Ten Permeation and Independent Labor

Historians have long debated the extent to which the Fabians acted as John the Baptist to the Labour Party. Initially, most historians accepted the Fabians’ account of themselves as the single most important group in getting socialism a foothold on British soil. In this view, the Fabians forged a gradualist constitutionalist tradition of socialism that gave rise to the Labour Party by way of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).¹ Then, during the latter half of the twentieth century, most historians dismissed the Fabians as largely inconsequential. Eric Hobsbawm and Alan McBriar led those who argued that the ILP took its strategy from labor Marxists such as H.H. Champion, with the Fabians having little impact on the rise of a popular socialist movement or on the Labour Party.² These revisionists condemned the Fabians as elitist and irrelevant. The Fabians were elitist because they ignored the grassroots of working-class politics in favor of the high politics of the day. They were irrelevant because the Labour Party arose from the interaction between the ILP and the trade unions, both of which had been ignored, or even opposed, by the permeation-besotted Fabians. The Fabians were bypassed by the rise of a new class-based politics associated with Marxism and, of course, the working class itself.

The debate over the impact of the Fabians is one in which both sides capture part of the truth. Equally, both go awry. The problem is that both sides in the debate treat Fabianism as a monolithic and stable political strategy, and more particularly they treat the Fabians as liberal radicals who consistently and uniformly committed themselves to a high politics in which they provided expert ideas to other constitutional parties. The two sides disagree only about whether or not these ideas were important for the creation of the Labour Party. The positive view concentrates on the continuities between liberal radicalism and the Labour Party and presents the Fabians as the main bridge between the two. The negative view concentrates on the place of working-class identities, interests, and organizations in the formation of the Labour Party, thereby dismissing the Fabians’ high politics and liberal inheritance.

Yet, in previous chapters, we found that Fabianism was neither monolithic nor stable. Fabianism was often in flux, especially in the crucial years of the 1880s and the early 1890s leading up to the formation of the ILP in 1893. The early Fabians were involved with the Fellowship of the New Life and Christian socialism as well as land reform and Marxism. Most had responded to the crisis of faith with a reformist humanitarianism that left them rather dissatisfied with the scientism and secularism of the Social Democratic Federation. But they did not have a clear alternative social or economic theory. It was only in the mid- to late 1880s that leading Fabians drew on alternative economic theories to provide novel defenses of socialism. Even then, moreover, Fabianism accommodated various conflicting theories. Different Fabians provided varied defenses of socialism by drawing on marginalist, neoclassical, and positivist economic theories.

This chapter explores the Fabians’ fluid and diverse political strategies. It begins by distinguishing two main varieties of permeation, one associated with George Bernard Shaw and the other with Sidney Webb. Thereafter the chapter explores the rise and shifting fortunes of these two political strategies within the Fabian Society as a whole, looking especially at their role in defining the Society’s attitude to the formation and growth of the ILP.

Contemporaries were well aware of the diverse political strategies found among the Fabians. As late as 1887, Brailsford Bright, who was a Fabian, identified three competing outlooks.

British Socialists may, at present, be divided into three sections, namely: (1) The Social Democrats of the Federation, and certain members of the Fabian and Christian Socialist Societies, and others who wish to remain an entirely distinct party. … (2) Those Fabians and others who prefer to make use of the existing Radical party, forming an “Extreme Left” wing thereof. … (3) Those who hold aloof from all existing parties without forming any political party or groups of their own, but would support any party, or any individual candidate or member of Parliament, who, for the time being, seemed to be promoting the growth of Socialism.³

Historians typically place Hubert Bland in the first category but fail to distinguish the second and third categories. Yet the Fabians debated the merits of the second and third categories long after they broke with Marxism. Shaw generally advocated a strategy akin to Bright’s second category. Webb led those who countered with one akin to Bright’s third category.

Shaw’s and Webb’s different political strategies derived from their respective economic theories. Shaw’s marginalist theory of rent continued to overlap with Marxist theories, such as those of the O’Brienites in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Surplus value consisted of, first, an economic rent due to natural advantages of fertility and location and, second, monopoly payments made for the privilege of using the means of production at all. Like many Marxists, he argued that monopolies enabled capitalists and landlords to charge workers for access to the means of production.⁴ Capitalists, qua monopolists, exploited the workers. Shaw’s economic theory thus suggested that there was a class struggle between workers and monopolists. According to Shaw, socialism made explicit the radicals’ implicit idea of an irreconcilable clash of interests between these warring classes.

Early Fabians such as Bland and Shaw did not break with the SDF because they rejected the idea of class struggle. They believed in the class struggle. They just did not believe that the workers were revolutionary.⁵Bland explained that “the revolt of the empty stomach ends at the baker’s shop.”⁶ Shaw believed that although one might expect current injustices to lead the workers to rise up to set things to right, “an army of light is no more to be gathered from the human product of nineteenth-century civilisation than grapes are to be gathered from thistles.”⁷

Bland and Shaw advocated a parliamentary road to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one. Yet, they argued that the class struggle implied socialists could not expect any help from the owners of property. The Liberal Party was useless because it represented the monopolists, whose interests were diametrically opposed to those of the workers. A new party was thus essential. Bland called for “the formation of a definitely Socialist party.”⁸ Shaw told the editor of the Scots Observer, “I thirst for the blood of the Liberal Party; and if ever your sham fight with them becomes a real one, you may come to me for a lead.”⁹ Bland, Shaw, and several other early Fabians wanted a new socialist party. Shaw asked that a Fabian manifesto “emphatically repudiate the Liberal Party and denounce Gladstone in express terms”; he argued that we should “proclaim ourselves, not an advanced guard of the Liberal party, but definitely Social-Democratic.”¹⁰

Shaw wanted a new socialist party to fight the monopolists of the Liberal and Conservative parties. Yet, when the SDF entered candidates in the general election of 1885, they got little support. Shaw then concluded that a new party was not currently feasible. Most workers were radicals but not socialists. Socialists initially would have to concentrate their energies on building the support they needed to sustain a future political party. Where, though, were socialists to find this support? Shaw looked to the extreme radicals. He argued that radicals and socialists were natural allies because the radicals implicitly recognized the class struggle. Indeed, he believed that the Liberal Party would split and the radicals would join the socialists. Liberals and radicals were not natural allies. They could cohabit momentarily only because of their mutual support for home rule for Ireland. Once the issue of home rule disappeared, the liberals and radicals would go their separate ways. Shaw advised a liberal friend of his to “read the Star & watch the struggle between our Social Democratic editor [Massingham] & your Home Rule Liberal editor [O’Connor].” He asked the friend, “When you have grasped the situation, will you join Goschen & [will] Hartington join us?” And he told the friend, “Home Rule is not eternal, and when it is settled, the via media vanishes.”¹¹

According to Shaw, radicalism had an innate trajectory toward a new socialist party. The class struggle pitched the radical workers against the monopolists controlling the Liberal Party, and the dynamics of this struggle would drive the radicals to socialism. Shaw wanted the Fabians to declare themselves “prepared to act with the Radical party as far as that party pursues its historic mission of overthrowing Capitalist Liberalism in the interest of the working classes, but utterly hostile to it as far as it is only the tail of the National Liberal Federation.”¹² Clearly Shaw did not foresee the Liberal Party’s being driven to socialism by the wire-pulling of the Fabians. Instead, he believed that the class struggle would produce a split within the Liberal Party. After this split, there would be two parties, one of which would consist of the monopolists and the other would unite the workers. The Liberals would combine with the Tories in a party of reaction. The radicals would combine with the socialists in a “real Party of Progress.”¹³

The question facing Shaw was how best to bring out the implicit conflict between workers and monopolists. How could socialists lure the radicals away from the Liberal Party and into the socialist camp? Initially, Shaw adopted the SDF’s strategy of zealous propaganda and outdoor demonstrations. In the late 1880s Shaw began to advocate what he called permeation. He wanted socialists to join radical organizations and work within them to turn the radicals into socialists. For example, he advised the North Kensington branch of the SDF to pursue a Fabian policy and “throw in their lot with the Radicals,” because “socialism must be established, if it is to come at all, by the whole working class of the country.”¹⁴ Socialists should cooperate with the radicals in order to gain the support of the workers, not to influence the Liberals. Socialists could work with radicals, since most radicals were workers who opposed monopoly. But socialists could not work with Liberals, since most Liberals were monopolists who defended private property.

Shaw’s aim of luring the radicals away from the Liberals stands in contrast to Webb’s version of permeation. Webb believed that economic surpluses, such as land rent and interest, derived entirely from advantages of fertility, location, and circumstances. He objected to the surpluses going to individuals on the grounds that these advantages were not necessary to attract capital and they were a result not of personal effort or ability but of social forces. In his view, all surplus value was social value rather than a tribute taken from the worker. There was no class war and therefore no need for a new party. Indeed, when Webb first declared he was a socialist, he advocated the moralization of the capitalist. Only in the late 1880s did he begin to advocate collectivism, defining socialism as the efficient organization of society as prescribed by empirical sociology. Webb believed that socialism was based on rational knowledge of social evolution. Socialism could rise from experts’ appealing to the rationality of the policy-making elite. The “intelligence of the natural leaders of the community” would lead them to accept the need for socialism.¹⁵ Webb wanted to win over the minds of opinion makers, not the votes of radicals. He told Edward Pease that “nothing in England is done without the consent of a small intellectual yet practical class in London not 2000 in number.”¹⁶

Webb’s version of permeation began with the idea of Fabian experts showing politicians what policies were necessary for an efficient society. The Fabians would be backroom boys coming up with the bright ideas that rational politicians would adopt as a matter of course. In principle, the target of this permeation was a cross-party elite, since Conservatives too would recognize the impartial merits of socialist policies. In practice, however, Webb considered Liberals more open than Conservatives to Fabian expertise. He foresaw the Liberals adopting a progressive program, getting elected, and then introducing socialist legislation, with the Fabians providing them with suitable policies. Webb saw the Fabian Society as an intellectual advisory group—a Jeeves to the Liberal Party’s Bertie Wooster. The problem was that the Liberal elite did not always stick to the script. Webb told Beatrice Potter (before they got married) that “it is difficult to know how to treat the Liberal leaders” because “they are generally such poor creatures, and so hopelessly ‘out of it’”; “I wish their education could be taken in hand in some way that would save the Fabian Society from becoming more and more conceited.”¹⁷ By the end of the 1880s, Webb became so concerned that the Liberal elite were not listening to the Fabians’ advice that he extended his strategy of permeation to include joining local Liberal associations and using them as platforms from which to gain the ears of the Liberal elite.

Generally, Webb opposed independent socialist candidates for Parliament. He believed that independent action was unnecessary because the existing parties could be shown the impartial advantages of socialism and thus led to introduce suitable legislation. He also believed that independent action was impolitic because it would antagonize the local Liberal associations through which socialists could best influence the Liberal elite. Unlike Shaw, Webb did not want to split the Liberal Party, luring the radicals over to a new socialist party. Instead, he argued that the existing Liberal Party was quite capable of establishing socialism. He spoke of his hopes of the Liberals, not the radicals, saying, “I feel no doubt that we shall be able to drive the official Liberals on into a very sea of Socialism.”¹⁸

When permeation rose in the Fabian Society, it could mean either pulling the radicals into a new party, as it did for Shaw, or using local Liberal groups to influence Liberal elites, as it did for Webb. Most of the early Fabians favored Shaw’s strategy. They were less interested in foisting socialist policies onto a recalcitrant Liberal Party than in forging a new party of radicals and socialists that would advance the interests of the workers. It was only after the Fabians had broken with Marxism and anarchism that Webb began to propose his alternative idea of permeation.

As we have seen, the founding Fabians were a mixture of radicals involved with land reform on the fringes of the SDF. The first executive committee of the Society consisted of Bland, Frank Podmore, and Frederick Keddell, a Marxist who soon left to commit himself entirely to the SDF. The second executive consisted of Bland, Alice Hoatson (who was Bland’s lover), Pease, Shaw, and Charlotte Wilson.¹⁹ Most of these Fabians thought that radicalism led inexorably to socialism, since both were based on hostility to monopolies and the class-based exploitation to which they gave rise. Shaw had no difficulty getting the other Fabians to agree in 1884 to his publishing a tract on behalf of the Society in which he insisted that everybody should labor to provide for his or her wants, that monopolies of land and capital caused poverty and divided society into warring classes, and that the solution to these problems lay in land nationalization and state competition with private enterprise.²⁰ When Annie Besant joined the Fabians in 1885, she too talked of socialism as the logical outcome of radicalism and so of the need to wean the radicals away from the Liberal Party.²¹

The early Fabians wanted a new party that would combine socialists and radicals. They worked mainly with the Marxists of the SDF to attract radicals to the socialist cause. For a start, they joined in the Marxists’ outdoor propaganda. Besant was a much practiced stump orator who spoke from both SDF and Fabian platforms. Shaw joined the SDF in the struggle to prevent the police from closing the speakers’ corner at Dod Street. In addition, the early Fabians spent numerous evenings proselytizing to secularists and other radicals. Besant had been a vice president of the National Secular Society, and, as a socialist, she now held public debates with prominent secularists and spoke at local secularist branches and radical clubs.²² Shaw gave sixty-six public lectures in one year alone. As one of his biographers writes, “Every Sunday he spoke, usually in the London area, sometimes against the blaring of brass bands, often at workmen’s clubs and coffee houses, to secular societies and radical associations, expounding and arguing from squalid platforms in dens full of tobacco smoke, to a little knot of members.”²³ The goal of this propaganda and proselytizing remained a new party uniting radicals and socialists. In 1886 the Fabians organized a conference of radicals and socialists, including members of the SDF, at South Place Chapel, to discuss a “common basis on which Radicals, Socialists, and Social Reformers of all kinds can cooperate for practical work in and out of parliament.”²⁴

At first Fabian opposition to the attempt to forge a new party came from Wilson and her anarchism. The early Fabians and the SDF had to defend their strategy against Wilson and the Socialist League. As we saw in chapter 7, the Fabians decisively rejected anarchism at an open meeting in 1886. Afterward, they formed the Fabian Parliamentary League. The original Council of the League included Ashman, Besant, Bland, T. Bolas, Brailsford Bright, Sydney Olivier, and Shaw, almost all of whom seem to have favored a new socialist party. The League’s manifesto called on British socialists to follow the lead of those Continental socialists who had made electoral progress in local and national government. In local elections the League would even run candidates where it was strong enough. In general elections the League proposed supporting the candidate who was most sympathetic to socialism “until a fitting opportunity arises for putting forward Socialist candidates to form the nucleus of a Socialist party in Parliament.”²⁵

When Webb joined the Fabians in May 1885, he found himself opposed to the Society’s strategy. He disapproved not only of Wilson’s anarchism, but also of the strategy of the other early Fabians. He was less concerned with founding a new party than with promoting socialist policies through the Liberal Party. Initially, Webb’s only real ally among the Fabians was Graham Wallas, who joined the Fabian Society in 1886. Like Webb, Wallas rejected the class war and considered the Liberal Party quite capable of introducing socialism through piecemeal legislation. So, while Besant, Bland, Pease, Podmore, Shaw, and the others were trying to draw the radicals away from the Liberals, Webb wrote to Wallas identifying their electoral interests with those of the Liberals and then complaining, “We have gone a tremendous crash in the towns.”²⁶ Wallas and Webb initially opposed the Fabian Parliamentary League on the grounds that an independent party would hamper efforts to provide the Liberals with an efficient socialist program. Webb complained to Pease, “I hardly understand your so heartily supporting the party of action rather than education.”²⁷

So, in the late 1880s, the Fabians were unevenly split between two rival political strategies. Shaw and the larger “party of action” wanted to build a new party. Webb and the smaller “party of education” hoped to infiltrate the Liberal elite with socialism. The unusual nature of London politics enabled these two parties to agree on a single strategy at the local level. The Local Government Act of 1888 had at long last created a citywide government in the form of the London County Council (LCC). The members of the LCC split into Progressives, who were generally radical reformers, and Moderates, who did not want to go so far so quickly. The Progressive councillors included John Burns of the SDF. They introduced legislation to give council workers an eight-hour day and to write a fair-wages clause into council contracts. All the Fabians were happy to support the Progressives in London politics. Shaw and the party of action saw the Progressives as a local example of radicals and socialists combining in a new party. Wallas and Webb may have wanted to work with the Liberal Party, but as there was no Liberal Party on the LCC, they decided to work with the Progressives. All the Fabians agreed on working with the Progressives in London. Indeed, when Wallas and Webb joined the council of the Fabian Parliamentary League, they steered it firmly toward local politics and away from national political action. In 1888 Besant wrote a lead article, and Webb wrote a letter, in which they both proposed joint democratic committees to coordinate the votes of radicals and socialists in the election for the London School Board.²⁸ Thereafter Webb became the Fabians’ acknowledged expert on local government, writing numerous tracts outlining and defending a program of municipal reform.²⁹

Although the Fabians agreed on a strategy for London, they disagreed on national politics. Whereas Shaw wanted to attract the radicals to a third party, Webb thought that the threat of a third party was useful only as a way of encouraging Liberals to adopt progressive policies. So, when the Liberal Party disappointed the socialists by adopting the Nottingham Programme of 1887, Shaw responded with a “Radical programme” that was meant to pull radicals toward socialism, whereas Webb wrote a pamphlet for private circulation among “leading London Liberals,” calling on them to adopt a program that would win the support of radical workingmen.³⁰

The late 1880s saw a subtle shift in Shaw’s strategy. The mid-1880s had been a time of mass unemployment and social unrest. Besant, Shaw, and others joined rallies and meetings. Trafalgar Square became a center of socialist protest. On 8 November 1887, the police forbade demonstrators to enter the square. The ban exacerbated matters. Few radicals had shown sympathy for the unemployed, but they complained that the ban infringed on the right to free speech. Radicals and socialists arranged a joint rally against coercion in Ireland to culminate in the square in defiance of the ban. The date, 13 November 1887, became known as Bloody Sunday. Four columns of demonstrators set out from different parts of London to reach the square simultaneously. Besant and Shaw marched at the head of the column from the East End. The police baton-charged the demonstrators and broke up the protest before sizable numbers could reach the square. One hundred and fifty people were detained. Three days later a socialist died of injuries sustained on that day. Bloody Sunday led Shaw to reconsider his political strategy. He turned away from vigorous propaganda and toward his version of permeation. He wanted socialists to infiltrate local Liberal organizations so as to convert radicals to the need for a new party.

At the same time, Webb modified his political strategy. Webb had never shown much interest in political demonstrations. He had spent the mid-1880s making direct approaches to the Liberal elite; he sent his draft of an Eight Hours Bill to Herbert Gladstone, one of the Liberal Party managers, and a Fabian tract on leasehold enfranchisement to every Liberal MP just before a parliamentary debate on that issue.³¹ It was in the late 1880s, however, that Webb started to complain about the difficulties of getting the Liberal elite to listen. He began to stress the importance of participating in local Liberal associations as a means of securing the attention of the elite. Just after Bloody Sunday, he wrote to Pease ignoring “the most sensational political event of the year.” He concentrated instead on the tactic of working through local Liberal associations to win over Liberal politicians.

I believe very much in getting hold of the Liberal caucuses. They are just on the turn, without knowing it, and a little push from inside does much to send them in our direction. I hope you take part in the Newcastle one. Champion relates how he talked the matter over with John Morley [the Liberal MP for Newcastle], who was quite friendly and sympathetic with our aims, but said he had not had occasion to look into social matters, and could not do so at present, as his constituents were not interested in the questions. Now this is just where the use of political Socialism comes in. If you managed to get resolutions passed at ward meetings etc., as to the necessity of dealing with these things, John Morley would take them up.³²

After Bloody Sunday, both Shaw and Webb adopted the tactic of joining Liberal groups. However, whereas Webb tried thereby to get Liberal leaders to adopt socialist policies, Shaw hoped to attract the radicals to a new party.

Most of the early Fabians wanted a new party. Webb led a minority who instead concentrated their hopes on Liberal politicians. These different strategies rarely came into conflict during the late 1880s because the socialists were too weak for a new party to be a serious prospect. The Fabians agreed on a single strategy at the local level and went their separate ways at the national level. Besant and Shaw marched on Trafalgar Square. Webb posted draft bills of Parliament to MPs. However, in the early 1890s, socialism expanded rapidly. Much of this expansion occurred with the rise of ethical socialism, which we will explore in later chapters. Yet, the Fabian Society too attracted large numbers of new recruits, partly due to the triumphal publication of Fabian Essays, partly because of an extremely successful lecture tour, and partly because of the spread of ethical socialism in the northern counties. The Fabians spread out of London, with new branches appearing in places such as Bradford, Bristol, Manchester, and Sheffield. The London Fabian Society grew from 173 members in 1890 to 640 members in 1893. Membership in the rest of the country grew from about 350 in 1891 to about 1,300 in 1892.³³ The spread of socialism made a new party an increasingly viable prospect.

Typically the new socialists strongly favored a new and independent socialist party. Robert Blatchford, Katherine Conway, Keir Hardie, and Ben Tillett joined the Fabian Society, but they devoted their energy to forming local labor parties with the ultimate aim of creating a national socialist party. For example, the Independent Labour Party in Manchester was founded by Blatchford and John Trevor, both of whom were members of the Fabian Society. While Webb dallied with the Liberals, and while Shaw tried to use Liberal associations to convert radicals to socialism, the new socialists were forming local organizations that constituted the nucleus of the future ILP. Support for a new party reached new levels among the Fabians. When the Society held its first annual conference in February 1892, fifteen local societies sent delegates, who passed a motion declaring that “this meeting, being of the opinion that the best way to forward the Labour cause is by the workers acting independently of both political parties, hails with satisfaction the formation of an independent labour party, and heartily wishes success to the movement.”³⁴

How did the leading Fabians react to the growing demand for an independent labor party? In brief, Webb opposed such a party, whereas Shaw continued to support the idea of a new party, insisting on certain conditions only because he saw them as essential if an independent party were to prove workable.

Shaw told the first annual conference of the Fabians that the permeation “game is played out,” and “the time has come for a new departure.”³⁵In his view, permeation had involved working in Liberal organizations to wean the radicals away from the Liberal leaders, and it had succeeded.

The Radicals are at last conscious that the leaders are obstructing them; and they say to us, in effect, “Your policy of permeating has been successful: we are permeated; and the result is that we find all the money and all the official power of our leaders, who are not permeated and cannot be permeated, arrayed against us. Now show us how to get rid of those leaders or to fight them.”³⁶

Permeation had worked. For a start, socialist propaganda and education had turned numerous radicals into socialists. Shaw argued that “there are thousands of thoroughly Socialised Radicals to-day who would have resisted Socialism fiercely if it had been forced upon them with taunts, threats, and demands.”³⁷ More importantly, permeation had thereby made visible the class struggle between Liberals and radicals—“property versus labour.”³⁸ The result would surely be party realignment. On the one side, when the Liberal leaders realized what was going on, they would not only resist permeation but “close up the ranks of capitalism against the insidious invaders.”³⁹ On the other side, a new party combining socialists and radicals was now a real possibility.

Nonetheless, Shaw warned that there remained the problems of organization and of funding. Certainly, there was enough support for an independent party, but “it is one thing to make people shout and another to make them pay.”⁴⁰ The workers were capable of funding an independent party, but they might choose not to do so, preferring beer and football to liberty. Shaw believed that “there are unfortunately very few constituencies in which the Working Classes are politically organised enough to take the overwhelming lead in politics which their superiority in numbers has placed within their reach.”⁴¹ Any workable socialist strategy had to take account of the lack of political organization among the workers. Moreover, Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system meant that there was a danger that independent candidates would not only fail to get elected but also split the progressive vote, and so enable reactionaries to triumph. Shaw advised the workers to run an independent candidate only where, first, the candidate had a good chance of winning or polling well enough to add respectability to the labor cause or, second, the Liberal and Conservative candidates were equally backward on labor issues. Elsewhere the workers should support the most progressive candidate among those available.

The Fabians adopted Shaw’s proposals as their manifesto for the general election of 1892. In Bradford they supported Tillett as a labor candidate because they believed he had a chance to win. In Newcastle they backed a Liberal candidate, John Morley, against a labor candidate on the grounds that the labor cause was hopeless and the candidate would split the progressive vote.⁴²

Shaw took a similar view of the growing movement to establish an independent labor party. He argued that the success of permeation had established sufficient support for such a party, but there remained problems of finance. He favored a new party, while proposing that in the absence of a suitable organization, it should remain flexible over its tactics. A new party should vary its tactics locally, running its own candidates in some constituencies and trying to get the Liberals to adopt progressive candidates in others. Indeed, Shaw now defined permeation as much in terms of local flexibility as in terms of luring the radicals away from the Liberals. He equated permeation with “non-centralised local organisation of the Labour Party.”⁴³

A conference chaired by Hardie to found a national ILP was organized for January 1893 in Bradford. Shaw felt trepidation as the conference drew near. For a start, although he supported the new party, he worried that a national organization would undermine local flexibility. His main concern was the fourth clause of the Manchester ILP, which pledged its members not to vote for any candidate associated with another political party. In addition, Shaw feared that a Tory plot might lie behind the Bradford conference. Burns had become a Liberal politician, and he fueled this fear. Shaw told Burns, “I have been thinking over what you told me, and I think it looks like a formidable Unionist intrigue with Champion at the wires.”⁴⁴ Many Fabians shared Shaw’s suspicion. Champion was already notorious for his part in the 1885 scandal over Tory Gold in the SDF. Moreover, there were rumors that when Hardie stood for the parliamentary seat of Mid-Lanark in 1888, he had been a “tool” of the “Tory intriguer.”⁴⁵ Nasty questions had been asked about Hardie’s funds. Margaret Harkness eased the pressure, saying publicly that she had donated one hundred pounds. Yet, privately she indicated to Beatrice Webb that she was just a go-between who had not donated a penny.⁴⁶ No wonder, then, that Shaw described Hardie as one of the “ultra-Opportunist excandidates who do not object to contest Parliamentary seats in the name of Labour with finances derived from the man in the moon.”⁴⁷

The London Fabians sent W. S. De Mattos and Shaw as delegates to the Bradford conference with the provisos that attending the conference did not imply that the Fabian Society would merge into a national labor movement or that it would be bound by any decisions the conference reached. The conference debated the Fabians’ credentials before voting to allow them to attend.⁴⁸ Shaw was delighted by the proceedings. His fears proved unfounded. The conference refused to have any truck with Champion and rejected the restriction on flexibility embodied in clause four. As Shaw explained, the conference refused “the Tory money move,” and when the anti-permeationists “wheeled up their big gun (the ‘fourth clause’),” the delegates “spiked it at one smack,” securing “the freedom of the branches to nobble the Liberals wherever that is obviously the right Labour policy.”⁴⁹

Shaw now began to look forward to a time when the Fabians would concentrate on “bringing the Labour party up to the Socialist mark instead of bringing the Radical wing of the Liberal party up to the Independent Labour mark.”⁵⁰ He thought that the ILP would split the radicals from the Liberals, and then the socialists could turn from the need to establish a new party incorporating the radicals to the task of ensuring that this new party embraced a properly socialist program. In Shaw’s view, the only remaining difficulty was financial. Tactical flexibility was necessary only because of organizational weakness. If the ILP had secure funds, it could forget about tactical flexibility and become an effective national party capable of competing in elections to form the government. Shaw made the financial support of the trade unions the litmus test of the viability of independent action.⁵¹ Without the unions’ backing, the ILP would be just another socialist sect, a more flexible, and so slightly superior, version of the SDF. To develop into Shaw’s cherished new party, the ILP needed the financial backing of the trade unions.

At the 1891 Trades Union Congress (TUC), Hardie had proposed a penny levy on union members to finance a parliamentary fund for labor candidates, but his motion had been defeated by two hundred votes to ninety-three. Now, the 1893 TUC declared for public ownership of the means of production and passed Tillett’s motion providing for financial aid to labor candidates in local and parliamentary elections. (Burns helped to ensure that the motion covered workingmen standing as Liberals or Conservatives as well as independent candidates.) In Shaw’s mind, this motion clinched the matter. The ILP could obtain the financing, as well as the support, needed to become a national force capable of winning parliamentary seats. He had the new party for which he had long wished.

While Shaw promoted and engaged the ILP, Webb remained noticeably distant, wedded to the Liberal elite. He spent much of 1891 talking to Mr. Fenton about a safe Progressive seat on the LCC, and he even raised with Francis Schnadhorst the possibility of his standing as a Liberal candidate for Parliament in South Islington.⁵² Webb and his allies were assiduously courting the ears of Liberal politicians such as H. H. Asquith, Edward Grey, R. B. Haldane, and Lord Rosebery. For example, in 1890 Beatrice Webb spoke to Wallas and Haldane in an attempt to forge links between the Fabians and the Liberal elite. When she visited London in early 1891, she discussed her plans with Wallas and Webb but no other Fabian.⁵³ Clearly, these three were not thinking of a new party. On the contrary, they actively opposed the enthusiasm of other Fabians for an independent labor party. At the end of 1891, Webb explained to Beatrice that Wallas could not visit her for the weekend because Wallas was needed at a Fabian meeting to “save the society” from the “impatient element” that wants “to throw the whole movement entirely into the Labour Party.”⁵⁴ Webb spoke publicly against the idea of a labor party at a meeting on 11 December 1891. He reiterated his belief that socialism was about social feeling, not class militancy. He wanted a collectivist party “not restricted to manual workers or any one class … [and] … not pursuing its own class interest, but open to all and seeking the welfare of the whole community.”⁵⁵ Webb found little support among the Fabians. He complained that “Wallas and I are losing influence because we are suspected of too much attachment to the Liberal Party.”⁵⁶

Ironically, Webb was growing increasingly disillusioned with the Liberals. He protested that the new Fabians had turned on him, even though “these nine months have not made me more Liberal, but less.”⁵⁷ Webb believed that the Liberals were drifting without a suitable program. The Liberal government elected in 1892 incensed him by failing to live up to the promise of the 1889 Newcastle program. A disgruntled Webb told Wallas, “The time has come I think for a strong tract showing up the Liberal Party.”⁵⁸

By 1893 Shaw was full of enthusiasm for an independent labor party, and Webb was disillusioned with the Liberals. Together they wrote a Fabian tract, “To Your Tents, O Israel,” which attacked the Liberal government for failing to implement the Newcastle Program and called on the workers to abandon the Liberals, form a trade-union party, raise thirty thousand pounds, and finance fifty parliamentary candidates.⁵⁹ The Fabians called for an independent working-class party backed by the trade unions. Unfortunately, the financial plan adopted by the 1893 TUC relied exclusively on voluntary subscriptions from individual unions. By 1894 most people realized that the individual unions were not going to respond without more vigorous encouragement. Shaw’s hopes were dashed. The leading Fabians tried to return to their various styles of permeation. But “To Your Tents, O Israel” had damaged their relationship with the Liberals. Friendly government ministers and other Liberal politicians felt aggrieved at the dismissal of their efforts to introduce suitable policies.⁶⁰ Liberal Fabians, such as H. W. Massingham and D. G. Ritchie, resigned from the Society. As a result, the Fabians found it increasingly difficult to work through the Liberals. Pease recalled, “At this point the policy of simple permeation of the Liberal Party may be said to have come to an end.”⁶¹

For the rest of the century, the Fabians limped on with wounded forms of their respective versions of permeation. Shaw continued to argue that permeation “breaks down at a certain point because the parties in power are neither Socialists nor members of the working class working unconsciously towards Socialism in pursuit of their own interests.”⁶² He maintained that until a suitable alternative appeared, the Fabians should remain tactically flexible, advancing socialism however circumstances suggested.⁶³ The Webbs, who got married in 1892, repented of their earlier outburst. Beatrice recorded her belief that the attack on the Liberal government had been a mistake.⁶⁴ Sidney became a Progressive member of the LCC and, in the national arena, returned to a strategy based on the idea of impartial expertise. Now, however, the Webbs began to provide socialist expertise to the cooperative movement, the trade unions, and eventually the Labour Party.

The contemporary Marxist Ernest Belfort Bax described Fabianism as “the special movement of the government official, just as militarism is the special movement of the soldier and clericalism of the priest.”⁶⁵ The old historiography often caricatured the leading Fabians, and especially Webb, by reducing their theories and politics to an expression of the interests of a rising professional class of bureaucrats. Even when historians explored the actual ideas of the Fabians, they often wrongly treated them as adhering to a homogeneous outlook based on a theory of rent that allegedly inspired a political strategy of permeating the Liberal Party. In contrast, we have found that the leading Fabians held different and changing economic theories that inspired different and changing political strategies. In this chapter, for example, we came across Fabians who had little interest in permeating existing political elites and who concentrated instead on speaking to radical clubs and at outdoor meetings and on joining marches and demonstrations. Many Fabians were neither wedded to the Liberal Party nor hostile to the ILP; they wanted an independent socialist party, especially if it could obtain proper funding.

Nonetheless, Fabian socialism did have some fairly distinctive and widespread features. It is just that these features are best understood as family resemblances and explained by reference to a tradition of liberal radicalism and the dilemmas posed by the crisis of faith and especially the collapse of classical economics. Most of the Fabians reached their socialist convictions against the background of a liberal radical inheritance as opposed to the Tory and popular radicalisms of their Marxist contemporaries.

For a start, many Fabians remained indebted to liberal radicalism in their focus on practical improvements rather than claims about universal rights. By the 1870s, many liberal radicals had replaced the standard of utility with reformist humanitarianism. The crisis of faith encouraged a generation to transfer the evangelical sense of duty from God to humanity. The tradition of liberal radicalism shifted dramatically, from utilitarianism and an enthusiasm for enlightened self-interest to ethical positivism and the moralization of society. J. S. Mill acted as a bridge between the liberal radicalism of the early and late nineteenth century, defining freedom as doing what one desired while making qualitative judgments between different types of desire.⁶⁶ Ethical positivists then began to conceive of the good life as self-denial, and freedom as individual fulfillment through participating in society with and for others. The Fabians’ ethical positivism appeared in their concern with social duty as the motive for practical improvements to help the poor.

Many Fabians also continued to echo earlier liberal radicals in their belief that economic theory showed what was and was not a practical improvement. The collapse of classical economics meant that the Fabians often relied here on marginalism, neoclassical theory, positivist economics, and later a positivist historical sociology. However, they still treated the social sciences as offering conclusive arguments against the possibility of utopias. Anarchism was utopian because rent would remain in private hands unless the state collected it and used it to provide collective goods. Revolutionary socialism was utopian because evolutionary theory and positivist sociology proved change is inevitably gradual, with the new order emerging out of the old without any abrupt change. Socialism consisted of the extension of the collectivist tendencies already found in society. Several leading Fabians also drew on liberal radicalism in their use of social science to fuse the actual and the ideal. Earlier liberal radicals often treated the laws of political economy as both an explanation of the actual and a teacher of morality; economic necessity encouraged hard work, sobriety, and thrift. Several Fabians similarly treated positivist sociology as both a guide to social laws and a teacher of social duty and collective and cooperative action.

Finally, the Fabians looked on political reform not as a way to solve social ills but as administrative measures to facilitate good government. Although they did not share Mill’s fear that democracy might erode individual liberty, they rarely promoted greater popular participation in government. Generally, they welcomed the rise of a professional civil service and policy experts. The Fabians concentrated on using and improving the established institutions of representative and responsible government. They argued that socialists had a duty to promote reform by taking part in elections, putting pressure on elected politicians, using the press, and joining parties. And they argued that socialists should promote the efficient organization of public affairs. Indeed, once the Fabians increasingly began to associate socialism with the deliberate extension of collectivist institutions and policies, they often suggested that socialism just was a more widespread and efficient public administration.

The Fabians were liberal radicals who confronted the Victorian crisis of faith and the collapse of classical economics. Some explored secularism, anarchism, Marxism, and theories of rent. Over time, however, Fabian socialism came to draw most heavily on ethical positivism as a response to the crisis of faith and on evolutionary sociology as a response to the collapse of classical economics. The leading Fabians believed that people had a social duty to promote the common good and to uplift the poor through the gradual and continuous development of collective institutions. By the 1890s, Olivier, Wallas, and the Webbs regularly defined socialism in terms of positivist sociology. The distinctive feature of Fabian socialism had become a focus on institutional and administrative relationships rather than economic ones. The Fabians had little patience with either romantic utopias or revolutionary action. Fabianism involved a gradual and institutional approach to social theory and social reform.