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.