Social Networks

The main body through which the Fabian Society operated in the beginning was the Liberal Party, this being the centre-left party at the time. However, the Fabians' involvement with Liberal politics also linked them with liberal capitalist interests, regular contact with whom was nurtured through various Fabian creations such as the Coefficients Dining Club (Quigley, pp. 137-8; cf. M. Cole, p. 118).

That the Fabians consciously sought the company, collaboration and support of the wealthy and powerful is evident from Fabian writings such as Beatrice Webb's "Our Partnership", which abound in references to "catching millionaires", "wire-pulling", "moving all the forces we have control over", while at the same time taking care to "appear disinterested" and claiming to be "humble folk whom nobody suspects of power" (Webb, 1948).

In fact, the Webbs were in regular touch with the likes of Arthur Balfour and Richard Haldane (a member of the Fabian Society) who served as contacts between the Fabians and the powerful and wealthy. As their social circle expanded, the Webbs' frequent dinners, informal meetings, and "little parties" enabled them to mingle with leading members of the ruling elite like Lord Rosebery, Julius Wernher (of the gold and diamond mining company Wernher, Beit & Co.) and Lord Rothschild, and talk them into backing their subversive projects.

It is essential to understand, however, that this was far from being a one-way affair. The leading elements of liberal capitalism -- the big businessmen, industrialists and bankers -- who had amassed great wealth in the wake of the industrial revolution, were no selfless philanthropists. They aimed to strengthen their own position of power and influence by two means: (1) by monopolising finance, economy and politics; and (2) by controlling the growing urban working class.

The first aim was to be achieved by the centralisation of capital, means of production, etc. The second was to be gained through organising the workers and through promises of a larger share in resources. These aims coincided with those of the Socialist movement of which the Fabians aimed to become the leading element.

As pointed out by H. G. Wells, big business was by no means antipathetic to Communism as "the larger big business grows the more it approximates to Collectivism" (Wells, p. 100). Similarly, Joseph A Schumpeter, who taught David Rockefeller at Harvard, wrote:

"The true pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers" (Schumpeter, p. 134).

Indeed, we find that the core of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848) consisted of monopolistic capitalist policies like the centralisation of capital and the organisation of workers.

Marx and Engels had begun their career as journalists working for liberal capitalist interests. Marx later worked for the New York Tribune, whose owner, Horace Greeley and editor, Charles Anderson Dana were close collaborators of Clinton Roosevelt (Sutton, 1995, p. 45), a radical Democrat member of the well-known Roosevelt clan whose main areas of interest were banking and politics and who were close allies of the Vanderbilts.

The Fabian Society not only adopted Marx and Engels' policies but was closely connected with the same kind of interests.

Media Connections

Hubert Bland, a bank-employee-turned-journalist, worked for the London Sunday Chronicle, a paper owned by newspaper magnate Edward Hulton, formerly of the Liberal Manchester Guardian. Bland was a co-founder of the Fabian Society in 1884 and became a member of its executive and its long-serving treasurer. He also recruited his friend and fellow journalist Bernard Shaw.

Shaw was working for the London Pall Mall Gazette, where leading Liberal William T. Stead served as editor and Alfred (later Lord) Milner as his assistant. Both Stead and Milner were close to diamond magnate and Rothschild associate Cecil Rhodes and were involved in the formation of the influential secret organisation known as the Milner Group. Having been recruited to the Fabian Society by his friend Bland in 1884, Shaw recruited Annie Besant and his friends Sidney Webb, Sydney Olivier and Graham Wallas in 1885 and 1886.

Tellingly, the Fabians were also adept at securing a higher social and financial position for themselves -- which shows that the "equitable share of natural and acquired advantages" and the "complete substitution of public property for private property" preached in the "Fabian Basis" (1887) and elsewhere were not regarded by Fabians as binding on themselves.

Shaw's friend and fellow Fabian Society leader Sidney Webb married Beatrice, daughter of Richard Potter, a wealthy financier with international connections who served as chairman of the Great Western and Grand Trunk Railways of England and Canada. Beatrice was also a close friend of Rothschild associate and Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. The Great Western Railways (GWR) supported Webb's fledgling London School of Economics (LSE) by booking courses for members of its staff at the school and Webb also used his wife's other connections to further his Fabian agendas.

Shaw himself married Charlotte, daughter of Horace Payne-Townshend (a wealthy Stock Exchange investor), who was one of the financial backers of the Fabian Society. Shaw was employed by millionaire William Waldorf (later Lord) Astor, owner of the Pall Mall Gazette, and became a close friend of the latter's son (and Milner Group leader) Waldorf Astor and his wife Nancy. Interviews with both Shaw and Webb promoting Socialist ideas were published by the Pall Mall and St. James's Gazettes.

The Manchester School and the Rothschilds

As Shaw, Webb, Olivier and Wallas became the Fabian Society's dominant "Big Four", it becomes clear that the Society originated as a private organisation run by elements in the employ of media outlets representing liberal capitalist interests.

Indeed, the Society's key financial backers included John Passmore Edwards, an associate of textile manufacturer and leader of the Liberal "Manchester School", Richard Cobden himself. For example, in the 1890s, Passmore Edwards donated £10,000 for a new building for the Fabians' London School of Economics (LSE) (Webb. p. 93).

The Fabians were also linked with the Manchester School through Harold Cox, a member of the Fabian Society who was a follower of Manchester Liberalism, secretary of the Cobden Club and editor of the influential quarterly Edinburgh Review, as well as a collaborator of Sidney Webb (Webb, p. 502).

It follows that both Karl Marx and the Fabian Society were bankrolled by industrial interests with links to the left-wing Manchester School and the media world.

These already powerful interests were allies of the Rothschild banking family which had close links to the shadowy world of Manchester's left-wing media, industry and finance: the Rothschilds' first port of call in England had been Manchester, where the group's patriarch Nathan Meyer started his career in the textile trade. They had a long tradition of support for Liberal causes, several leading members of the group having served as Liberal members of parliament.

The Fabian Society was in close touch with the Rothschilds both directly and through go-betweens like Lord Arthur Balfour. The Balfours were among the chief representatives of Britain's money power and were involved in the creation of organisations advancing its interests from the Anglo-American League and the Pilgrims Society to Imperial College and the League of Nations. While his brother Gerald was President of the Board of Trade, Arthur Balfour served as President of the Local Government Board and later as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. While in these posts, he conferred on a regular basis with both Lord Natty Rothschild and the Fabian leadership and used his position to advance their agendas.

Lord Rothschild himself was personally involved, with Sidney Webb, in the restructuring of the University of London into which the Fabians' London School of Economics (LSE) was incorporated in 1898. He also provided funds for the LSE and served as its third president, after his relative Lord Rosebery (Webb, pp. 182, 214).

The LSE continues to maintain close links with Rothschild and allied interests. For example, LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is funded by the Grantham Foundation, whose founder Jeremy Grantham of the investment management firm Grantham, Mayo & Otterloo (GMO) was an economist at Rothschild-controlled Royal Dutch Shell. The Grantham Institute's advisory board includes Sir Evelyn de Rothschild of EL Rothschild Ltd. and Vikram Singh Mehta of Shell Companies, India. Rothschild, Shell, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are members of the LSE Careers Patron Group. Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International, is chairman of the LSE, etc.

Other Financial Connections

The Tata Group

One of the Fabians' links to industrial interests was the Indian textile magnate Jamsetji Tata whom Sidney and Beatrice Webb helped to set up a company town around his newly acquired steel works at Bombay, where the Fabians had set up a local Fabian Society. In 1912, Tata endowments funded the Sir Ratan Tata Department at the LSE, which later became the Department of Social Sciences, whose first lecturer was Fabian Society member and later New Fabian Research Bureau chairman Clement Attlee (West, 2012).

The Rowntree Clan

Another Fabian line of connection with industrial interests were the chocolate manufacturers Rowntree's. The company's head Joseph Rowntree, who had founded various charitable trusts in 1904, financed the Fabian Society's Commission for the Prevention of Destitution and from 1915 provided funds for the general work of the Society as well as for its Research Department and special inquiries, including the one that produced "International Government" (Pugh, p. 129). His son, Seebohm Rowntree, who in addition to being an industrialist was also an avid social reformer, collaborated with Beatrice Webb on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law 1905-9 (Webb, p. 332), and Rowntree trusts have funded Fabian projects ever since.

The Cassel interests

The Fabian Society was also connected with the international banker and financier Sir Ernest Cassel, who was an associate of Rothschild, Schiff and Morgan interests. Cassel was persuaded by his friend Lord Richard Haldane, a member of the Fabians' Coefficients dining club and, from 1925, Fabian Society member, to bequeath large sums to the LSE (Butler, p. 19).

When the Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust was set up in 1919, Haldane, Liberal leader Herbert Asquith (a friend of Cassel and Bernard Shaw) and Lord Balfour (a close friend of Beatrice Webb and Shaw) were appointed trustees. In 1924, the Trust provided substantial grants to the LSE, establishing among others the Sir Ernest Cassel Chair of International Relations, later International Relations Department. (see "History of the Cassel Trust")

The Rockefellers, LSE and CFR

The Fabian Society has been particularly close to the Rockefellers who are covert Fabian Socialists. David Rockefeller wrote a sympathetic senior thesis on Fabian Socialism at Harvard ("Destitution Through Fabian Eyes", 1936) and studied left-wing economics at the Fabian Society's London School of Economics. Not surprisingly, the Rockefellers have funded countless Fabian projects, including the LSE. Already in the late 1920s and 1930s, the LSE received millions of dollars from the Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Foundations, becoming known as "Rockefellers baby". (see "A history of philanthropic support at LSE")

The Rockefellers' Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) operating within the U.S. State Department was responsible for designing America's post-war foreign policy. A key element of this policy was the $13 billion Marshall Aid that funded Europe's Socialist governments, including Britain's own Fabian Socialist Labour government run by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, former chairman of the New Fabian Research Bureau.

[Editor's note: The CFR still dominates U.S. policy. David Rockefeller was Chairman from 1970-85, and his son David Jr. is also a member. The current chairman is Robert Rubin, a former executive at Rockefeller's Citibank who studied at LSE. For background, see "Final Warning" by David Rivera (1994) and "The Invisible Government" by Dan Smoot (1962) ]

Another Rockefeller outfit bankrolling Fabian projects was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), established in 1944 along with the World Bank. Its chief architect was U.S. Under-Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White, a covert Communist, who had close links to the Rockefeller-associated Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).

The IMF provided several loans to Labour (Fabian) governments:

• $250 million to the Attlee Government in 1947 (Martin, p. 77)
• $1 billion to the Wilson Government in 1969 (Martin, p. 109)
• $4 billion to the second Wilson Government in 1976 (Stone-Lee, 2005)

Another important loan of $4.34 billion was negotiated in 1946 by Fabian economist John Maynard Keynes and facilitated by his friend and collaborator Harry Dexter White who operated within the U.S. Treasury as well as the IMF. All these loans were organised under successive Fabian Chancellors Hugh Dalton, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey.

The Fabian Society itself continues to be funded by subversive entities like the European Commission and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), an EU-wide operation co-funded by the European Parliament, which works for a Socialist Europe.

The Society also operates in partnership with global companies like Pearson, a long-time Lazard and Rothschild associate. Pearson has been a major stockholder in the banking group Lazard from the early 1900s. Lazard was identified by the historian Carroll Quigley as the principal bank of the Anglo-American Establishment, a left-wing international alliance consisting of the British Milner Group (revolving around Rothschild interests) and America's Eastern Establishment (revolving around J. P. Morgan and Rockefeller interests).

Like Pearson, Lazard is a left-wing operation with a long history of support for left-wing causes. It has been a supporter of America's Democratic President Barack Obama, and has hired leading Fabian Socialist Peter Mandelson as senior adviser.