Establishment " at the suggestion of
Frank Podmore (above) , the original coat of arms of the Fabian Society The Fabian Society was founded on 4 January 1884 in London as an offshoot of a society founded a year earlier, called The
Fellowship of the New Life, which had been a forebear of the British
Ethical and
humanist movements. Early Fellowship members included the visionary
Victorian-era elite, among them the poets
Edward Carpenter and
John Davidson, the sexologist and eugenicist
Havelock Ellis, and the early socialist
Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow. Some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid society's transformation; they set up a separate society, the Fabian Society. All members were free to attend both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of Western European Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the world. The Fellowship of the New Life was dissolved in 1899, but the Fabian Society grew to become a leading academic society in the United Kingdom in the
Edwardian era. It was typified by the members of its vanguard
Coefficients club. Public meetings of the Society were for many years held at
Essex Hall, a popular location just off
the Strand in
Central London. at 17 Osnaburgh St, where the Society was founded in 1884 The Fabian Society was named—at the suggestion of
Frank Podmore—in honour of the
Roman general
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (nicknamed
Cunctator, meaning the "Delayer"). His
Fabian strategy sought gradual victory against the superior
Carthaginian army under the renowned general
Hannibal through persistence, harassment, and wearing the enemy down by attrition rather than pitched, climactic battles. An explanatory note appearing on the title page of the group's first pamphlet declared:For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless. According to the author
Jon Perdue, "The logo of the Fabian Society, a tortoise, represented the group's predilection for a slow, imperceptible transition to socialism, while its coat of arms, a '
wolf in sheep's clothing', represented its preferred methodology for achieving its goal." The wolf in sheep's clothing symbolism was later abandoned, due to its obvious negative connotations. Its nine founding members were
Frank Podmore,
Edward R. Pease,
William Clarke,
Hubert Bland,
Percival Chubb, Frederick Keddell,
Henry Hyde Champion,
E. Nesbit and Rosamund Dale Owen. of industrial Britain, including alternative
co-operative economics that applied to ownership of
capital as well as land. Many Fabians participated in the formation of the
Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and the group's constitution, written by Sidney Webb, borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society. At the meeting that founded the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, the Fabian Society claimed 861 members and sent one delegate. The years 1903 to 1908 saw a growth in popular interest in the socialist idea in Britain, and the Fabian Society grew accordingly, trebling its membership to nearly 2,500 by the end of the period, half of whom were located in London. In 1912 a student section was organised called the
University Socialist Federation (USF) and by the outbreak of World War I in 1914 this contingent counted its own membership of more than 500. It operated until 1948.
Letitia Fairfield was a member and spoke to
Brian Harrison about joining the Group, and their lectures and discussions as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled
Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. Early Fabian views The first Fabian Society pamphlets advocating tenets of
social justice coincided with the
zeitgeist of
progressive reforms during the early 1900s. The Fabians lobbied for the introduction of a
minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a
universal health care system in 1911 and for the abolition of
hereditary peerages in 1917.
Agnes Harben and
Henry Devenish Harben were among Fabians advocating women's emancipation and supporting
suffrage movements in Britain, and internationally. The early Fabian Society’s advocacy for social reform was deeply intertwined with the contemporary
eugenics movement, which was particularly popular among progressive intellectuals at the time. Rather than a peripheral interest, eugenics provided the 'scientific' basis for the early Fabian vision of a rationally planned society. Leading figures in the early Fabian Society such as
Sidney and
Beatrice Webb,
George Bernard Shaw, and
H. G. Wells argued that a
rationalised socialist state required the 'improvement of the human stock' to ensure social efficiency through the gradual elimination of undesirable elements through compulsory sterilisation and segregation. They were also influenced by the idea that the lowest echelons of society, sometimes termed the 'residuum', "had hereditary defects and would increasingly degenerate." Sidney Webb wrote in
The Difficulties of Individualism (1896) about the problem of the "breeding of degenerate hordes of a demoralized ‘residuum’ unfit for social life".
Havelock Ellis, a founding member of the Fabian Society, was a vice-president of the
Eugenics Society from 1909–12. He wrote in opposition to the provision of welfare to this 'residuum', since, in his view, the "superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born. So it is the question of breed, the production of fine individuals, the elevation of the ideal of quality in human production over that of mere quantity, begins to be seen, not merely as a noble idea in itself, but as the only method by which Socialism can be enabled to continue on its present path." Fabian socialists were in favour of reforming the foreign policy of the
British Empire as a conduit for
internationalist reform and were in favour of a
capitalist welfare state modelled on the
Bismarckian German model; they criticised
Gladstonian liberalism both for its individualism at home and its internationalism abroad. They favoured a national
minimum wage in order to stop British industries compensating for their inefficiency by lowering wages instead of investing in capital equipment; slum clearances and a health service in order for "the breeding of even a moderately Imperial race" which would be more productive and better militarily than the "stunted, anaemic, demoralised denizens ... of our great cities"; and a national education system because "it is in the classrooms ... that the future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are already being lost". In 1900 the Society produced
Fabianism and the Empire, the first statement of its views on foreign affairs, drafted by Bernard Shaw and incorporating the suggestions of 150 Fabian members. It was directed against the liberal individualism of those such as
John Morley and Sir
William Harcourt. It claimed that the classical liberal political economy was outdated, and that imperialism was the new stage of the international polity. The question was whether Britain would be the centre of a world empire or whether it would lose its colonies and end up as just two islands in the North Atlantic. It expressed support for Britain in the
Boer War because small nations, such as the
Boers, were anachronisms in the age of empires. In order to hold onto the Empire, the British needed to fully exploit the trade opportunities secured by war; maintain the British armed forces in a high state of readiness to defend the Empire; and create a citizen army to replace the professional army; the
Factory Acts would be amended to extend to 21 the age for half-time employment, so that the thirty hours gained would be used in "a combination of physical exercises, technical education, education in civil citizenship ... and field training in the use of modern weapons". The Fabians also favoured the nationalisation of
land rent, believing that rents collected by landowners in respect of their land's value were unearned, an idea which drew heavily from the work of the American economist
Henry George. George Bernard Shaw wrote "When I was thus swept into the great socialist revival of 1883, I found that 5/6 of those who were swept in with me had been converted by Henry George."
Second generation In the period between the two World Wars, the "Second Generation" Fabians, including the writers
R. H. Tawney,
G. D. H. Cole and
Harold Laski, continued to be a major influence on
socialist thought. Cole's
New Fabian Research Bureau, founded in 1931, was particularly important in revitalising both the Fabians and Labour generally from an interwar low. It was at this time that many of the future leaders of the
Third World were exposed to Fabian thought, most notably India's
Jawaharlal Nehru, who subsequently framed economic policy for India on Fabian socialism lines. After independence from Britain, Nehru's Fabian ideas committed India to an economy in which the state owned, operated and controlled means of production, in particular key heavy industrial sectors such as steel, telecommunications, transportation, electricity generation, mining and real estate development. Private activity, property rights and entrepreneurship were discouraged or regulated through permits, while nationalisation of economic activity and high taxes were encouraged, and rationing, control of individual choices and the
Mahalanobis model were considered by Nehru as a means to implement the Fabian Society version of socialism. In addition to Nehru, several pre-independence leaders in colonial India such as
Annie Besant—Nehru's mentor and later a president of
Indian National Congress – were members of the Fabian Society.
Obafemi Awolowo, who later became the premier of
Nigeria's now defunct
Western Region, was also a Fabian member in the late 1940s. It was the Fabian ideology that Awolowo used to run the Western Region during his premiership with great success, although he was prevented from using it in a similar fashion on the national level in Nigeria. It is less known that the founder of
Pakistan,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was an avid member of the Fabian Society in the early 1930s.
Lee Kuan Yew, the first
prime minister of
Singapore, stated in his memoirs that his initial political philosophy was strongly influenced by the Fabian Society. However, he later altered his views, considering the Fabian ideal of socialism as impractical. In 1993, Lee said: In the
Middle East the theories of the Fabian Society intellectual movement of early-20th-century Britain inspired the
Ba'athist vision. The Middle East adaptation of Fabian socialism led the state to control big industry, transport, banks, internal and external trade. The state would direct the course of economic development, with the ultimate aim to provide a guaranteed minimum standard of living for all.
Michel Aflaq, widely considered as the founder of the Ba'athist movement, was a Fabian socialist. Aflaq's ideas, with those of
Salah al-Din al-Bitar and
Zaki al-Arsuzi, came to fruition in the Arab world in the form of dictatorial regimes in
Iraq and
Syria.
Salāmah Mūsā of Egypt, another prominent champion of Arab Socialism, was a keen adherent of Fabian Society, and a member since 1909. In October 1940 the Fabian Society established the Fabian Colonial Bureau to facilitate research and debate British colonial policy. The Fabian Colonial Bureau strongly influenced the colonial policies of the
Attlee government (1945–51).
Rita Hinden founded the colonial bureau and was its secretary. Fabian academics of the late-20th century included the political scientist Sir
Bernard Crick, the economists
Thomas Balogh and
Nicholas Kaldor and the sociologist
Peter Townsend. ==20th century==