to whom he gave employment, including criminal attorneys,
policemen, turnkeys, builders of gaols, and it might be the hangman. He
did not wish to hurt the feelings of shareholders ... or of landlords
... any more than he wished to pain burglars. He would merely point out
that all three inflicted on the community an injury of precisely the
same nature."[11]
It may be added that Mr. Shaw was patted on the back by a subsequent
speaker, Mr. John Wilson, of the Durham Miners, for many years M.P. for
Mid-Durham, and by no means an habitual supporter of Socialists.
The stout volume in which the proceedings are published is now but
seldom referred to, but it is a somewhat significant record of the
intellectual unrest of the period, an indication that the governing
classes even at this early date in the history of English Socialism,
were prepared to consider its claims, and to give its proposals a
respectful hearing.
* * * * *
The early debates in the Society were in the main on things abstract or
Utopian. Social Reconstruction was a constant theme, Hubert Bland
outlined "Revolutionary Prospects" in January, 1885, and Bernard Shaw in
February combated "The proposed Abolition of the Currency."
On March 6th a new departure began: a Committee was appointed to collect
"facts concerning the working of the Poor Law," with special reference
to alleged official attempts to disprove "great distress amongst the
workers." It does not appear that the Report was ever completed.
On March 20th Sidney Webb read a paper on "The Way Out," and on the 1st
May he was elected a member along with his Colonial Office colleague
Sydney Olivier. On May 15th is recorded the election of Harold Cox,
subsequently M.P., and now editor of the "Edinburgh Review."
The Society was now finding its feet. On April 17th it had been
resolved to send a delegate "to examine into and report upon the South
Yorkshire Miners"! And on the same day it was determined to get up a
Soirée. This gathering, held in Gower Street, was memorable because it
was attended by Mrs. Annie Besant, then notorious as an advocate of
Atheism and Malthusianism, the heroine of several famous law cases, and
a friend and colleague of Charles Bradlaugh. Mrs. Besant was elected a
member a few weeks later, and she completed the list of the seven who
subsequently wrote "Fabian Essays," with the exception of Graham Wallas,
who did not join the Society until April, 1886.[12]
But although Sidney Webb had become a Fabian the scientific spirit was
not yet predominant. Bernard Shaw had, then as now, a strong objection
to the peasant agriculture of his native land, and he submitted to the
Society a characteristic leaflet addressed: "To provident Landlords and
Capitalists, a suggestion and a warning." "The Fabian Society," it says,
"having in view the advance of Socialism and the threatened subversion
of the powers hitherto exercised by private proprietors of the national
land and capital ventures plainly to warn all such proprietors that the
establishment of Socialism in England means nothing less than the
compulsion of all members of the upper class, without regard to sex or
condition, to work for their own living." The tract, which is a very
brief one, goes on to recommend the proprietary classes to "support all
undertakings having for their object the parcelling out of waste or
inferior lands amongst the labouring class" for sundry plausible
reasons. At the foot of the title page, in the smallest of type, is the
following: "Note.--Great care should be taken to keep this tract out of
the hands of radical workmen, Socialist demagogues and the like, as they
are but too apt to conclude that schemes favourable to landlords cannot
be permanently advantageous to the working class." This elaborate joke
was, except for one amendment, adopted as drafted on June 5th, 1885, and
there is a tradition that it was favourably reviewed by a Conservative
newspaper!
The Society still met as a rule at 17 Osnaburgh Street, or in the rooms
of Frank Podmore at 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster, but it was steadily
growing and new members were elected at every meeting. Although most of
the members were young men of university education, the Society included
people of various ages. To us at any rate Mrs. James Hinton, widow of
Dr. Hinton, and her sisters, Miss Haddon and Miss Caroline Haddon,
seemed to be at least elderly. Mrs. Robins, her husband (a successful
architect), and her daughter, who acted as "assistant" honorary
secretary for the first eighteen months, lent an air of prosperous
respectability to our earliest meetings. Mr. and Mrs. J. Glode
Stapleton, who were prominent members for some years, were remarkable
amongst us because they drove to our meetings in their own brougham! The
working classes, as before mentioned, had but a single representative.
Another prominent member at this period was Mrs. Charlotte M. Wilson,
wife of a stock-broker living in Hampstead, who a short time later
"simplified" into a cottage at the end of the Heath, called Wildwood
Farm, now a part of the Garden Suburb Estate, where Fabians for many
years held the most delightful of their social gatherings. Mrs. Wilson
was elected to the Executive of five in December, 1884 (Mrs. Wilson, H.
Bland, E.R. Pease, G. Bernard Shaw and F. Keddell), but after some time
devoted herself entirely to the Anarchist movement, led by Prince
Kropotkin, and for some years edited their paper, "Freedom." But she
remained throughout a member of the Fabian Society, and twenty years
later she resumed her Fabian activity, as will be related in a later
chapter.
All this time the Socialist movement in England was coming into public
notice with startling rapidity. In January, 1884, "Justice, the organ of
the Democratic Federation," was founded, and in August of that year the
Federation made the first of its many changes of name, and became the
Social Democratic Federation or S.D.F. The public then believed, as the
Socialists also necessarily believed, that Socialism would be so
attractive to working-class electors that they would follow its banner
as soon as it was raised, and the candidatures undertaken by the S.D.F.
at the General Election in November, 1885, produced widespread alarm
amongst politicians of both parties. The following account of this
episode from Fabian Tract 41, "The Early History of the Fabian Society,"
was written by Bernard Shaw in 1892, and describes the events and our
attitude at the time far more freshly and graphically than anything I
can write nearly thirty years later.
After explaining why he preferred joining the Fabian Society rather than
the S.D.F., Mr. Shaw goes on (pp. 4-7):--
"However, as I have said, in 1885 our differences [from other
Socialists] were latent or instinctive; and we denounced the
capitalists as thieves at the Industrial Remuneration Conference,
and, among ourselves, talked revolution, anarchism, labour notes
_versus_ pass-books, and all the rest of it, on the tacit assumption
that the object of our campaign, with its watchwords, 'EDUCATE,
AGITATE, ORGANIZE,' was to bring about a tremendous smash-up of
existing society, to be succeeded by complete Socialism. And this
meant that we had no true practical understanding either of existing
society or Socialism. Without being quite definitely aware of this,
we yet felt it to a certain extent all along; for it was at this
period that we contracted the invaluable habit of freely laughing at
ourselves which has always distinguished us, and which has saved us
from becoming hampered by the gushing enthusiasts who mistake their
own emotions for public movements. From the first, such people fled
after one glance at us, declaring that we were not serious. Our
preference for practical suggestions and criticisms, and our
impatience of all general expressions of sympathy with working-class
aspirations, not to mention our way of chaffing our opponents in
preference to denouncing them as enemies of the human race, repelled
from us some warm-hearted and eloquent Socialists, to whom it seemed
callous and cynical to be even commonly self-possessed in the
presence of the sufferings upon which Socialists make war. But there
was far too much equality and personal intimacy among the Fabians to
allow of any member presuming to get up and preach at the rest in the
fashion which the working-classes still tolerate submissively from
their leaders. We knew that a certain sort of oratory was useful for
'stoking up' public meetings; but we needed no stoking up, and, when
any orator tried the process on us, soon made him understand that he
was wasting his time and ours. I, for one, should be very sorry to
lower the intellectual standard of the Fabian by making the
atmosphere of its public discussions the least bit more congenial to
stale declamation than it is at present. If our debates are to be
kept wholesome, they cannot be too irreverent or too critical. And
the irreverence, which has become traditional with us, comes down
from those early days when we often talked such nonsense that we
could not help laughing at ourselves.
"TORY GOLD AT THE 1885 ELECTION.
"When I add that in 1885 we had only 40 members, you will be able to
form a sufficient notion of the Fabian Society in its nonage. In that
year there occurred an event which developed the latent differences
between ourselves and the Social-Democratic Federation. The
Federation said then, as it still says, that its policy is founded on
a recognition of the existence of a Class War. How far the fact of
the working classes being at war with the proprietary classes
justifies them in suspending the observance of the ordinary social
obligations in dealing with them was never settled; but at that time
we were decidedly less scrupulous than we are now in our ideas on the
subject; and we all said freely that as gunpowder destroyed the
feudal system, so the capitalist system could not long survive the
invention of dynamite. Not that we are dynamitards: indeed the
absurdity of the inference shows how innocent we were of any
practical acquaintance with explosives; but we thought that the
statement about gunpowder and feudalism was historically true, and
that it would do the capitalists good to remind them of it. Suddenly,
however, the Federation made a very startling practical application
of the Class War doctrine. They did not blow anybody up; but in the
general election of 1885 they ran two candidates in London--Mr.
Williams, in Hampstead, who got 27 votes, and Mr. Fielding, in
Kennington, who got 32 votes. And they made no secret of the fact
that the expenses of these elections had been paid by one of the
established political parties in order to split the vote of the
other. From the point of view of the abstract moralist there was
nothing to be said against the transaction; since it was evident that
Socialist statesmanship must for a long time to come consist largely
of taking advantage of the party dissensions between the
Unsocialists. It may easily happen to-morrow that the Liberal party
may offer to contribute to the expenses of a Fabian candidate in a
hopelessly Tory stronghold, in order to substantiate its pretensions
to encourage Labour representation. Under such circumstances it is
quite possible that we may say to the Fabian in question, Accept by
all means; and deliver propagandist addresses all over the place.
Suppose that the Liberal party offers to bear part of Mr. Sidney
Webb's expenses at the forthcoming County Council election at
Deptford, as they undoubtedly will, by means of the usual National
Liberal Club subscription, in the case of the poorer Labour
candidates. Mr. Webb, as a matter of personal preference for an
independence which he is fortunately able to afford, will refuse. But
suppose Mr. Webb were not in that fortunate position, as some Labour
candidates will not be! It is quite certain that not the smallest
odium would attach to the acceptance of a Liberal grant-in-aid. Now
the idea that taking Tory money is worse than taking Liberal money is
clearly a Liberal party idea and not a Social-Democratic one. In 1885
there was not the slightest excuse for regarding the Tory party as
any more hostile to Socialism than the Liberal party; and Mr.
Hyndman's classical quotation, _'Non olet'_--'It does not smell,'
meaning that there is no difference in the flavour of Tory and Whig
gold once it comes into the Socialist treasury, was a sufficient
retort to the accusations of moral corruption which were levelled at
him. But the Tory money job, as it was called, was none the less a
huge mistake in tactics. Before it took place, the Federation loomed
large in the imagination of the public and the political parties.
This is conclusively proved by the fact that the Tories thought that
the Socialists could take enough votes from the Liberals to make it
worth while to pay the expenses of two Socialist candidates in
London. The day after the election everyone knew that the Socialists
were an absolutely negligeable quantity there as far as voting power
was concerned. They had presented the Tory party with 57 votes, at a
cost of about £8 apiece. What was worse, they had shocked London
Radicalism, to which Tory money was an utter abomination. It is hard
to say which cut the more foolish figure, the Tories who had spent
their money for nothing, or the Socialists who had sacrificed their
reputation for worse than nothing.
"The disaster was so obvious that there was an immediate falling off
from the Federation, on the one hand of the sane tacticians of the
movement, and on the other of those out-and-out Insurrectionists who
repudiated political action altogether, and were only too glad to be
able to point to a discreditable instance of it. Two resolutions were
passed, one by the Socialist League and the other by the Fabian
Society. Here is the Fabian resolution:
"'That the conduct of the Council of the Social-Democratic Federation
in accepting money from the Tory party in payment of the election
expenses of Socialist candidates is calculated to disgrace the
Socialist movement in England,'--4th Dec., 1885."
The result of this resolution, passed by 15 votes to 4, was the first of
the very few splits which are recorded in the history of the Society.
Frederick Keddell, the first honorary secretary, resigned and I took his
place, whilst a few weeks later Sidney Webb was elected to the vacancy
on the Executive.
In 1886 Socialism was prominently before the public. Unemployment
reached a height which has never since been touched. Messrs. Hyndman,
Champion, Burns, and Williams were actually tried for sedition, but
happily acquitted; and public opinion was justified in regarding
Socialism rather as destructive and disorderly than as constructive,
and, as is now often said, even too favourable to repressive
legislation. In these commotions the Society as a whole took no part,
and its public activities were limited to a meeting at South Place
Chapel, on December 18th, 1885, addressed by Mrs. Besant.
In March, 1886, the Executive Committee was increased to seven by the
addition of Mrs. Besant and Frank Podmore, and in April Tract No. 4,
"What Socialism Is," was approved for publication. It begins with a
historical preface, touching on the Wars of the Roses, Tudor
confiscation of land, the enclosure of commons, the Industrial
Revolution, and so on. Surplus value and the tendency of wages to a
minimum are mentioned, and the valuable work of Trade
Unionism--sometimes regarded by Guild Socialists and others nowadays as
a recent discovery--is alluded to: indeed the modern syndicalist
doctrine was anticipated: the workman, it is said, "has been forced to
sell himself for a mess of pottage and is consequently deprived of the
guidance of his own life and the direction of his own labour." Socialist
opinion abroad, it says, "has taken shape in two distinct schools,
Collectivist and Anarchist. English Socialism is not yet Anarchist or
Collectivist, not yet definite enough in point of policy to be
classified. There is a mass of Socialist feeling not yet conscious of
itself as Socialism. But when the conscious Socialists of England
discover their position they also will probably fall into two parties: a
Collectivist party supporting a strong central administration, and a
counterbalancing Anarchist party defending individual initiative against
that administration. In some such fashion progress and stability will
probably be secured under Socialism by the conflict of the uneradicable
Tory and Whig instincts in human nature."
It will be noticed that even in this period of turmoil the Society was
altogether constitutional in its outlook; political parties of
Socialists and Anarchists combining progress with stability were the
features of the future we foresaw.
By this time the Society was thoroughly aware of its relation to
international socialism, and the remaining six pages of the tract are
occupied by expositions of the alternatives above alluded to.
"Collectivism" is summarised from Bebel's "Woman in the Past, Present,
and Future," and is a somewhat mechanical scheme of executive committees
in each local commune or district representing each branch of industry,
elected by universal suffrage for brief periods of office and paid at
the rate of ordinary workmen; and of a central Executive Committee
chosen in like manner or else directly appointed by the local Communal
Councils. The second part consists of "Anarchism, drawn up by C.M.
Wilson on behalf of the London Anarchists." This is a statement of
abstract principles which frankly admits that "Anarchists have no fears
that in discarding the Collectivist dream of the scientific regulation
of industry and inventing no formulas for social conditions as yet
unrealised, they are neglecting the essential for the visionary,"
This tract was never reprinted, and, of course, it attracted no
attention. It was however the first of the long series of Fabian tracts
that aimed at supplying information and thus carrying out the original
object of the Society, the education of its members and the systematic
study of the reconstruction of the social system.
The spring of 1886 was occupied with arrangements for the Conference,
which was held at South Place Chapel on June 9th, 10th, and 11th.
Here again a quotation from Bernard Shaw's "Early History of the Fabian
Society" is the best description available:--
"THE FABIAN CONFERENCE OF 1886.
"You will now ask to be told what the Fabians had been doing all this
time. Well, I think it must be admitted that we were overlooked in
the excitements of the unemployed agitation, which had, moreover,
caused the Tory money affair to be forgotten. The Fabians were
disgracefully backward in open-air speaking. Up to quite a recent
date, Graham Wallas, myself, and Mrs. Besant were the only
representative open-air speakers in the Society, whereas the
Federation speakers, Burns, Hyndman, Andrew Hall, Tom Mann, Champion,
Burrows, with the Socialist Leaguers, were at it constantly. On the
whole, the Church Parades and the rest were not in our line; and we
were not wanted by the men who were organizing them. Our only
contribution to the agitation was a report which we printed in 1886,
which recommended experiments in tobacco culture, and even hinted at
compulsory military service, as means of absorbing some of the
unskilled unemployed, but which went carefully into the practical
conditions of relief works. Indeed, we are at present trying to
produce a new tract on the subject without finding ourselves able to
improve very materially on the old one in this respect. It was drawn
up by Bland, Hughes, Podmore, Stapleton, and Webb, and was the first
of our publications that contained any solid information. Its tone,
however, was moderate and its style somewhat conventional; and the
Society was still in so hot a temper on the social question that we
refused to adopt it as a regular Fabian tract, and only issued it as
a report printed for the information of members. Nevertheless we were
coming to our senses rapidly by this time. We signalized our
repudiation of political sectarianism in June, 1886, by inviting the
Radicals, the Secularists, and anyone else who would come, to a great
conference, modelled upon the Industrial Remuneration Conference, and
dealing with the Nationalization of Land and Capital. It fully
established the fact that we had nothing immediately practical to
impart to the Radicals and that they had nothing to impart to us.
The proceedings were fully reported for us; but we never had the
courage even to read the shorthand writer's report, which still
remains in MS. Before I refreshed my memory on the subject the other
day, I had a vague notion that the Conference cost a great deal of
money; that it did no good whatever; that Mr. Bradlaugh made a
speech; that Mrs. Fenwick Miller, who had nothing on earth to do with
us, was in the chair during part of the proceedings; and that the
most successful paper was by a strange gentleman whom we had taken on
trust as a Socialist, but who turned out to be an enthusiast on the
subject of building more harbours. I find, however, on looking up the
facts, that no less than fifty-three societies sent delegates; that
the guarantee fund for expenses was £100; and that the discussions
were kept going for three afternoons and three evenings. The
Federation boycotted us; but the 'Times' reported us.[13] Eighteen
papers were read, two of them by members of Parliament, and most of
the rest by well-known people. William Morris and Dr. Aveling read
papers as delegates from the Socialist League; the National Secular
Society sent Mr. Foote and Mr. [John M.] Robertson,[14] the latter
contributing a 'Scheme of Taxation' in which he anticipated much of
what was subsequently adopted as the Fabian program; Wordsworth
Donisthorpe took the field for Anarchism of the type advocated by the
authors of 'A Plea for Liberty'; Stewart Headlam spoke for Christian
Socialism and the Guild of St. Matthew; Dr. Pankhurst dealt with the
situation from the earlier Radical point of view; and various
Socialist papers were read by Mrs. Besant, Sidney Webb, and Edward
Carpenter, besides one by Stuart Glennie, who subsequently left us
because we fought shy of the Marriage Question when revising our
'Basis.' I mention all this in order to show you how much more
important this abortive Conference looked than the present one. Yet
all that can be said for it is that it made us known to the Radical
clubs and proved that we were able to manage a conference in a
businesslike way. It also, by the way, showed off our pretty
prospectus with the design by Crane at the top, our stylish-looking
blood-red invitation cards, and the other little smartnesses on which
we then prided ourselves. We used to be plentifully sneered at as
fops and arm-chair Socialists for our attention to these details; but
I think it was by no means the least of our merits that we always, as
far as our means permitted, tried to make our printed documents as
handsome as possible, and did our best to destroy the association
between revolutionary literature and slovenly printing on paper that
is nasty without being cheap. One effect of this was that we were
supposed to be much richer than we really were, because we generally
got better value and a finer show for our money than the other
Socialist societies."[15]
Three members of Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh, William Saunders, and
Dr. G.B. Clark, took part. The Dr. Pankhurst mentioned was the husband
of Mrs. Pankhurst, later the leader of the Women's Social and Political
Union.
The reference in the foregoing passage to the report on "The Government
Organisation of Unemployed Labour," prepared concurrently with the
organisation of the Conference, is by no means adequate. The Report
attracted but little attention at the time, even in the Society itself,
but it is in fact the first typically Fabian publication, and the first
in which Sidney Webb took part. Much subsequent experience has convinced
me that whenever Webb is on a committee it may be assumed in default of
positive evidence to the contrary that its report is his work. Webb
however maintains that to the best of his recollection the work was
shared between Podmore and himself, the simple arrangement being that
Podmore wrote the first half and Webb the second. The tract is an
attempt to deal with a pressing social problem on constructive lines. It
surveys the field, analyses the phenomena presented, and suggests
practicable remedies. It is however a very cautious document. Webb was
then old as an economist, and very young as a Socialist; none of the
rest of the Committee had the knowledge, if they had the will, to stand
up to him. Therefore we find snippets from the theory of economic
"balance" which was universally regarded as valid in those days.
"In practice the government obtains its technical skill by attracting
men from other employers, and its capital in a mobile form by attracting
it from other possessors. It gets loans on the money market, which is
thereby rendered more stringent; the rate of interest rises and the
loans made to other borrowers are diminished,"
But the particular interest of the Report at the present day is the fact
that it contains the germs of many ideas which more than twenty years
later formed the leading features of the Minority Report of the Poor Law
Commission.
At that time it was universally believed that the slum dwellers of
London were mainly recruited by rural immigrants, and this
error--disproved several years later by the painstaking statistical
investigations of Mr. (now Sir) H. Llewelyn Smith--vitiates much of the
reasoning of the Report.
After analysing the causes of unemployment on lines now familiar to all,
and denouncing private charity with vehemence worthy of the Charity
Organisation Society, it recommends the revival of social life in our
villages in order to keep the country people from crowding into the
slums. The Dock Companies are urged to organise their casual labour into
permanently employed brigades: and it is suggested, as in the "Minority
Report," that "the most really 'remunerative' form of 'relief' works for
the unemployed would often be a course of instruction in some new trade
or handicraft" Technical education is strongly recommended; Labour
Bureaux are advocated; State cultivation of tobacco is suggested as a
means of employing labour on the land (private cultivation of tobacco
was until recently prohibited by law), as well as municipal drink
supply, State railways, and "universal military (home) service" as a
means of promoting "the growth of social consciousness,"
The Report is unequal. An eloquent but irrelevant passage on the social
effects of bringing the railway contractor's navvies to a rural village
was possibly contributed by Hubert Bland, whilst the conclusion, a
magniloquent eulogy of the moral value of Government service, written,
according to Webb's recollection, by Frank Podmore, is evidently the
work of a civil servant who has not got over the untamed enthusiasms of
youth!
The Report shows immature judgment, but also in parts remarkable
foresight, and a complete realisation of the right scientific method.
With State tobacco farms and the public organisation of a corps of
peripatetic State navvies, the childhood stage of the Fabian Society
may be said to conclude.
My own connection with the Society also changed. In the spring of 1886 I
gave up my business on the Stock Exchange and in the summer went to
Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I lived till the autumn of 1890. My account of
the Society for the next three years is therefore in the main derived
from its records. Sydney Olivier succeeded me as "Acting Secretary," but
for some months I was still nominally the secretary, a fact of much
significance to my future, since it enabled me if I liked to deal with
correspondence, and it was through a letter to the secretary of the
Society, answered by me from Newcastle, that I made the acquaintance of
the lady who three years later became my wife.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] "Misalliance: with a treatise on parents and children," 1914.
[11] Industrial Remuneration Conference. The Report, etc. Cassell, 1885,
p. 400.
[12] William Clarke had attended some early meetings but dropped out and
was actually elected to the Society in February, 1886.
[13] Presumably a "Times" reporter was present; but his report was not
published.
[14] Later M.P. for Tyneside and a member of Mr. Asquith's Government.
[15] Contemporary accounts of the conference can be found in the July
numbers of "To-day" and "The Republican," the former by Mrs. Besant, and
the latter, a descriptive criticism, by the Editor and Printer, George
Standring.
Chapter IV
The Formation of Fabian Policy: 1886-9
The factors of success; priority of date; the men who made it--The
controversy over policy--The Fabian Parliamentary League--"Facts for
Socialists"--The adoption of the Basis--The seven Essayists in
command--Lord Haldane--The "Essays" as lectures--How to train for
Public Life--Fabians on the London School Board--"Facts for
Londoners"--Municipal Socialism--"The Eight Hours Bill"
The Society was now fully constituted, and for the next three years its
destiny was controlled by the seven who subsequently wrote "Fabian
Essays." But it was still a very small and quite obscure body. Mrs.
Besant, alone of its leaders, was known beyond its circle, and at that
period few outside the working classes regarded her with respect. The
Society still met, as a rule, at the house of one or other of the
members, and to the founders, who numbered about 20, only about 67
members had been added by June, 1886. The receipts for the year to
March, 1886, were no More than £35 19s., but as the expenditure only
amounted to £27 6s. 6d., the Society had already adopted its lifelong
habit of paying its way punctually, though it must be confessed that a
complaisant printer and a series of lucky windfalls have contributed to
that result.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, W._
SYDNEY OLIVIER, IN 1903]
The future success of the Society was dependent in the main on two
factors then already in existence. The first was its foundation before
there was any other definitely Socialist body in England. The Social
Democratic Federation did not adopt that name until August, 1884; the
Fabian Society can therefore claim technical priority, and consequently
it has never had to seek acceptance by the rest of the Socialist
movement. At any later date it would have been impossible for a
relatively small middle-class society to obtain recognition as an
acknowledged member of the Socialist confraternity. We were thus in a
position to welcome the formation of working-class Socialist societies,
but it is certain that in the early days they would never have welcomed
us.
Regret has been sometimes expressed, chiefly by foreign observers, that
the Society has maintained its separate identity. Why, it has been
asked, did not the middle-class leaders of the Society devote their
abilities directly to aiding the popular organisations, instead of
"keeping themselves to themselves" like ultra-respectable suburbans?
If this had been possible I am convinced that the loss would have
exceeded the gain, but in the early years it was not possible. The
Social Democrats of those days asserted that unquestioning belief in
every dogma attributed to Marx was essential to social salvation, and
that its only way was revolution, by which they meant, not the complete
transformation of society, but its transformation by means of rifles and
barricades; they were convinced that a successful repetition of the
Commune of Paris was the only method by which their policy could
prevail. The Fabians realised from the first that no such revolution was
likely to take place, and that constant talk about it was the worst
possible way to commend Socialism to the British working class. And
indeed a few years later it was necessary to establish a new
working-class Socialist Society, the Independent Labour Party, in order
to get clear both of the tradition of revolutionary violence and of the
vain repetition of Marxian formulas. If the smaller society had merged
itself in the popular movement, its criticism, necessary, as it proved
to be, to the success of Socialism in England, would have been voted
down, and its critics either silenced or expelled. Of this criticism I
shall have more to say in another place.[16]
But there was another reason why this course would have been
impracticable. The Fabians were not suited either by ability,
temperament, or conditions to be leaders of a popular revolutionary
party. Mrs. Besant with her gift of splendid oratory and her long
experience of agitation was an exception, but her connection with the
movement lasted no more than five years. Of the others Shaw did not and
does not now possess that unquestioning faith in recognised principles
which is the stock-in-trade of political leadership:[17] and whilst Webb
might have been a first-class minister at the head of a department, his
abilities would have been wasted as a leader in a minority. But there
was a more practical bar. The Fabians were mostly civil servants or
clerks in private employ. The methods of agitation congenial to them
were compatible with their occupations: those of the Social Democrats
were not. Indeed in those days no question of amalgamation was ever
mooted.
But it must be remembered by critics that so far as concerns the Fabian
Society, the absence of identity in organisation has never led to such
hostility as has been common amongst Continental Socialists. Since the
vote of censure in relation to the "Tory Gold," the Fabian Society has
never interfered with the doings of its friendly rivals. The two
Societies have occasionally co-operated, but as a rule they have
severally carried on their own work, each recognising the value of many
of the activities of the other, and on the whole confining mutual
criticism within reasonable limits.
The second and chief reason for the success of the Society was its good
fortune in attaching to its service a group of young men, then
altogether unknown, whose reputation has gradually spread, in two or
three cases, all over the world, and who have always been in the main
identified with Fabianism. Very rarely in the history of voluntary
organisations has a group of such exceptional people come together
almost accidentally and worked unitedly together for so many years for
the furtherance of the principles in which they believed. Others have
assisted according to their abilities and opportunities, but to the
Fabian Essayists belongs the credit of creating the Fabian Society.
For several years, and those perhaps the most important in the history
of the Society, the period, in fact, of adolescence, the Society was
governed by the seven Essayists, and chiefly by four or five of them.
Mrs. Besant had made her reputation in other fields, and belonged, in a
sense, to an earlier generation; she was unrivalled as an expositor and
an agitator, and naturally preferred the work that she did best. William
Clarke, also, was just a little of an outsider: he attended committees
irregularly, and although he did what he was persuaded to do with
remarkable force--he was an admirable lecturer and an efficient
journalist--he had no initiative. He was solitary in his habits, and in
his latter years, overshadowed by ill-health, he became almost morose.
Hubert Bland, again, was always something of a critic. He was a Tory by
instinct wherever he was not a Socialist, and whilst thoroughly united
with the others for all purposes of the Society, he lived the rest of
his life apart. But the other four Essayists, Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw,
Graham Wallas, and Sydney Olivier, then and for many years afterwards
may be said to have worked and thought together in an intellectual
partnership.[18] Webb and Olivier were colleagues in the Colonial
Office, and it is said that for some time the Fabian records--they were
not very bulky--were stored on a table in Downing Street. For many years
there were probably few evenings of the week and few holidays which two
or more of them did not spend together.
In 1885 or early in 1886 a group which included those four and many
others formed a reading society for the discussion of Marx's "Capital."
The meetings--I attended them until I left London--were held in
Hampstead, sometimes at the house of Mrs. Gilchrist, widow of the
biographer of Blake, sometimes at that of Mrs. C.M. Wilson, and finally
at the Hampstead Public Library. Later on the Society was called "The
Hampstead Historic," and its discussions, which continued for several
years, had much to do with settling the Fabian attitude towards Marxian
economics and historical theory.[19]
It was this exceptional group of leaders, all intimate friends, all
loyal to each other, and to the cause they were associated to advocate,
and all far above the average in vigour and ability, that in a few years
turned an obscure drawing-room society into a factor in national
politics.
* * * * *
At the meeting on June 19th, 1886, at 94 Cornwall Gardens, Sydney
Olivier assumed the duties of Secretary, and the minutes began to be
written with less formality than before. It is recorded that "Graham
Wallas read a paper on Personal Duty under the present system. A number
of questions from Fabians more or less in trouble about their souls were
answered _ex cathedra_ by Mr. Wallas, after which the Society was given
to understand by G.B. Shaw that Joseph the Fifth Monarchy Man could show
them a more excellent way. Joseph addressed the meeting for five
minutes, on the subject of a community about to be established in
British North America under the presidency of the Son of God. Sidney
Webb, G. Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, [the Rev.] C.L. Marson and Adolph
Smith discussed the subject of the paper with especial reference to the
question of buying cheap goods and of the employment of the surplus
income of pensioners, after which Graham Wallas replied and the meeting
dispersed,"
William Morris lectured on "The Aims of Art" on July 2nd, at a public
meeting at South Place Chapel, with Walter Crane in the chair; and
Belfort Bax was the lecturer on July 17th.
The first meeting after the holidays was a memorable one, and a few
words of introduction are necessary.
In normal times it may be taken for granted that in addition to the
Government and the Opposition there is at least one party of Rebels.
Generally there are more, since each section has its own rebels, down to
the tiniest. In the eighties the rebels were Communist Anarchists, and
to us at any rate they seemed more portentous than the mixed crowd of
suffragettes and gentlemen from Oxford who before the war seemed to be
leading the syndicalist rebels. Anarchist Communism was at any rate a
consistent and almost sublime doctrine. Its leaders, such as Prince
Kropotkin and Nicholas Tchaykovsky, were men of outstanding ability and
unimpeachable character, and the rank and file, mostly refugees from
European oppression, had direct relations with similar parties abroad,
the exact extent and significance of which we could not calculate.
The Socialist League, founded in 1885 by William Morris, Dr. Edward
Aveling, and others, as the result of a quarrel, mainly personal, with
the leaders of the Social Democrats, soon developed its own doctrine,
and whilst never until near its dissolution definitely anarchist, it was
always dominated by the artistic and anti-political temperament of
Morris. Politically the Fabians were closer to the Social Democrats, but
their hard dogmatism was repellent, whilst Morris had perhaps the most
sympathetic and attractive personality of his day.
The crisis of the Society's policy is described in the following
passage from Shaw's "Early History,":--
"By 1886 we had already found that we were of one mind as to the
advisability of setting to work by the ordinary political methods and
having done with Anarchism and vague exhortations to Emancipate the
Workers. We had several hot debates on the subject with a section of
the Socialist League which called itself Anti-State Communist, a name
invented by Mr. Joseph Lane of that body. William Morris, who was
really a free democrat of the Kropotkin type, backed up Lane, and
went for us tooth and nail. Records of our warfare may be found in
the volumes of the extinct magazine called 'To-day,' which was then
edited by Hubert Bland; and they are by no means bad reading. We soon
began to see that at the debates the opposition to us came from
members of the Socialist League, who were present only as visitors.
The question was, how many followers had our one ascertained
Anarchist, Mrs. Wilson, among the silent Fabians. Bland and Mrs.
Besant brought this question to an issue on the 17th September, 1886,
at a meeting in Anderton's Hotel, by respectively seconding and
moving the following resolution:
"'That it is advisable that Socialists should organize themselves as
a political party for the purpose of transferring into the hands of
the whole working community full control over the soil and the means
of production, as well as over the production and distribution of
wealth.'
"To this a rider was moved by William Morris as follows:
"'But whereas the first duty of Socialists is to educate the people
to understand what their present position is and what their future
might be, and to keep the principle of Socialism steadily before
them; and whereas no Parliamentary party can exist without compromise
and concession, which would hinder that education and obscure those
principles, it would be a false step for Socialists to attempt to
take part in the Parliamentary contest.'
"I shall not attempt to describe the debate, in which Morris, Mrs.
Wilson, Davis, and Tochatti did battle with Burns, Mrs. Besant, Bland,
Shaw, Donald, and Rossiter: that is, with Fabian and S.D.F. combined.
Suffice it to say that the minutes of the meeting close with the
following significant note by the secretary:
"'Subsequently to the meeting, the secretary received notice from
the manager of Anderton's Hotel that the Society could not be
accommodated there for any further meetings.'
Everybody voted, whether Fabian or not; and Mrs. Besant and Bland
carried their resolution by 47 to 19, Morris's rider being subsequently
rejected by 40 to 27."
A short contemporary report written by Mrs. Besant was published in
"To-day" for October, 1886, from which it appears that "Invitations were
sent out to all Socialist bodies in London," and that the irregularity
of the proceedings alluded to by Shaw was intentional. The minutes of
the proceedings treat the meeting as in ordinary course, but it is plain
from Mrs. Besant's report that it was an informal attempt to clear the
air in the Socialist movement as well as in the Society itself.
In order to avoid a breach with Mrs. Wilson and her Fabian sympathisers,
it was resolved to form a Fabian Parliamentary League, which Fabians
could join or not as they pleased; its constitution, dated February,
1887, is given in full in Tract No. 41; here it is only necessary to
quote one passage which describes the policy of the League and of the
Society, a policy of deliberate possibilism:--
"The League will take active part in all general and local elections.
Until a fitting opportunity arises for putting forward Socialist
candidates to form the nucleus of a Socialist party in Parliament, it
will confine itself to supporting those candidates who will go
furthest in the direction of Socialism. It will not ally itself
absolutely with any political party; it will jealously avoid being
made use of for party purposes; and it will be guided in its action
by the character, record, and pledges of the candidates before the
constituencies. In Municipal, School Board, Vestry, and other local
elections, the League will, as it finds itself strong enough, run
candidates of its own, and by placing trustworthy Socialists on
local representative bodies it will endeavour to secure the
recognition of the Socialist principle in all the details of local
government."
Its history is narrated in the same Tract:--
"Here you have the first sketch of the Fabian policy of to-day. The
Parliamentary League, however, was a short-lived affair. Mrs.
Wilson's followers faded away, either by getting converted or leaving
us. Indeed, it is a question with us to this day whether they did not
owe their existence solely to our own imaginations. Anyhow, it soon
became plain that the Society was solidly with the Executive on the
subject of political action, and that there was no need for any
separate organization at all. The League first faded into a Political
Committee of the Society, and then merged silently and painlessly
into the general body."
Amongst the lecturers of the autumn of 1886 were H.H. Champion on the
Unemployed, Mrs. Besant on the Economic Position of Women, Percival
Chubb, Bernard Shaw on "Socialism and the Family"--a pencil note in the
minute book in the lecturer's handwriting says, "This was one of Shaw's
most outrageous performances"--and, in the absence of the Rev. Stopford
Brooke, another by Shaw on "Why we do not act up to our principles,"
A new Tract was adopted in January, 1887. No. 5, "Facts for Socialists,"
perhaps the most effective Socialist tract ever published in England. It
has sold steadily ever since it was issued: every few years it has been
revised and the figures brought up to date; the edition now on sale,
published in 1915, is the eleventh. The idea was not new. Statistics of
the distribution of our national income had been given, as previously
mentioned, in one of the earliest manifestoes of the Democratic
Federation. But in Tract 5 the exact facts were rubbed in with copious
quotations from recognised authorities and illustrated by simple
diagrams. The full title of the tract was "Facts for Socialists from the
Political Economists and Statisticians," and the theme of it was to
prove that every charge made by Socialism against the capitalist system
could be justified by the writings of the foremost professors of
economic science. It embodied another Fabian characteristic of
considerable importance. Other Socialists then, and many Socialists now,
endeavoured by all means to accentuate their differences from other
people. Not content with forming societies to advocate their policy,
they insisted that it was based on a science peculiar to themselves, the
Marxian analysis of value, and the economic interpretation of history:
they strove too to dissociate themselves from others by the adoption of
peculiar modes of address--such as the use of the words "comrade" and
"fraternal"--and they were so convinced that no good thing could come
out of the Galilee of capitalism that any countenance of capitalist
parties or of the capitalist press was deemed an act of treachery.
The Fabians, on the other hand, tended to the view that "we are all
Socialists now." They held that the pronouncements of economic science
must be either right or wrong, and in any case science was not a matter
of party; they endeavoured to show that on their opponents' own
principles they were logically compelled to be Socialists and must
necessarily adopt Fabian solutions of social problems.
"Facts for Socialists" was the work of Sidney Webb. No other member
possessed anything like his knowledge of economics and statistics. It
is, as its title implies, simply a mass of quotations from standard
works on Political Economy, strung together in order to prove that the
bulk of the wealth annually produced goes to a small fraction of the
community in return either for small services or for none at all, and
that the poverty of the masses results, not as the individualists argue,
from deficiencies of individual character, but, as John Stuart Mill had
declared, from the excessive share of the national dividend that falls
to the owners of land and capital.
* * * * *
After the settlement, by a compromise in structure, of the conflict
between the anarchists and the collectivists, the Society entered a
period of calm, and the Executive issued a circular complaining of the
apathy of the members. Probably this is the first of the innumerable
occasions on which it has been said that the Society had passed its
prime. Moreover, the Executive Committee were blamed for "some habits"
which had "a discouraging effect" on the rest of the Society, and it was
resolved, for the first, but not the last time, to appoint a Committee
to revise the Basis. The Committee consisted of the Executive and eight
added members, amongst whom may be mentioned Walter Crane, the Rev. S.D.
Headlam, and Graham Wallas. It is said that after many hours of
discussion they arrived by compromise at an unanimous report, and that
their draft was accepted by the Society without amendment. The report
was presented to a meeting on June 3rd, 1887, of which I, on a visit to
London, was chairman. It is unfortunate that the record of this meeting,
at which the existing Basis of the Society was adopted, is the only one,
in the whole history of the Society, which is incomplete. Possibly the
colonial policy of the empire was disturbed, and the secretary occupied
with exceptional official duties. Anyway the minutes were left
unfinished in June, were continued in October, and were never completed
or recorded as confirmed. The proceedings relating to the Basis were
apparently never written. There is no doubt, however, that the Basis was
adopted on this occasion, it is said, at an adjourned meeting, and in
spite of many projects of revision it has with one addition--the phrase
about "equal citizenship of women"--remained the Basis of the Society to
the present time.[20]
The purpose of the Basis has been often misunderstood. It is not a
confession of faith, or a statement of the whole content and meaning of
Socialism. It is merely a test of admission, a minimum basis of
agreement, acceptance of which is required from those who aspire to
share in the control of a Society which had set out to reconstruct our
social system. The most memorable part of the discussion was the
proposal of Mr. Stuart Glennie to add a clause relating to marriage and
the family. This was opposed by Mrs. Besant, then regarded as an
extremist on that subject, and was defeated. In view of the large amount
of business transacted before the discussion of the Basis began, the
debate cannot have been prolonged.
It is easy enough, nearly thirty years later, to criticise this
document, to point out that it is purely economic, and unnecessarily
rigid: that the phrase about compensation, which has been more discussed
than any other, is badly worded, and for practical purposes always
disregarded in the constructive proposals of the Society.[21] The best
testimony to the merits of the Basis is its survival--its acceptance by
the continuous stream of new members who have joined the Society--and it
has survived not because its upholders deemed it perfect, but because
it has always been found impracticable to put on paper any alternative
on which even a few could agree. In fact, proposals to re-write the
Basis have on several occasions been referred to Committees, but none of
the Committees has ever succeeded in presenting a report.
* * * * *
At the end of the year the sole fruit of the Parliamentary League was
published. It is Tract No. 6, entitled "The True Radical Programme" and
consists of a declamatory criticism of the official Liberal-Radical
Programme announced at Nottingham in October, 1887, and a demand to
replace it by the True Radical Programme, namely, adult (in place of
manhood) suffrage, payment of Members of Parliament and election
expenses, taxation of unearned incomes, nationalisation of railways, the
eight hours day, and a few other items. "The above programme," it says,
"is sufficient for the present to fill the hands of the True Radical
Party--the New Labour Party--in a word, the Practical Socialist Party,"
It is by no means so able and careful a production as the Report on the
Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour.
In April, 1888, the seven Essayists were elected as the Executive
Committee, Graham Wallas and William Clarke taking the places of Frank
Podmore and W.L. Phillips, who retired, and at the same meeting the
Parliamentary League was turned into the Political Committee of the
Society; and Tract 7, "Capital and Land," was approved. This tract, the
work of Sydney Olivier, is a reasoned attack on Single Tax as a panacea,
and in addition contains an estimate of the total realised wealth of the
country, just as "Facts for Socialists" does of its income. This, too,
has been regularly revised and reprinted ever since and commands a
steady sale. It is now in its seventh edition.
Meanwhile the series of meetings, variously described as Public,
Ordinary, and Private, was kept on regularly twice a month, with a break
only of two months from the middle of July. Most of the meetings were
still held in the houses of members, but as early as November, 1886, an
ordinary meeting was held at Willis's Rooms, King Street, St. James's,
at that time an ultra-respectable rendezvous for societies of the most
select character, keeping up an old-fashioned ceremonial of crimson
tablecloths, elaborate silver candlesticks, and impressively liveried
footmen. Having been turned out of Anderton's Hotel, the Society, on the
application of Olivier, was accepted solemnly at Willis's, probably
because the managers regarded the mere fact of our venturing to approach
them as a certificate of high rank in the world of learned societies.
One meeting of this period is perhaps worthy of record. On 16th March,
1888, Mr. R.B. Haldane, M.P., subsequently Secretary of State for War
and Lord Chancellor, addressed the Society on "Radical Remedies for
Economic Evils." In the pages of the "Radical," Vol. II, No. 8, for
March, 1888, can be found a vivid contemporary account of the
proceedings from the pen of Mr. George Standring, entitled "Butchered to
Make a Fabian Holiday." After describing the criticism of the lecture by
Sidney Webb, Mrs. Besant, and Bernard Shaw the report proceeds:--
"The massacre was concluded by two other members of the Society and then
the chairman called on Mr. Haldane to reply. Hideous mockery! The
chairman knew that Haldane was _dead_! He had seen him torn and tossed
and trampled under foot. Perhaps he expected the ghost of the M.P. to
rise and conclude the debate with frightful jabberings of fleshless
jaws and gestures of bony hands. Indeed I heard a rustling of papers as
if one gathered his notes for a speech; but I felt unable to face the
grisly horror of a phantom replying to his assassins; so I fled."
It should be added that Mr. Standring did net become a member of the
Society until five years later.
By the summer of 1888 the leaders of the Society realised that they had
a message for the world, and they decided that the autumn should be
devoted to a connected series of lectures on the "Basis and Prospects of
Socialism" which should subsequently be published.
There is no evidence, however, that the Essayists supposed that they
were about to make an epoch in the history of Socialism. The meetings in
the summer had been occupied with lectures by Professor D.G. Ritchie on
the "Evolution of Society," subsequently published as his well-known
volume "Darwinism and Politics." Walter Crane on "The Prospects of Art
under Socialism," Graham Wallas on "The Co-operative Movement," and Miss
Clementina Black on "Female Labour." At the last-named meeting, on June
15th, a resolution was moved by H.H. Champion and seconded by Herbert
Burrows (neither of them members) calling on the public to boycott
Bryant and May's matches on account of the low wages paid. This marks
the beginning of the period of Labour Unrest, which culminated in the
Dock Strike of the following year.
The first meeting of the autumn was held at Willis's Rooms on September
21st, with the Rev. S.D. Headlam in the chair. The Secretary read a
statement indicating the scope of the course of the seven lectures
arranged for the Society's meetings during the autumn, after which the
first paper, written by Sidney Webb on "The Historical Aspect of the
Basis of Socialism," was read by Hubert Bland. Webb had at that time
started for a three months' visit to the United States, in which I
accompanied him. Mr. Headlam was the chairman throughout the course,
except on one occasion, and the lectures continued fortnightly to the
21st December. It does not appear that any special effort was made to
advertise them. Each lecture was discussed by members of the Society and
of the S.D.F., and with the exception of the Rev. Philip Wicksteed there
is no evidence of the presence of any persons outside the movement then
or subsequently known to fame.
* * * * *
The preparation of "Fabian Essays" for publication occupied nearly a
year, and before dealing with it we must follow the history of the
Society during that period.
The first lecture in 1889 was by Edward Carpenter, whose paper,
"Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure," gives the title to perhaps his best
known volume of essays. Another interesting lecture was by William
Morris, entitled "How Shall We Live Then?" and at the Annual Meeting in
April Sydney Olivier became the first historian of the Society with an
address on "The Origin and Early History of the Fabian Society," for
which he made the pencil notes on the minute book already mentioned.
The seven Essayists were re-elected to the Executive, and in the record
of proceedings at the meeting there is no mention of the proposed volume
of essays.
It is, however, possible to give some account of the organisation and
activities for the year ending in March, 1889, since the first printed
Annual Report covers that period. It is a four-page quarto document,
only a few copies of which are preserved. Of the Society itself but
little is recorded--a list of lectures and the bare statement that the
autumn series were to be published: the fact that 6500 Fabian Tracts had
been distributed and a second edition of 5000 "Facts for Socialists"
printed: that 32 members had been elected and 6 had withdrawn--the total
is not given--and that the deficit in the Society's funds had been
reduced.
A favourite saying of Sidney Webb's is that the activity of the Fabian
Society is the sum of the activities of its members. His report as
Secretary of the work of the "Lecture Committee" states that a lecture
list with 33 names had been printed, and returns made by 31 lecturers
recorded 721 lectures during the year. Six courses of lectures on
Economics accounted for 52 of these. The "Essays" series of lectures was
redelivered by special request in a room lent by King's College,
Cambridge, and also at Leicester. Most of the other lectures were given
at London Radical Working Men's Clubs, then and for some years later a
much bigger factor in politics than they have been in the twentieth
century.
But an almost contemporary account of the life of Bernard Shaw, probably
the most active of the leaders, because the least fettered by his
occupation, is given in Tract 41 under the heading:
"HOW TO TRAIN FOR PUBLIC LIFE.
"We had to study where we could and how we could. I need not repeat
the story of the Hampstead Historic Club, founded by a handful of us
to read Marx and Proudhon, and afterwards turned into a systematic
history class in which each student took his turn at being professor.
My own experience may be taken as typical. For some years I attended
the Hampstead Historic Club once a fortnight, and spent a night in
the alternate weeks at a private circle of economists which has since
blossomed into the British Economic Association--a circle where the
social question was left out, and the work kept on abstract
scientific lines. I made all my acquaintances think me madder than
usual by the pertinacity with which I attended debating societies and
haunted all sorts of hole-and-corner debates and public meetings and
made speeches at them. I was President of the Local Government Board
at an amateur Parliament where a Fabian ministry had to put its
proposals into black and white in the shape of Parliamentary Bills.
Every Sunday I lectured on some subject which I wanted to teach to
myself; and it was not until I had come to the point of being able to
deliver separate lectures, without notes, on Rent, Interest, Profits,
Wages, Toryism, Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Anarchism,
Trade-Unionism, Co-operation, Democracy, the Division of Society into
Classes, and the Suitability of Human Nature to Systems of Just
Distribution, that I was able to handle Social-Democracy as it must
be handled before it can be preached in such a way as to present it
to every sort of man from his own particular point of view. In old
lecture lists of the Society you will find my name down for twelve
different lectures or so. Nowadays I have only one, for which the
secretary is good enough to invent four or five different names.
Sometimes I am asked for one of the old ones, to my great dismay, as
I forget all about them; but I get out of the difficulty by
delivering the new one under the old name, which does as well. I do
not hesitate to say that all our best lecturers have two or three old
lectures at the back of every single point in their best new
speeches; and this means that they have spent a certain number of
years plodding away at footling little meetings and dull discussions,
doggedly placing these before all private engagements, however
tempting. A man's Socialistic acquisitiveness must be keen enough to
make him actually prefer spending two or three nights a week in
speaking and debating, or in picking up social information even in
the most dingy and scrappy way, to going to the theatre, or dancing
or drinking, or even sweethearting, if he is to become a really
competent propagandist--unless, of course, his daily work is of such
a nature as to be in itself a training for political life; and that,
we know, is the case with very few of us indeed. It is at such
lecturing and debating work, and on squalid little committees and
ridiculous little delegations to conferences of the three tailors of
Tooley Street, with perhaps a deputation to the Mayor thrown in once
in a blue moon or so, that the ordinary Fabian workman or clerk must
qualify for his future seat on the Town Council, the School Board,
or perhaps in the Cabinet. It was in that way that Bradlaugh, for
instance, graduated from being a boy evangelist to being one of the
most formidable debaters in the House of Commons. And the only
opponents who have ever held their own against the Fabians in debate
have been men like Mr. Levy or Mr. Foote, who learnt in the same
school."
But lecturing was not the only activity of the Fabians. There were at
that time local Groups, each comprising one or a dozen constituencies in
London and its suburbs. The Groups in a corporate capacity did little:
but the members are reported as taking part in local elections, County
Council, School Board, and Vestry, in the meetings of the London Liberal
and Radical Union, the National Liberal Federation, the Metropolitan
Radical Federation, the Women's Liberal Federation, and so on. This was
the year of the first London County Council Election, when the
Progressive Party, as it was subsequently named, won an unexpected
victory, which proved to be both lasting and momentous for the future of
the Metropolis. The only overt part taken by the Fabian Society was its
"Questions for Candidates," printed and widely circulated before the
election, which gave definiteness and point to the vague ideas of
Progressivism then in the air. A large majority of the successful
candidates had concurred with this programme. A pamphlet by Sidney Webb,
entitled "Wanted a Programme," not published but printed privately, was
widely circulated in time for the meeting of the National Liberal
Federation at Birmingham, and another by the same author, "The Progress
of Socialism," stated to be published by "the Hampstead Society for the
Study of Socialism," is reported as in its second edition. This pamphlet
was later republished by the Fabian Society as Tract No. 15, "English
Progress Towards Social Democracy."
Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam, standing as Progressives,
were elected to the School Board in November, 1888, when Hubert Bland
was an unsuccessful candidate.
Finally it may be mentioned that a Universities Committee, with Frank
Podmore as Secretary for Oxford and G.W. Johnson for Cambridge, had
begun the "permeation" of the Universities, which has always been an
important part of the propaganda of the Society.
At the Annual Meeting in April, 1889, the Essayists were re-elected as
the Executive Committee and Sydney Olivier as Honorary Secretary, but he
only retained the post till the end of the year. I returned to London in
October, was promptly invited to resume the work, and took it over in
January, 1890.
In July another important tract was approved for publication. "Facts for
Londoners," No. 8 in the series, 55 pages of packed statistics sold for
6d., was the largest publication the Society had yet attempted. It is,
as its sub-title states: "an exhaustive collection of statistical and
other facts relating to the Metropolis, with suggestions for reform on
Socialist principles." The latter were in no sense concealed: the
Society still waved the red flag in season and out. "The Socialist
Programme of immediately practicable reforms for London cannot be wholly
dissociated from the corresponding Programme for the kingdom." This is
the opening sentence, and it is followed by a page of explanation of the
oppression of the workers by the private appropriation of rent and
interest, and an outline of the proposed reforms, graduated and
differentiated income tax, increased death duties, extension of the
Factory Acts, reform of the Poor Law, payment of all public
representatives, adult suffrage, and several others.
Then the tract settles down to business. London with its County Council
only a few months old was at length waking to self-consciousness: Mr.
Charles Booth's "Life and Labour in East London"--subsequently issued as
the first part of his monumental work--had just been published; it was
the subject of a Fabian lecture by Sidney Webb on May 17th; and interest
in the political, economic, and social institutions of the city was
general. The statistical facts were at that time practically unknown.
They had to be dug out, one by one, from obscure and often unpublished
sources, and the work thus done by the Fabian Society led up in later
years to the admirable and far more voluminous statistical publications
of the London County Council.
The tract deals with area and population; with rating, land values, and
housing, with water, trams, and docks, all at that time in the hands of
private companies, with gas, markets, City Companies, libraries,
public-houses, cemeteries; and with the local government of London, Poor
Law Guardians and the poor, the School Board and the schools, the
Vestries, District Boards, the County Council, and the City Corporation.
It was the raw material of Municipal Socialism, and from this time forth
the Society recognised that the municipalisation of monopolies was a
genuine part of the Socialist programme, that the transfer from private
exploiters to public management at the start, and ultimately by the
amortisation of the loans to public ownership, actually was _pro tanto_
the transfer from private to public ownership of land and capital, as
demanded by Socialists.
Here, in passing, we may remark that there is a legend, current chiefly
in the United States, that the wide extension of municipal ownership in
Great Britain is due to the advocacy of the Fabian Society. This is very
far from the truth. The great provincial municipalities took over the
management of their water and gas because they found municipal control
alike convenient, beneficial to the citizens, and financially
profitable: Birmingham in the seventies was the Mecca of
Municipalisation, and in 1882 the Electric Lighting Act passed by Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain was so careful of the interests of the public, so
strict in the limitations it put upon the possible profits to the
investor, that electric lighting was blocked in England for some years,
and the Act had to be modified in order that capital might be
attracted.[22]
What the Fabian Society did was to point out that Socialism did not
necessarily mean the control of all industry by a centralised State;
that to introduce Socialism did not necessarily require a revolution
because much of it could be brought about piecemeal by the votes of the
local electors. And secondly the Society complained that London was
singularly backward in municipal management: that the wealthiest city in
the world was handed over to the control of exploiters, who made profits
from its gas, its water, its docks, and its tramways, whilst elsewhere
these monopolies were owned and worked by public authorities who
obtained all the advantages for the people of the localities concerned.
Moreover, it may be questioned whether the Fabian advocacy of
municipalisation hastened or retarded that process in London. In
provincial towns municipalisation--the word of course was unknown--had
been regarded as of no social or political significance. It was a
business matter, a local affair, a question of convenience. In London,
partly owing to Fabian advocacy and partly because London had at last a
single representative authority with a recognised party system, it
became the battle ground of the parties: the claim of the Socialists
awakened the Individualists to opposition: and the tramways of London
were held as a trench in the world-wide conflict between Socialism and
its enemies, whose capture was hailed as an omen of progress by one
side, and by the other deplored as the presage of defeat.
"Facts for Londoners" was the work of Sidney Webb, but there is nothing
in the tract to indicate this. The publications of the Society were
collective works, in that every member was expected to assist in them by
criticism and suggestion. Although several of the tracts were lectures
or papers written by members for other purposes, and are so described,
it was not until the issue in November, 1892, of Tract 42, "Christian
Socialism," by the Rev. S.D. Headlam, that the author's name is printed
on the title page. The reason for the innovation is obvious: this tract
was written by a Churchman for Christians, and whilst the Society as a
whole approved the conclusions, the premises commended themselves to but
a few. It was therefore necessary that the responsibility of the author
should be made clear.
The autumn of 1889 is memorable for the great strike of the London
Dockers, which broke out on August 14th, was led by John Burns, and was
settled mainly by Cardinal Manning on September 14th. The Fabian Society
held no meeting between July 19th and September 20th, and there is
nothing in the minutes or the Annual Report to show that the Society as
such took any part in the historic conflict. But many of the members as
individuals lent their aid to the Dockers in their great struggle, which
once for all put an end to the belief that hopeless disorganisation is a
necessary characteristic of unskilled labour.[23]
Arising out of the Dock Strike, the special demand of the Socialist
section of trade unionists for the next four or five years was a legal
eight hours day, and the Fabian Society now for the first time
recognised that it could render substantial assistance to the labour
movement by putting into a practicable shape any reform which was the
current demand of the day.
At the members' meeting on September 20 a committee was appointed to
prepare an Eight Hours Bill for introduction into Parliament, and in
November this was published as Tract No. 9. It consists of a Bill for
Parliament, drawn up in proper form, with explanatory notes. It provided
that eight hours should be the maximum working day for Government
servants, for railway men, and for miners, and that other trades should
be brought in when a Secretary of State was satisfied that a majority of
the workers desired it. The tract had a large sale--20,000 had been
printed in six months--and it was specially useful because, in fact, it
showed the inherent difficulty of any scheme for universal limitation of
the hours of labour.
The Eight Hours Day agitation attained larger proportions than any other
working-class agitation in England since the middle of the nineteenth
century. For a number of years it was the subject of great annual
demonstrations in Hyde Park. It commended itself both to the practical
trade unionists, who had always aimed at a reduction in the hours of
labour, and to the theoretical socialists, who held that the exploiter's
profits came from the final hours of the day's work. The Fabian plan of
"Trade Option" was regarded as too moderate, and demands were made for a
"Trade Exemption" Bill, that is, a Bill enacting a universal Eight Hours
Day, with power to any trade to vote its own exclusion. But the more
the subject was discussed, the more obvious the difficulties became,
and at last it was recognised that each trade must be dealt with
separately. Considerable reductions of hours were meantime effected in
particular industries; an eight-hour day became the rule in the
Government factories and dockyards; the Board of Trade was empowered to
insist on the reduction of unduly long hours of duty on railways;
finally in 1908 the Miners' Eight Hours Act became law; and the demand
for any general Bill faded away.
The autumn meetings were occupied by a course of lectures at Willis's
Rooms on "A Century of Social Movements," by Frank Podmore, William
Clarke, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, and Mrs. Besant, and with the
beginning of the year 1890 we come to the publication of "Fabian
Essays," and a new chapter in the History of the Society.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] On this passage Shaw has written the following criticism, which I
have not adopted because on the whole I do not agree with it: "I think
this is wrong, because the Fabians were at first as bellicose as the
others, and Marx had been under no delusion as to the Commune and did
not bequeath a tradition of its repetition. Bakunin was as popular a
prophet as Marx. Many of us--Bland and Keddell among others--were
members of the S.D.F., and I was constantly speaking for the S.D.F. and
the League. We did not keep ourselves to ourselves; we aided the working
class organisations in every possible way; and they were jolly glad to
have us. In fact the main difference between us was that we worked for
everybody (permeation) and they worked for their own societies only. The
real reason that we segregated for purposes of thought and study was
that the workers could not go our pace or stand our social habits.
Hyndman and Morris and Helen Taylor and the other bourgeois S.D.F.-ers
and Leaguers were too old for us; they were between forty and fifty when
we were between twenty and thirty."
[17] On this passage Shaw comments, beginning with an expletive, and
proceeding: "I was the only one who had any principles. But surely the
secret of it is that we didn't really want to be demagogues, having
other fish to fry, as our subsequent careers proved. Our decision not to
stand for Parliament in 1892 was the turning point. I was offered some
seats to contest--possibly Labour ones--but I always replied that they
ought to put up a bona fide working man. We lacked ambition."
[18] See "The Great Society," by Graham Wallas (Macmillan, 1914), p.
260.
[19] For a much fuller account of this subject, see Appendix I. A.
[20] See Appendix II.
[21] See Fabian Tract 147, "Capital and Compensation," by Edw. R. Pease.
[22] See "Fabian Essays," p. 51, for the first point, and Fabian Tract
No. 119 for the second.
[23] See "The Story of the Dockers' Strike," by Vaughan Nash and H. (now
Sir Hubert) Llewellyn Smith; Fisher Unwin, 1890.
Chapter V
"Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign: 1890-3
"Fabian Essays" published--Astonishing success--A new presentation of
Socialism--Reviewed after twenty-five years--Henry Hutchinson--The
Lancashire Campaign--Mrs. Besant withdraws--"Fabian News."
Volumes of essays by various writers seldom have any durable place in
the history of thought because as a rule they do not present a connected
body of ideas, but merely the opinions of a number of people who start
from incompatible premises and arrive at inconsistent conclusions. A
book, to be effective, must maintain a thesis, or at any rate must be a
closely integrated series of propositions, and, as a rule, thinkers
strong enough to move the world are too independent to pull together in
a team.
"Fabian Essays," the work of seven writers, all of them far above the
average in ability, some of them possessing individuality now recognised
as exceptional, is a book and not a collection of essays. This resulted
from two causes. The writers had for years known each other intimately
and shared each other's thoughts; they had hammered out together the
policy which they announced; and they had moulded each other's opinions
before they began to write. Secondly the book was planned in advance.
Its scheme was arranged as a whole, and then the parts were allotted
to each author, with an agreement as to the ground to be covered and the
method to be adopted, in view of the harmonious whole which the authors
had designed. It is not often that circumstances permit of a result so
happy. "Fabian Essays" does not cover the whole field of Fabian
doctrine, and in later years schemes were often set on foot for a second
volume dealing with the application of the principles propounded in the
first. But these schemes never even began to be successful. With the
passage of time the seven essayists had drifted apart. Each was working
at the lines of thought most congenial to himself; they were no longer
young and unknown men; some of the seven were no longer available.
Anyway, no second series of Essays ever approached completion.
[Illustration: _From a photograph By Savony of New York_
MRS. ANNE BESANT, IN 1890]
Bernard Shaw was the editor, and those who have worked with him know
that he does not take lightly his editorial duties. He corrects his own
writings elaborately and repeatedly, and he does as much for everything
which comes into his care. The high literary level maintained by the
Fabian tracts is largely the result of constant scrutiny and amendment,
chiefly by Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, although the tract so corrected
may be published as the work of some other member.
Although therefore all the authors of "Fabian Essays" were competent,
and some of them practised writers, it may be assumed that every phrase
was considered, and every word weighed, by the editor before the book
went to press.[24]
A circular inviting subscriptions for the book was sent out in the
spring, and three hundred copies were subscribed in advance.
Arrangements with a publisher fortunately broke down because he declined
to have the book printed at a "fair house," and as Mrs. Besant was
familiar with publishing--she then controlled, or perhaps _was_, the
Freethought Publishing Company, of 63 Fleet Street--the Committee
resolved on the bold course of printing and publishing the book
themselves. A frontispiece was designed by Walter Crane, a cover by Miss
May Morris, and just before Christmas, 1889, the book was issued to
subscribers and to the public.
None of us at that time was sufficiently experienced in the business of
authorship to appreciate the astonishing success of the venture. In a
month the whole edition of 1000 copies was exhausted. With the exception
of Mrs. Besant, whose fame was still equivocal, not one of the authors
had published any book of importance, held any public office, or was
known to the public beyond the circles of London political agitators.
The Society they controlled numbered only about 150 members. The subject
of their volume was far less understood by the public than is
Syndicalism at the present day. And yet a six-shilling book, published
at a private dwelling-house and not advertised in the press, or taken
round by travellers to the trade, sold almost as rapidly as if the
authors had been Cabinet Ministers.
A second edition of 1000 copies was issued in March, 1890: in September
Mr. Walter Scott undertook the agency of a new shilling paper edition,
5000 of which were sold before publication and some 20,000 more within a
year. In 1908 a sixpenny paper edition with a new preface by the editor
was issued by Walter Scott, of which 10,000 were disposed of in a few
months, and in all some 46,000 copies of the book have been sold in
English editions alone. It is difficult to trace the number of foreign
editions and translations. The authors made over to the Society all
their rights in the volume, and permission for translation and for
publication in the United States has always been freely given. In that
country we can trace an edition in 1894, published by Charles E. Brown
of Boston, with an Introduction by Edward Bellamy and a Preface of some
length on the Fabian Society and its work by William Clarke: and another
edition in 1909, published by the Ball Publishing Company of Boston,
also with the Introduction on the Fabian Society. A Dutch translation by
F.M. Wibaut was published in 1891; in 1806 the Essays, translated into
Norwegian by Francis Wolff, appeared as a series of small books; and in
1897 a German translation by Dora Lande was issued by G.H. Wigand of
Leipzig.
The effect of "Fabian Essays" arose as much from what it left out as
from what it contained. Only the fast-dwindling band of pioneer
Socialists, who lived through the movement in its earliest days, can
fully realise the environment of ideas from which "Fabian Essays" showed
a way of escape.
The Socialism of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist
League, the two societies which had hitherto represented Socialism to
the general public, was altogether revolutionary. Socialism was to be
the result of an outbreak of violence, engineered by a great popular
organisation like that of the Chartists or the Anti-Corn Law League, and
the Commune of Paris in 1871 was regarded as a premature attempt which
pointed the way to future success. The Socialist Government thus
established was to reconstruct the social and industrial life of the
nation according to a plan supposed to be outlined by Karl Marx. "On the
morrow of the revolution" all things would be new, and at a bound the
nation was expected to reach something very like the millennium.
The case for this project was based, strange to say, not on any history
but on the Marxian analysis of the origin of the value of commodities,
and no man who did not understand this analysis, or pretend to
understand it, was fit to be called a "comrade." The economic reasoning
which "proved" this "law" was expressed in obscure and technical
language peculiar to the propagandists of the movement, and every page
of Socialist writings was studded with the then strange words
"proletariat" and "bourgeoisie."
Lastly, the whole world, outside the socialist movement, was regarded as
in a conspiracy of repression. Liberals (all capitalists), Tories (all
landlords), the Churches (all hypocrites), the rich (all idlers), and
the organised workers (all sycophants) were treated as if they fully
understood and admitted the claims of the Socialists, and were
determined for their own selfish ends to reject them at all costs.
Although the Fabian propaganda had no doubt had some effect, especially
amongst the working-class Radicals of London, and although some of the
Socialist writers and speakers, such as William Morris, did not at all
times present to the public the picture of Socialism just outlined, it
will not be denied by anybody whose recollections reach back to this
period that Socialism up to 1890 was generally regarded as
insurrectionary, dogmatic, Utopian, and almost incomprehensible.
"Fabian Essays" presented the case for Socialism in plain language which
everybody could understand. It based Socialism, not on the speculations
of a German philosopher, but on the obvious evolution of society as we
see it around us. It accepted economic science as taught by the
accredited British professors; it built up the edifice of Socialism on
the foundations of our existing political and social institutions: it
proved that Socialism was but the next step in the development of
society, rendered inevitable by the changes which followed from the
industrial revolution of the eighteenth century.
It is interesting after twenty-five years to re-read these essays and to
observe how far the ideas that inspired them are still valid, and how
far the prophecies made have been fulfilled.
Bernard Shaw contributed the first Essay on "The Economic Basis of
Socialism," and also a second, a paper read to the British Association
in September, 1888, on the "Transition to Social Democracy." His
characteristic style retains its charm, although the abstract and purely
deductive economic analysis on which he relied no longer commends itself
to the modern school of thought. Sidney Webb's "Historic Basis" is as
readable as ever, except where he quotes at length political programmes
long forgotten, and recounts the achievements of municipal socialism
with which we are all now familiar.
William Clarke in explaining the "Industrial Basis" assumed that the
industry would be rapidly dominated by trusts--then a new
phenomenon--with results, the crushing out of all other forms of
industrial organisation, which are but little more evident to-day,
though we should no longer think worthy of record that the Standard Oil
Company declared a 10 per cent cash dividend in 1887!
If the Essays had been written in 1890 instead of 1888 the authors would
have acquired from the great Trade Union upheaval of 1889 a fuller
appreciation of the importance of Trade Unionism than they possessed at
the earlier date. Working-class organisation has never been so prominent
in London as in the industrial counties, and the captious comments on
the great Co-operative movement show that the authors of the Essays
were still youthful, and in some matters ignorant.[25]
Sydney Olivier's "Moral Basis" is, in parts, as obscure now as it was at
first, and there are pages which can have conveyed but little to most of
its innumerable readers. Graham Wallas treated of "Property" with
moderation rather than knowledge. Time has dealt hardly with Mrs.
Besant's contribution. She anticipated, as the other Essayists did, that
unemployment caused by labour-saving machinery would constantly
increase; and that State organisation of industries for the unemployed
would gradually supersede private enterprise. She apparently supposed
that the county councils all over England, then newly created, were
similar in character to the London County Council, which had already
inaugurated the Progressive policy destined in the next few years to do
much for the advancement of practical socialism. The final paper on "The
Outlook," by Hubert Bland, is necessarily of the nature of prophecy, and
in view of the difficulty of this art his attempt is perhaps less
unsuccessful than might have been expected. He could foresee the advent
neither of the Labour Party, mainly formed of Trade Unionists, nor of
Mr. Lloyd George and the policy he represents: he assumed that the rich
would grow richer and the poor poorer; that Liberals would unite with
Tories, as they have done in Australia, and would be confronted with a
Socialist Party representing the dispossessed. Possibly the developments
he sketches are still to come, but that is a matter which cannot be
discussed here.
* * * * *
I can find no trace in the records of the Society that the first success
of their publication occasioned any elation to the Essayists, and I
cannot recollect any signs of it at the time. The Annual Report mentions
that a substantial profit was realised on the first edition, and states
that the authors had made over the copyright, "valued at about £200," to
the Society; but these details are included in a paragraph headed
"Publications," and the Essays are not mentioned in the general sketch
of the work of the year.
In fact the obvious results of the publication took some months to
materialise, and the number of candidates for election to the Society
showed little increase during the spring. It is true that great changes
were made in the organisation of the Society at the Annual Meeting held
on March 28th, 1890, but these were in part due to other causes. The
Executive Committee was enlarged to fifteen, and as I happened to be
available I was appointed paid secretary, half time, at the modest
salary of £1 a week for the first year. The newly elected Executive
included the seven Essayists, Robert E. Dell, now Paris correspondent
for several journals, W.S. De Mattos, for many years afterwards an
indefatigable organiser for the Society, and now settled in British
Columbia, the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, Mrs. L.T. Mallet, then a
prominent member of the Women's Liberal Association, J.F. Oakeshott, of
the Fellowship of the New Life, and myself.
The lectures of the early months of 1890 were a somewhat brilliant
series. Sidney Webb on the Eight Hours Bill; James Rowlands, M.P., on
the then favourite Liberal nostrum of Leasehold Enfranchisement (which
the Essayists demolished in a crushing debate); Dr. Bernard Bosanquet on
"The Antithesis between Individualism and Socialism Philosophically
Considered"; Mrs. Besant on "Socialism and the School Board Policy"; Mr.
(now Sir) H. Llewellyn Smith on "The Causes and Effects of Immigration
from Country to Town," in which he disproved the then universal opinion
that the unemployed of East London were immigrants from rural districts;
Sydney Olivier on "Zola"; William Morris on "Gothic Architecture"
(replacing a lecture on Morris himself by Ernest Radford, who was absent
through illness); Sergius Stepniak on "Tolstoi, Tchernytchevsky, and the
Russian School"; Hubert Bland on "Socialist Novels"; and finally on July
18th Bernard Shaw on "Ibsen." This last may perhaps be regarded as the
high-water mark in Fabian lectures. The minutes, which rarely stray
beyond bare facts, record that "the paper was a long one," nearer two
hours than one, if my memory is accurate, and add: "The meeting was a
very large one and the lecture was well received." In fact the lecture
was the bulk of the volume "The Quintessence of Ibsenism," which some
regard as the finest of Bernard Shaw's works, and it is perhaps
unnecessary to say that the effect on the packed audience was
overwhelming. It was "briefly discussed" by a number of speakers, but
they seemed as out of place as a debate after an oratorio.
* * * * *
On June 16th Henry H. Hutchinson of Derby was elected a member, an event
of much greater importance than at the time appeared. Mr. Hutchinson had
been clerk to the Justices of Derby, and when we first knew him had
retired, and was with his wife living a somewhat wandering life
accompanied by a daughter, who also joined the Society a few months
later. He was not rich, but he was generous, and on July 29th it is
recorded in the minutes of the Executive that he had offered us £100 or
£200, and approved the suggestion that it should be chiefly used for
lectures in country centres.
A fortnight later the "Lancashire campaign" was planned. It was
thoroughly organised. An advanced agent was sent down, and abstracts of
lectures were prepared and printed to facilitate accurate reports in the
press. Complete lists of the forthcoming lectures--dates, places,
subjects, and lecturers--were printed. All the Essayists except Olivier
took part, and in addition Robert E. Dell, W.S. De Mattos, and the Rev.
Stewart Headlam. An account of the Society written by Bernard Shaw was
reprinted from the "Scottish Leader" for September 4th, 1890, for the
use of the audience and the Press.
A "Report" of the campaign was issued on November 4th, which says:--
"The campaign began on September 20th and ended on October 27th, when
about sixty lectures in all had been delivered ... not only in
Lancashire, at Manchester, Liverpool, Rochdale, Oldham, Preston,
Salford, and the district round Manchester, but also at Barnsley,
Kendal, Carlisle, Sheffield, and Hebden Bridge.
"In thus making our first attack upon the stronghold of the old Unionism
and the new Toryism, we would have been contented with a very small
measure of success, and we are much more than contented with the results
obtained. The lectures, except for a few days during the contest at
Eccles, were extremely well reported, and even the 'Manchester Guardian'
(the 'Daily News' of the manufacturing districts) came out with an
approving leader. The audiences throughout the campaign steadily
increased and followed the lectures with close and intelligent
attention. In particular the members of Liberal working men's clubs
constantly declared that they had never heard 'the thing put so
straight' before, and complained that the ordinary party lecturers were
afraid or unwilling to speak out. Men who frankly confessed that they
had hesitated before voting for the admission of our lecturers to their
clubs were enthusiastic in welcoming our message as soon as they heard
it. The vigorous propaganda in the manufacturing districts of the S.D.F.
branches has been chiefly carried on by means of outdoor meetings. Its
effect upon working-class opinion, especially among unskilled labourers,
has been marked and important, but it has entirely failed to reach the
working-men politicians who form the rank and file of the Liberal
Associations and Clubs, or the 'well-dressed' Liberals who vaguely
desire social reform, but have been encouraged by their leaders to avoid
all exact thought on the subject."
* * * * *
The lectures were given chiefly in sets of four in consecutive weeks,
mostly at Liberal and Radical Clubs: others were arranged by
Co-operative Societies, and by branches of the S.D.F. and the Socialist
League. The subjects were "Socialism," "Where Liberalism Fails,"
"Co-operation and Labour," "The Future of Women," "The Eight Hours
Bill," "The Politics of Labour," and so on. Those arranged by
Co-operative Societies were, we are told, the least successful, but it
is hoped "that they will bring about a better feeling between Socialists
and Co-operators," a state of things which on the side of the Socialists
was, as we have previously indicated, badly wanted. It should be noted
that much of the success of the campaign was due to friendly assistance
from the head-quarters of the Co-operative Union and the National Reform
Union.
There is no doubt that this campaign with the series of lectures on the
same lines which were continued for several years was an event of some
importance, not only in the history of the Fabian Society but also in
English politics. Hitherto the Socialism presented to the industrial
districts of England, which are the backbone of Trade Unionism and
Co-operation, to the men who are meant when we speak of the power and
independence of the working classes, was revolutionary and destructive,
ill-tempered and ungenerous. It had perhaps alarmed, but it had failed
to attract them. It had made no real impression on the opinion of the
people. From this point a new movement began. It first took the form of
local Fabian Societies. They were succeeded by and merged into branches
of the Independent Labour Party, which adopted everything Fabian except
its peculiar political tactics. A few years later the Labour Party
followed, more than Fabian in its toleration in the matter of opinions,
and virtually, though not formally, Fabian in its political policy. No
doubt something of the sort would have happened had there never been a
Lancashire campaign, but this campaign may be fairly described as the
first step in an evolution, the end of which is not yet in sight.
* * * * *
Her lectures in the Lancashire campaign and the formation of the
branches were Mrs. Besant's last contributions to the Socialist
movement. Early in November she suddenly and completely severed her
connection with the Society. She had become a convert to Theosophy,
which at that time accepted the Buddhist doctrine that spiritual
conditions alone mattered, and that spiritual life would flourish as
well in the slum amidst dirt and starvation as in the comfortable
cottage, and much better than in the luxurious mansion.
Twentieth-century theosophy has receded from that position, and now
advocates social amelioration, but Mrs. Besant thought otherwise in
1890. Some twenty years later she lectured on several occasions to the
Society, and she joined her old friends at the dinner which celebrated
the thirtieth anniversary of its foundation, but in the interval her
connection with it completely ceased.
The Fabian Society and British Socialism owe much to Mrs. Besant for the
assistance she gave it during five important years. Her splendid
eloquence, always at our service, has seldom been matched, and has never
been surpassed by any of the innumerable speakers of the movement. She
had, when she joined us, an assured position amongst the working-class
Radicals in London and throughout the country; and through her Socialism
obtained a sympathetic hearing in places where less trusted speakers
would have been neglected. She was not then either a political thinker
or an effective worker on committees, but she possessed the power of
expressing the ideas of other people far better than their originators,
and she had at her command a certain amount of political machinery--such
as an office at 63 Fleet Street, and a monthly magazine, "Our
Corner"--which was very useful. Her departure was a serious loss, but it
came at a moment of rapid expansion, so rapid that her absence was
scarcely felt.
* * * * *
On the Society itself the effect of the Essays and the Lancashire
Campaign was considerable. As the Executive Committee report in April,
1891: "During the past year the Socialist movement has made conspicuous
progress in every respect, and a constantly increasing share of the work
of its organisation and extension has fallen to the Fabian Society." The
membership increased from 173 to 361, and the subscription list--thanks
in part to several large donations--from £126 to £520. Local Fabian
Societies had been formed at Belfast, Birmingham, Bombay, Bristol,
Huddersfield, Hyde, Leeds, Manchester, Oldham, Plymouth, Tyneside, and
Wolverhampton, with a total membership of 350 or 400. The business in
tracts had been enormous. Ten new tracts, four pamphlets and six
leaflets, were published, and new editions of all but one of the old
ones had been printed. In all 335,000 tracts were printed and 98,349
distributed. The new tracts include "The Workers' Political Programme,"
"The New Reform Bill," "English Progress Towards Social Democracy," "The
Reform of Poor Law," and a leaflet, No. 13, "What Socialism Is," which
has been in circulation ever since. It should be added that at this
period our leaflets were given away freely, a form of propaganda which
soon proved too expensive for our resources.
In March, 1891, just before the end of the official year, appeared the
first number of "Fabian News," the monthly organ of the Society, which
has continued ever since. It replaced the printed circulars previously
issued to the members, and was not intended to be anything else than a
means of communicating with the members as to the work of the Society,
and also in later years as to new books on subjects germane to its work.
It has been edited throughout by the Secretary, but everything of a
contentious character relating to the affairs of the Society has been
published by the express authority of the Executive Committee.
It may be mentioned that from this time forward the documents of the
Society are both fuller and more accessible than before. For the period
up to the end of 1889 the only complete record is contained in the two
minute books of the meetings. No regular minutes of Executive Committee
meetings were kept, and the Annual Reports were not printed until 1889.
From 1890 onwards the meetings of every committee were regularly
recorded: the Annual Reports were printed in octavo and can be found in
many public libraries, whilst "Fabian News" contains full information of
the current doings of the Society. It will not therefore be necessary to
treat the later years with such attention to detail as has seemed
appropriate to the earlier. The only "sources" for these are shabby
notebooks and the memories of a few men now rapidly approaching old age.
The later years can be investigated, if any subsequent enquirer desires
to do so, in a dozen libraries in Great Britain and the United States.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Van der Weyde_
WILLIAM CLARKE, ABOUT 1895]
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Shaw demurs to this passage, and says that he did not revise the
papers verbally, especially those by Mrs. Besant and Graham Wallas, but
that he suggested or made alterations in the others. I am still disposed
to suspect that my statement is not far from the truth.
[25] The opinions of some of the Essayists about co-operation were
apparently modified by some small meetings with leading co-operators on
March 27th, April 17th, and May 22nd, 1889. Bernard Shaw tells me that
he thinks that they were held at Willis's Rooms, that he was in the
chair, and that Mr. Benjamin Jones (whose name I find as a speaker at
Fabian Meetings about this period) played a prominent part on behalf of
the Co-operative Wholesale Society.
The first printed Annual Report presented on 5th April, 1889, mentions
that "the Society is taking part in a 'Round Table Conference' to
ascertain amongst other objects how far the various Co-operative and
Socialist bodies can act together politically," a problem, thirty years
later, still unsolved. It is a pity that the references to Co-operation
in "Fabian Essays" were not modified in the light of the Conference
which was held after the lectures were written but before they were
published. No record of the Conference seems to have been preserved.
Chapter VI
"To your tents, O Israel": 1894-1900
Progress of the Society--The Independent Labour Party--Local Fabian
Societies--University Fabian Societies--London Groups and Samuel
Butler--The first Fabian Conference--Tracts and Lectures--The 1892
Election Manifesto--The Newcastle Program--The Fair Wages Policy--The
"Fortnightly" article--The "Intercepted Letter" of 1906.
During the next two or three years the Society made rapid progress. The
membership was 541 in 1892, 640 in 1893, and 681 in 1894. The
expenditure, £640 to March, 1891, rose to £1100 for 1892, and £1179 in
1893. In both these years large sums--£350 and £450--were given by two
members for the expenses of lectures in the provinces, and in provincial
societies the growth was most marked. In March, 1892, 36 were recorded:
the report for 1893 gives 74, including Bombay and South Australia. This
was the high-water mark. The Independent Labour Party was founded in
January, 1893, at a Conference at which the Fabian Society of London and
nine local Fabian Societies were represented, and from this time onward
our provincial organisation declined until, in 1900, only four local and
four University Societies remained.
The attitude of the parent society towards its branches has always been
somewhat unusual. In early days it made admission to its own ranks a
matter of some difficulty. A candidate resident in London had to secure
a proposer and seconder who could personally vouch for him and had to
attend two meetings as a visitor. We regarded membership as something of
a privilege, and a candidate was required not only to sign the Basis,
but also to take some personal trouble as evidence of zeal and good
faith. To our provincial organisation the same principle was applied. If
the Socialists in any town desired to form a local society we gave them
our blessing and received them gladly. But we did not urge the formation
of branches on lukewarm adherents, and we always recognised that the
peculiar political methods of the London Society, appropriate to a body
of highly educated people, nearly all of them speakers, writers, or
active political workers, were unsuitable for the groups of earnest
workmen in the provinces who were influenced by our teaching. In fact
the local Fabian Societies, with rare exceptions, of which Liverpool was
the chief, were from the first "I.L.P." in personnel and policy, and
were Fabian only in name.
This somewhat detached attitude, combined with the recognition of the
differences between the parent society and its offspring, led to the
adoption of a system of local autonomy. The parent society retained
complete control over its own affairs. It was governed by a mass meeting
of members, which in those days elected the Executive for the year. It
decided that a local Fabian Society might be formed anywhere outside
London, by any body of people who accepted the Fabian Basis. The parent
society would send them lecturers, supply them with literature and
"Fabian News," and report their doings in the "News." But in other
respects complete autonomy was accorded. No fees were asked, or
subventions granted: no control over, or responsibility for, policy was
claimed. Just as the political policy of each Fabian was left to his
own judgment, so we declined the impossible task of supervising or
harmonising the political activities of our local societies. When the
I.L.P. was founded in Bradford and set to work to organise Socialism on
Fabian lines, adopting practically everything of our policy, except the
particular methods which we had selected because they suited our
personal capacities, we recognised that provincial Fabianism had done
its work. There was no room, except here and there, for an I.L.P. branch
and a local F.S. in the same place. The men who were active in the one
were active also in the other. We made no effort to maintain our
organisation against that of the I.L.P., and though a few societies
survived for some years, and for a while two or three were formed every
year at such places as Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone, and Swindon, they
were bodies of small importance, and contributed scarcely anything to
the sum of Fabian activity. The only local Fabian Society which survived
the debacle was Liverpool, which has carried on work similar to that of
the London Society down to the present time. Its relations with the
I.L.P. have always been harmonious, and, like the I.L.P., it has always
maintained an attitude of hostility towards the old political parties.
Its work has been lecturing, the publication of tracts, and political
organisation.
The University Fabian Societies are of a different character. Formed by
and for undergraduates, but in some cases, especially at Oxford,
maintaining continuity by the assistance of older members in permanent
residence, such as Sidney Ball of St. John's, who has belonged to the
Oxford Society since its formation in 1895, they are necessarily
fluctuating bodies, dependent for their success on the personality and
influence of a few leading members. Their members have always been
elected at once to the parent society in order that the connection may
be unbroken when they leave the University. Needless to say, only a
small proportion become active members of the Society, but a few of the
leading members of the movement have entered it in this way. Oxford,
Glasgow, Aberystwyth, and latterly Cambridge have had flourishing
societies for long periods, and quite a number of the higher grade civil
servants and of the clergy and doctors in remote districts in Wales and
Scotland are or have been members. Moreover, the Society always retains
a scattering of members, mostly officials or teachers, in India, in the
heart of Africa, in China, and South America, who joined it in their
undergraduate days.
Almost from the first the Executive has endeavoured to organise the
members in the London area into groups. The parent society grew up
through years of drawing-room meetings; why should not the members
residing in Hampstead and Hammersmith, in Bloomsbury or Kensington do
the same? Further, the Society always laid much stress on local
politics: there were County Council and Borough Council, School Board
and Poor Law Guardians elections in which policy could be influenced and
candidates promoted or supported.
In fact it is only in the years when London government was in the
melting-pot, or in times of special socialist activity, and in a few
districts, such as Hampstead, where Fabians are numerous, and especially
when one or more persons of persistence and energy are available, that
the groups have had a more than nominal existence. The drawing-room
meetings of the parent society attracted audiences until they outgrew
drawing-rooms, because of the exceptional quality of the men and women
who attended them and the novelty of the doctrines promulgated. These
conditions were not repeated in each district of London, and in spite
of constant paper planning, and not a little service by the older
members, who spent their time and talents on tiny meetings in Paddington
or Streatham, the London group system has never been a permanent
success. What has kept the Society together is the series of fortnightly
meetings carried on regularly from the first, which themselves fluctuate
in popularity, but which have never wholly failed.[26]
* * * * *
We now return to the point whence this digression started. Our local
societies were then flourishing. They were vigorously supported from
London. We had funds for the expenses of lecturers and many willing to
give the time. W.S. De Mattos was employed as lecture secretary, and
arranged in the year 1891-2 600 lectures, 300 of them in the provinces.
In all 3339 lectures by members during the year were recorded. All this
activity imparted for a time considerable vitality to the local
societies, and on February 6th and 7th, 1892, the first (and for twenty
years the last) Annual Conference was held in London, at Essex Hall.
Only fourteen provincial societies were represented, but they claimed a
membership of about 1100, some four-fifths of the whole.
The Conference was chiefly memorable because it occasioned the
preparation of the paper by Bernard Shaw, entitled "The Fabian Society:
What it has done and how it has done it," published later as Tract 41
and renamed, when the passage of years rendered the title obsolete, "The
Fabian Society: Its Early History," parts of which have already been
quoted. This entertaining account of the Society, and brilliant defence
of its policy as opposed to that of the Social Democratic Federation,
was read to a large audience on the Saturday evening, and made so great
an impression that comment on it seemed futile and was abandoned. The
Conference on Sunday was chiefly occupied with the discussion of a
proposal that the electors be advised to vote at the coming General
Election in accordance with certain test questions, which was defeated
by 23 to 21. A resolution to expel from the Society any member becoming
"an official of the Conservative, Liberal, Liberal Unionist, or National
League parties" was rejected by a large majority, for the first but by
no means for the last time. The Conference was quite a success, but a
year later there was not sufficient eagerness in the provinces for a
second, and the project was abandoned.
* * * * *
Amidst all this propaganda of the principles of Socialism the activity
of the Society in local government was in no way relaxed. The output of
tracts at this period was remarkable. In the year 1890-1, 10 new tracts
were published, 335,000 copies printed, and 98,349 sold or given away.
In 1891-2, 20 tracts, 16 of them leaflets of 4 pages, were published,
308,300 printed, and 378,281 distributed, most of them leaflets. This
was the maximum. Next year only 272,660 were distributed, though the
sales of penny tracts were larger. At this period the Society had a
virtual monopoly in the production of political pamphlets in which facts
and figures were marshalled in support of propositions of reform in the
direction of Socialism. Immense trouble was taken to ensure accuracy and
literary excellence. Many of the tracts were prepared by Committees
which held numerous meetings. Each of them was criticised in proof both
by the Executive and by all the members of the Society. Every tract
before publication had to be approved at a meeting of members, when the
author or authors had to consider every criticism and justify, amend, or
delete the passage challenged.
The tracts published in these years included a series of "Questions" for
candidates for Parliament and all the local governing bodies embodying
progressive programmes of administration with possible reforms in the
law--which the candidate was requested to answer by a local elector and
which were used with much effect for some years--and a number of
leaflets on Municipal Socialism, extracted from "Facts for Londoners."
In 1891 the first edition of "What to Read: A List of Books for Social
Reformers," classified in a somewhat elaborate fashion, was prepared by
Graham Wallas, the fifth edition of which, issued as a separate volume
in 1910, is still in print. "Facts for Bristol," drafted by the
gentleman who is now Sir Hartmann Just, K.C.M.G., C.B., was the only
successful attempt out of many to apply the method of "Facts for
Londoners" to other cities.
It is impossible for me to estimate how far the Progressive policy of
London in the early nineties is to be attributed to the influence of the
Fabian Society. That must be left to the judgment of those who can form
an impartial opinion. Something, however, the Society must have
contributed to create what was really a remarkable political phenomenon.
London up to 1906 was Conservative in politics by an overwhelming
majority. In 1892 out of 59 seats the Liberals secured 23, but in 1895
and 1900 they obtained no more than 8 at each election. All this time
the Progressive Party in the County Council, which came into office
unexpectedly after the confused election in 1889 when the Council was
created, maintained itself in power usually by overwhelming majorities,
obtained at each succeeding triennial elections in the same
constituencies and with substantially the same electorate that returned
Conservatives to Parliament.
In the early nineties the Liberal and Radical Working Men's Clubs of
London had a political importance which has since entirely disappeared.
Every Sunday for eight months in the year, and often on weekdays,
political lectures were arranged, which were constantly given by
Fabians. For instance, in October, 1891, I find recorded in advance
twelve courses of two to five lectures each, nine of them at Clubs, and
fifteen separate lectures at Clubs, all given by members of the Society.
In October, 1892, eleven courses and a dozen separate lectures by our
members at Clubs are notified. These were all, or nearly all, arranged
by the Fabian office, and it is needless to say that a number of others
were not so arranged or were not booked four or five weeks in advance.
Our list of over a hundred lecturers, with their subjects and private
addresses, was circulated in all directions and was constantly used by
the Clubs, as well as by all sorts of other societies which required
speakers.
Moreover, in addition to "Facts for Londoners," Sidney Webb published in
1891 in Sonnenschein's "Social Science Series" a volume entitled "The
London Programme," which set out his policy, and that of the Society, on
all the affairs of the metropolis. The Society had at this time much
influence through the press. "The London Programme" had appeared as a
series of articles in the Liberal weekly "The Speaker." The "Star,"
founded in 1888, was promptly "collared," according to Bernard Shaw,[27]
who was its musical critic, and who wrote in it, so it was said, on
every subject under the sun except music! Mr. H.W. Massingham, assistant
editor of the "Star," was elected to the Society and its Executive
simultaneously in March, 1891, and in 1892 he became assistant editor of
the "Daily Chronicle," under a sympathetic chief, Mr. A.E. Fletcher.
Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam had been elected to the London
School Board in 1888, and had there assisted a Trade Union
representative in getting adopted the first Fair Wages Clause in
Contracts. But in the first London County Council the Society, then a
tiny body, was not represented.
At the second election in 1892 six of its members were elected to the
Council and another was appointed an alderman. Six of these were members
best known to the public as Trade Unionists or in other organisations,
but Sidney Webb, who headed the poll at Deptford with 4088 votes, whilst
his Progressive colleague received 2503, and four other candidates only
5583 votes between them, was a Fabian and nothing else. He had
necessarily to resign his appointment in the Colonial Office, and
thenceforth was able to devote all his time to politics and literary
work. Webb was at once elected chairman of the Technical Education
Board, which up to 1904 had the management of all the education in the
county, other than elementary, which came under public control. The
saying is attributed to him that according to the Act of Parliament
Technical Education could be defined as any education above elementary
except Greek and Theology, and the Board under his chairmanship--he was
chairman for eight years--did much to bring secondary and university
education within the reach of the working people of London. From 1892
onwards there was always a group of Fabians on the London County
Council, working in close alliance with the "Labour Bench," the Trade
Unionists who then formed a group of the Progressive Party under the
leadership of John Burns. Under this silent but effective influence the
policy of the Progressives was largely identical with the immediate
municipal policy of the Society itself, and the members of the Society
took a keen and continuous interest in the triennial elections and the
work of the Council.
* * * * *
All this concern in local administration did not interfere with the
interest taken by the Society in parliamentary politics, and one
illustration of this may be mentioned. The Liberal Party has a
traditional feud with Landlordism, and at this period its favourite
panacea was Leasehold Enfranchisement, that is, the enactment of a law
empowering leaseholders of houses built on land let for ninety-nine
years, the common practice in London, to purchase the freehold at a
valuation. Many Conservatives had come round to the view that the
breaking up of large town estates and the creation of numerous
freeholders, would strengthen the forces upholding the rights of
property, and there was every prospect that the Bill would be passed. A
few hours before the debate on April 29th, 1891, a leaflet (Tract No.
22) was published explaining the futility of the proposal from the
Fabian standpoint, and a copy was sent to every member of Parliament. To
the astonishment of the Liberal leaders a group of Radicals, including
the present Lord Haldane and Sir Edward Grey, opposed the Bill, and it
was defeated by the narrow majority of 13 in a house numbering 354. A
few years later the proposal was dropped out of the Liberal programme,
and the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association itself adopted a new name
and a revised policy.
But the main object of the Fabians was to force on the Liberal Party a
programme of constructive social reform. With few exceptions their
members belonged or had belonged to that party, and it was not
difficult, now that London had learned the value of the Progressive
policy, to get resolutions accepted by Liberal Associations demanding
the adoption of a programme. Sidney Webb in 1888 printed privately a
paper entitled "Wanted a Programme: An Appeal to the Liberal Party," and
sent it out widely amongst the Liberal leaders. The "Star" and the
"Daily Chronicle" took care to publish these resolutions, and everything
was done, which skilful agitators knew, to make a popular demand for a
social reform programme. We did what all active politicians in a
democratic country must do; we decided what the people ought to want,
and endeavoured to do two things, which after all are much the same
thing, to make the people want it, and to make it appear that they
wanted it. The result--how largely attributable to our efforts can
hardly now be estimated--was the Newcastle Program, reluctantly blessed
by Mr. Gladstone and adopted by the National Liberal Federation in
1891.[28]
The General Election of 1892 was anticipated with vivid interest. Since
the election of 1886 English Socialism had come into being and Trade
Unionism had been transformed by the rise of the Dockers, and the other
"new" unions of unskilled labour. But a Labour Party was still in the
future, and our Election Manifesto (Tract 40), issued in June, bluntly
tells the working classes that until they form a party of their own they
will have to choose between the parties belonging to the other classes.
The Manifesto, written by Bernard Shaw, is a brilliant essay on labour
in politics and a criticism of both the existing parties; it assures
the working classes that they could create their own party if they cared
as much about politics as they cared for horse-racing (football was not
in those days the typical sport); and it concludes by advising them to
vote for the better, or against the worse, man, on the ground that
progress was made by steps, a step forward was better than a step
backward, and the only thing certain is the defeat of a party which
sulks and does not vote at all. The Manifesto was widely circulated by
the then vigorous local societies, and no doubt had some effect, though
the intensity of the antipathy to Liberal Unionism on the one side and
to Home Rule on the other left little chance for other considerations.
Six members of the Society were candidates, but none of them belonged to
the group which had made its policy and conducted its campaign. In one
case, Ben Tillett at West Bradford, the Society took an active part in
the election, sending speakers and collecting £152 for the Returning
Officer's expenses. Of the six, J. Keir Hardie at West Ham alone was
successful, but Tillett did well at West Bradford, polling 2,749, only a
few hundred votes below the other two candidates, and preparing the
field for the harvest which F.W. Jowett reaped in 1906.
The result of the election, which took place in July, was regarded as a
justification for the Fabian policy of social advance. In London, where
Liberalism was strongly tainted with it, the result was "as in 1885,"
the year of Liberal victory, and the only Liberal seat lost was that of
the President of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association! In the
industrial cities, and in Scotland, where Liberalism was still
individualist, the result was rather as in 1886, when Liberalism lost.
In London also "by far the largest majorities were secured by Mr. John
Burns and Mr. Keir Hardie, who stood as avowed Socialists, and by Mr.
Sydney Buxton, whose views are really scarcely less advanced than
theirs."[29]
I have pointed out that Fabian policy began with State Socialism, and in
quite early days added to it Municipal Socialism; but in 1888 the
authors of "Fabian Essays" appeared to be unconscious of Trade Unionism
and hostile to the Co-operative movement. The Dock Strike of 1889 and
the lecturing in London clubs and to the artisans of the north pointed
the way to a new development. Moreover, in the summer of 1892 Sidney
Webb had married Miss Beatrice Potter, author of an epoch-making little
book, "The Co-operative Movement," and together they were at work on
their famous "History of Trade Unionism."
The "Questions" for local governing bodies issued in 1892 were full of
such matters as fair wages, shorter hours, and proper conditions for
labour, and it was speedily discovered that this line of advance was the
best suited to Fabian tactics because it was a series of skirmishes all
over the country, in which scores and hundreds could take part. Each
locality had then or soon afterwards three or four elected local
councils, and hardly any Fabian from one end of the country to the other
would be unable in one way or another to strike a blow or lift a finger
for the improvement of the conditions of publicly employed labour.
But the Government of Mr. Gladstone had not been in office for much more
than a year before a much more ambitious enterprise on this line was
undertaken. In March, 1893, Sir Henry (then Mr.) Campbell-Bannerman had
pledged the Government to "show themselves to be the best employers of
labour in the country": "we have ceased," he said, "to believe in what
are known as competition or starvation wages." That was a satisfactory
promise, but enunciating a principle is one thing and carrying it into
effect in scores of departments is another. Mr. Gladstone, of course,
was interested only in Home Rule. Permanent officials doubtless
obstructed, as they usually do: and but a few members of the Cabinet
accepted or understood the new obligation. The Fabian Society knew the
Government departments from the inside, and it was easy for the
Executive to ascertain how labour was treated under each chief, what he
had done and what he had left undone. At that time legislative reforms
were difficult because the Government majority was both small and
uncertain, whilst the whole time of Parliament was occupied by the
necessary but futile struggle to pass a Home Rule Bill for the Lords to
destroy. But administrative reforms were subject to no such limitations:
wages and conditions of labour were determined by the department
concerned, and each minister could do what he chose for the workmen
virtually in his employment, except perhaps in the few cases, such as
the Post Office, where the sums involved were very large, when the
Chancellor of the Exchequer had the same opportunity.
Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb then decided that the time had come to make
an attack on old-fashioned Liberalism on these lines. The "Fortnightly
Review" accepted their paper, the Society gave the necessary sanction,
and in November the article entitled "To Your Tents, O Israel" appeared.
Each of the great departments of the State was examined in detail, and
for each was stated precisely what should be done to carry out the
promise that the Government would be "in the first flight of employers,"
and what in fact had been done, which indeed, with rare exceptions, was
nothing. The "Parish Councils Act" and Sir William Harcourt's great
Budget of 1894 were still in the future, and so far there was little to
show as results from the Liberal victory of the previous year. The case
against the Government from the Labour standpoint was therefore
unrelieved black, and the Society, in whose name the Manifesto appeared,
called on the working classes to abandon Liberalism, to form a Trade
Union party of their own, to raise £30,000 and to finance fifty
candidates for Parliament. It is a curious coincidence that thirteen
years later, in 1906, the Party formed, as the Manifesto demanded, by
the big Trade Unions actually financed precisely fifty candidates and
succeeded in electing thirty of them.
The Manifesto led to the resignation of a few distinguished members,
including Professor D.G. Ritchie, Mrs. Bateson, widow of the Master of
St. John's College, Cambridge, and more important than all the rest, Mr.
H.W. Massingham. He was on the Continent when the Manifesto was in
preparation; otherwise perhaps he might have come to accept it: for his
reply, which was published in the same magazine a month later, was
little more than a restatement of the case. "The only sound
interpretation of a model employer," he said, "is a man who pays trade
union rates of wages, observes trade union limit of hours, and deals
with 'fair' as opposed to 'unfair' houses. Apply all these tests and the
Government unquestionably breaks down on every one of them." If this was
all that an apologist for the Government could say, no wonder that the
attack went home. The opponents of Home Rule were of course delighted to
find another weak spot in their adversary's defences; and the episode
was not soon forgotten.
In January the article was reprinted with much additional matter
drafted by Bernard Shaw. He showed in considerable detail how a Labour
Party ought to be formed, and how, in fact, it was formed seven years
later. With our numerous and still flourishing local societies, and the
newly formed I.L.P., a large circulation for the tract was easily
secured. Thousands of working-class politicians read and remembered it,
and it cannot be doubted that the "Plan of Campaign for Labour," as it
was called, did much to prepare the ground for the Labour Party which
was founded so easily and flourished so vigorously in the first years of
the twentieth century.
At this point the policy of simple permeation of the Liberal Party may
be said to have come to an end. The "Daily Chronicle," under the
influence of Mr. Massingham, became bitterly hostile to the Fabians.
They could no longer plausibly pretend that they looked for the
realisation of their immediate aims through Liberalism. They still
permeated, of course, since they made no attempt to form a party of
their own, and they believed that only through existing organisations,
Trade Unions on one side, the political parties on the other, could
sufficient force be obtained to make progress within a reasonable time.
In one respect it must be confessed we shared an almost universal
delusion. When the Liberal Party was crushed at the election of 1895 we
thought that its end had come in England as it has in other countries.
Conservatism is intelligible: Socialism we regarded as entirely
reasonable. Between the two there seemed to be no logical resting place.
We had discovered long ago that the working classes were not going to
rush into Socialism, but they appeared to be and were in fact growing up
to it. The Liberalism of the decade 1895-1905 had measures in its
programme, such as Irish Home Rule, but it had no policy, and it seemed
incredible then, as it seems astonishing now, that a party with so
little to offer could sweep the country, as it was swept by the Liberals
in 1906. But nobody could have foreseen Mr. Lloyd George, and although
the victory of 1906 was not due to his leadership, no one can doubt that
it is his vigorous initiative in the direction of Socialism which
secured for his party the renewed confidence of the country.
* * * * *
Twelve years later another attempt to get administrative reform from the
Liberal Party was made on somewhat similar lines. The party had taken
office in December, 1905, and in the interval before the General
Election of 1906 gave them their unprecedented majority, "An Intercepted
Letter," adopted at a members' meeting in December, was published in the
"National Review" for January. It purported to be a circular letter
addressed by the Prime Minister to his newly appointed colleagues,
giving each of them in turn advice how to run his department. In this
case there was no necessity to suggest administrative reforms only. The
Liberals were certain of a majority, and they had no programme: they
were bound to win, not on their merits, but on the defects of their
opponents. The Letter, written by Webb in a rollicking style, to which
he rarely condescends, touched on each of the great departments of
Government, and advocated both the old policy of Trade Union hours and
wages, for which the new Prime Minister had made himself in 1893
personally responsible, but also all sorts of progressive measures,
graduated and differentiated income-tax for the Treasury, Compulsory
Arbitration in Labour Disputes for the Home Office--we discovered the
flaw in that project later--reform of Grants in Aid for the Local
Government Board, Wages Boards for Agriculture, and so on. A few weeks
later the country had the General Election to think about, and the
Letter was merely reprinted for private circulation amongst the members
of the Society. But we took care that the new Ministers read it, and it
served to remind them of the demands which, after the election, the
Labour Party, at last in being, would not let them again forget.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Bernard Shaw has sent me the following note on this paragraph:--
One London group incident should be immortalized. It was in the W.C.
group, which met in Gt. Ormond St. It consisted of two or three members
who used to discuss bi-metallism. I was a member geographically, but
never attended. One day I saw on the notice of meetings which I received
an announcement that Samuel Butler would address the group on the
authorship of the Odyssey. Knowing that the group would have no notion
of how great a man they were entertaining, I dashed down to the meeting;
took the chair; gave the audience (about five strong including Butler
and myself) to understand that the occasion was a great one; and when we
had listened gravely to Samuel's demonstration that the Odyssey was
written by Nausicaa, carried a general expression of enthusiastic
agreement with Butler, who thanked us with old-fashioned gravity and
withdrew without giving a sign of his feelings at finding so small a
meeting of the famous Fabian Society. Considering how extraordinary a
man Butler is now seen to have been, there is something tragic in the
fact that the greatest genius among the long list of respectable
dullards who have addressed us, never got beyond this absurd little
group.
[27] Tract 41. "The Fabian Society," p. 18.
[28] Bernard Shaw has sent me the following note on this point:--
The exact facts of the launching of the Newcastle Program are these.
Webb gave me the Program in his own handwriting as a string of
resolutions. I, being then a permeative Fabian on the executive of the
South St. Pancras Liberal and Radical Association (I had coolly walked
in and demanded to be elected to the Association and Executive, which
was done on the spot by the astonished Association--ten strong or
thereabouts) took them down to a meeting in Percy Hall, Percy Street,
Tottenham Court Road, where the late Mr. Beale, then Liberal candidate
and subscr
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