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.
From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, W.
SYDNEY OLIVIER, IN 1903
[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.
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.
From a photograph By Savony of New York
MRS. ANNE BESANT, IN 1890