The Fabian Society

: Masters of Subversion Unmasked
A brief history of the Fabian socialists, their policies, and their elite supporters
-- by: Cassivellaunus, 2013, source: FreeBritainNow.org
MHP hypertext version for non-profit educational use only

3.  Control Over the Working Classes

Capture of the labour movement and the Labour Party

Educate, Agitate, Organise

The monopolistic elements in liberal capitalism had been able to secure control over resources (oil, gold, steel, etc.) with the collaboration of the ruling upper classes whom they were gradually replacing. However, the emergence of a less malleable new class of industrial workers was threatening to disrupt the established balance of power in industrial societies.

Therefore, leading liberal capitalists -- the big industrial, business and banking interests (Rothschild, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.) -- came to support social reform as a means of appeasing the restive working classes and ultimately bringing them under their control. The Fabian Society was the key organisation set up for this purpose.

The Fabian leadership had long discovered that Britain's working classes "were not going to rush into Socialism", as candidly admitted by Fabian Society Secretary Edward R. Pease (Pease, p. 88). Therefore the first task of the Society was to capture the working classes for its own ends.

Following the Fabian slogan, "educate, agitate, organise", skilful propaganda and agitation manipulated the public into accepting and backing Fabian policies like social reform programmes. In other words, the Fabians literally decided what the public ought to want and then made sure that the public either wanted, or appeared to want, what the Fabians had chosen for it (Pease, p 84).

The Independent Labour Party (1893)

Having indoctrinated the masses with Fabian ideas, the next phase was organising them and a key step in this direction was the formation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

The ILP was founded at a Fabian conference in 1893 through the merging of over seventy local Fabian societies and was headed by Fabian Keir Hardie, who had earlier co-founded the Second International with Friedrich Engels.

Once the new organisation had been formed, the Society spared no effort to increase its influence in branches of the ILP and the Social Democratic Federation all over the country. Tellingly, as in other matters, it modelled itself on the Milner Group's British South Africa Company (BSAC), comparing the Fabian Society's control over the British people with that of the BSAC's control over the South African natives.

For example, in 1897, the Fabian Executive announced that like the "Chartered Company" in Africa, the Fabian Society will capture and control the British natives "for its profit and their own good" (Fabian News, Sept. 1897, quoted by Pugh, p. 58).

The ILP's aim of controlling the working classes for Fabian purposes is also evident from Beatrice Webb's "Diary" and other Fabian documents. By 1913, she was able to observe that the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party were well on the way to controlling the policy of Britain's Labour and Socialist movement (M. Cole, p. 167).

The above demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Socialism (including Fabianism) has been imposed on the working classes by outside interests. This fact was openly admitted by Lenin who used it to suppress all spontaneity in the working-class movement and bring it under the control of his own "Social-Democratic" (later Communist) Party (see Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?" and Walicki, p. 294).

On their part, ordinary Labour supporters -- in so far as they were aware of the Fabians' activities -- thought of them as unprincipled spiders, spinning webs to entrap honest Socialists (M. Cole, p. 87). In one of his more lucid moments, Bernard Shaw concurred, referring to himself and the Society as "magnificent parasites" (Holroyd, vol. 3, p. 226).

The Labour Party (1900)

Another Fabian instrument for entrapping the unsuspecting masses was the Labour Party. Set up in 1900 by Keir Hardie and fellow Socialists, the party was known as the "Labour Representation Committee" for the first few years of its existence.

That it was not representing labour is evident from the middle-class Fabians involved in its formation who included Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and Edward R. Pease. From inception, Pease, one of the Fabian Society founders, sat on the Labour Party Executive followed by Sidney Webb and others.

The Fabian Society currently describes itself as a "think-tank." However, as a think-tank operating within the Labour Party the Society is, by definition, a body of experts providing advice and ideas on specific issues which are then implemented as Labour Party policy.

Indeed, from inception, the Fabian Executive described Fabians as the "brainworkers" of the Labour Party (Fabian News, XXIX (5), Apr. 1918 in Pugh, p. 138). In the 1950s, Fabian Society Secretary Margaret Cole described the Society as the "thinking machine of British Socialism" (Pugh, p. 236). The Society continues to define itself as being "at the forefront of developing ideas and public policy on the left". (see "About the Fabian Society")

It is bad enough for a major political party like Labour to have its public policy inspired by a semi-secret private organisation with a subversive agenda. However, the Fabian Society does much more than provide the Labour Party with ideas. From inception, the Labour constitution, manifesto and party policy were all personally written by various Fabians like Arthur Henderson and Sidney Webb.

The "Memorandum on War Aims" by Fabian Society co-founder Sidney Webb became the Labour Party's policy statement.

The pamphlet "Labour and the New Social Order" (1918), also by Webb, was adopted as the Labour Party manifesto.

"The Aims of Labour" (1918), by Webb and fellow Fabian Arthur Henderson became accepted Labour Party policy (Pugh, p. 138), etc.

It follows that the relationship between the Fabian Society and the Labour Party was not a purely intellectual one, but very much physical, given that Fabians literally wrote Labour's policy statements, manifestos and party programmes.

The ongoing physical involvement of the Fabian Society in the running of the Labour Party shows beyond reasonable doubt that the Society has retained complete control over the Labour Party ever since. Particularly disturbing is the striking overlap between the Fabian Society and the Labour Party leadership.

The Fabian Society has around 7000 members, 80 per cent (5,600) of whom are members of the Labour Party. This amounts to about 3 per cent of the general Labour Party membership (in 2010).

The Fabian percentage increases dramatically in the higher reaches of the Labour Party. From inception, Labour candidates standing for parliament included a fair number of Fabian Society members and the Society has retained a large proportion -- about 50 percent -- among Labour candidates since the 1940s. In 1945, 393 Labour candidates were elected to Parliament, out of whom 229 were Fabian Society members. In 1997, 418 Labour candidates were elected, out of whom 200 were Fabian Society members.

By the time we come to the Labour Party leadership, the proportion of Fabians comes close to 100 per cent. The 1966 Labour Cabinet had twenty-one members out of which seventeen were members of the Fabian Society and this proportion has remained constant down to the present. Nearly the entire 1997 Labour Cabinet (including Prime Minister Tony Blair) was composed of Fabians. (see "The Fabian Society: A Brief History", Guardian, 13 Aug. 2001)

From inception, leading Fabians like Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson, James ("Jim") Middleton, Morgan Phillips and others served as General Secretaries of the Labour Party.

All Labour governments from 1924 to 1997-2010 have consisted almost exclusively of Fabian Society members; all Labour Prime Ministers have been members of the Fabian Society; all (or nearly all) leaders of the Labour Party have been members of the Fabian Society; all (or nearly all) deputy leaders of the Labour Party have been members of the Fabian Society.

Future Labour leaders are groomed in the Young Fabians, the Fabian Society's under-31s section, who, like the Society itself are affiliated to the Labour Party. Unsurprisingly, the Young Fabians have been described as the "Labour MPs of the future". (see "The Young Fabians", Guardian, Special Report)

Fabian publications continue to provide the basis for Labour Party policy (Harrop, "Fabian review of the year"; Jenkinson, "Remaking the State", etc.) and Labour leaders continue to profess their allegiance to Fabianism and the Fabian Society.

In April 2006, while unveiling the Fabian Window at the LSE, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said that a lot of the values the Fabians stood for would be "very recognizable" in today's Labour Party (Blair, 2006).

Important Labour Party events are routinely announced, launched or discussed at Fabian Society conferences. For example, Ed Miliband announced his bid for the party leadership at a Fabian Society conference in May 2010; Labour politicians and activists met under the auspices of the Fabian Society to discuss party policy (Lawson, 2012).

In January 2013, at the Fabian Society's New Year Conference, Labour leader Ed Miliband declared that he is "an avid reader of Fabian pamphlets" (Jenkinson, "Ed Miliband's speech"), etc.

Control Over All Aspects of British Society

The Fabians' drive for total control was not restricted to the working classes. The Society's declared aim was to permeate all classes, from the top to the bottom, with "a common opinion in favour of social control of socially created values" (Barker, 1915).

Needless to say, all such opinions propagated by the Fabian Society were the opinions of the Fabian Society itself, not of the general public, the propagation of Fabian opinions being the Fabians' express objective: "The Fabians are associated to spread the following opinions held by them ..." (Pease, p. 28, our emphasis).

This, of course, once again shows that the Society was not representing the views, interests, or wishes of the general public but those of its own members and leaders. For this purpose and in addition to politics, the Society set out to control education, culture, economy, the legal system and even medicine and religion.

That this was deliberate and premeditated is evident from numerous statements by Fabian leaders. For example, Bernard Shaw declared the aim of Fabian educational reform as entailing the creation of a Minister for Education, with "control over the whole educational system, from the elementary school to the University, and over all educational endowments" (Shaw, "Educational Reform", 1889).

This was accomplished through a wide range of interconnected organisations, societies and movements:

• Education: councils like the London County Council, university societies and schools like the London School of Economics, Imperial College and London University.
• Culture: the New Age movement, the Central School of Arts and Crafts, the Leeds Arts Club, the Fabian Arts Group and the Stage Society.
• Economy: the London School of Economics, the Royal Economic Society, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
• Law: the Haldane Society (named after Fabian Society member Lord Haldane).
• Medicine: the Socialist Medical League.
• Religion: the Labour (later Socialist) Church movement, the Christian Socialist Crusade, the Christian Socialist League, the Christian Socialist Movement, etc.

All this, of course, was achieved as gradually and stealthily as possible, as enshrined in the "Fabian Basis" (1887), a document containing the Fabian Society's general rules, which all members were required to sign and abide by, which stated that Socialism was to be achieved through persuasion and "the general dissemination of knowledge" (M. Cole, pp. 21, 338).

As explained by Sidney Webb, all changes leading to Socialism had to be "gradual, and thus causing no dislocation, however rapid may be the rate of progress" (M. Cole, p. 29).