The League of Nations (1919)

Outside Britain, the Fabian Society's ultimate goal has been the establishment of a Socialist World Government. The Society's concern with international organisation was articulated early on in Fabian documents like "International Government" (L.S. Woolf, 1916) which formed the basis for the creation, three years later (at the end of World War I), of the League of Nations in collaboration with the Milner Group.

Leading Fabians involved in setting up and running the League included Leonard Woolf, Konni Zilliacus, Philip Noel-Baker, Arthur Salter and the American Walter Lippmann who was one of the Fabian contacts to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. [Lippmann was also a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations -- ed]

From the 1920s, world government was particularly promoted through the London School of Economics International Relations Department (funded by the Cassel Trust) where Noel-Baker ran courses such as the International Politics course on "international organisation for the promotion of common political and economic interest", which also promoted Fabian books on the subject like "International Government".

In 1941, the Fabian Society set up the Fabian International Bureau which was chaired by Noel-Baker, was involved in research and propaganda in international matters, and promoted various internationalist schemes like the union of the British Empire with America and Russia.

The United Nations (1945)

Unsurprisingly, the next Fabian project was the United Nations (U.N.) which was created in 1945 (at the end of World War II) with the involvement of the Fabian Socialist Rockefellers and their Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

(Most of the U.S. delegates to the U.N. Organizing Conference, including Nelson Rockefeller and lawyer John Foster Dulles, were CFR members --ed)

Designed as a successor to the League, the U.N. had as permanent members Fabian Socialist Britain, Democratic America, Communist Russia and National Socialist China and, from inception, was dominated by Socialists like Paul-Henri Spaak, Trygve Lie, Dag Hammarskjold and many others (Griffin, 1964), all of whom were closely connected with the London Fabians who had acquired a dominant position in the Socialist world during the war, when Europe's Socialist leaders had fled to London.

Needless to say, the Fabian Society was a staunch supporter of the U.N. In the 1950s it went as far as amending its "Basis", committing itself to the implementation of the Charter of the United Nations and to the creation of "effective international institutions" (Cole, p. 339).

While agitating for world government through apparently "mainstream" international organisations like the U.N. and educational institutions like the LSE, the Fabian Society also established an international network of Socialist parties and other organisations operating under the umbrella of the Socialist International (SI), which the Society set up in 1951 for the purpose of co-ordinating international Socialism.

Before long, the Socialist International was able to openly announce:

"The ultimate objective of the parties of the Socialist International is nothing less than world government. As a first step towards it, they seek to strengthen the United Nations ... Membership of the United Nations must be made universal" ("The World Today: The Socialist Perspective", Declaration of the Socialist International Oslo Conference, 2-4 June 1962).

This stance was parroted by Socialist parties (all members of the Fabian Socialist International) all over the world. For example, Britain's Labour Party declared:

"Labour remained faithful to its long-term belief in the establishment of east-west co-operation as the basis for a strengthened United Nations developing towards world government ... For us world government is the final objective and the United Nations the chosen instrument ..." (Labour Party manifesto 1964).

World government has remained the central objective of the Fabian Society ever since and has been vigorously promoted by leading Fabians like Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The United States of Europe

Like other Socialist projects, the idea of a "United States of Europe" originated in liberal capitalist circles, notably those around Richard Cobden, and was adopted by leading Socialists like Engels and Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) (Liebknecht, 1889).

By 1914, when the Fabian Society was exploring international government, the idea had become part of the official policy of the Fabian-created and controlled Independent Labour Party (ILP) ("Review of the Week", Labour Leader, 1 Oct. 1914). During and after World War I, the project was actively promoted by leading Fabians like Arthur Ponsonby, Joseph Retinger, Arthur Salter (a former member of the Fabian Society) and collaborators like Aristide Briand.

Tellingly, the project enjoyed the support of leading financiers like Louis von Rothschild of S. M. von Rothschild & Sohne, Vienna. Moreover, the political drive for a united Europe worked hand in hand with the drive by international financiers to establish a new world financial order involving a network of central banks controlled by themselves.

Thus, in January 1920, Liberal Herbert Asquith and Labourite J.R. Clynes, along with Rothschild agents Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and J.P. Morgan Jr., as well as Bank of England, Lazard and Rockefeller representatives, jointly called for an international economic conference to reorganise the world's financial and commercial structure. (see "Powers To Confer On World Finance", New York Times, 15 Jan. 1920)

In November 1921, plans for a "Gold Reserve Bank of the United States of Europe" were presented by Frank Vanderlip of the Rockefeller-controlled and Morgan-associated National City Bank of New York. (see "Vanderlip Gives Details Of Plan For World Bank", New York Times, 13 Nov 1921)

[The Bank for International Settlements was founded in 1930 to manage "gold deposit and swap facilities" on behalf of the central banks. The Morgan and Rockefeller banks provided part of the initial capital. --ed]