Socialists at their least revolutionary and the results of their efforts.

The Fabian Society is a British socialist organization whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means.^[1][2] It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the foundations of the Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the decolonisation of the British Empire, especially India.

Today, the society functions primarily as a think tank and is one of 15 socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (theAustralian Fabian Society), Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and the now disbanded League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.

The Fabian Society was founded on 4 January 1884 in London as an offshoot of a society founded in 1883 called The Fellowship of the New Life.^[3] Fellowship members included poets Edward Carpenter and John Davidson, sexologist Havelock Ellis and the future Fabian secretary Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow, but when some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid society's transformation, it was decided that a separate society, the Fabian Society, also be set up. All members were free to attend both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of Western European Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the rest of the world.

The Fellowship of the New Life was dissolved in 1899,^[4] but the Fabian Society grew to become the pre-eminent academic society in the United Kingdom in theEdwardian era, typified by the members of its vanguard Coefficients club. Public meetings of the Society were for many years held at Essex Hall, a popular location just off the Strand in central London.^[5]

The Fabian Society, which favoured gradual change rather than revolutionary change, was named – at the suggestion of Frank Podmore – in honour of the Romangeneral Fabius Maximus (nicknamed "Cunctator", meaning "the Delayer"). His Fabian strategy advocated tactics of harassment and attrition rather than head-on battles against the Carthaginian army under the renowned general Hannibal.

An explanatory note appearing on the title page of the group's first pamphlet declared:

"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."^[6]

Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonaldand Emmeline Pankhurst. Even Bertrand Russell briefly became a member, but resigned after he expressed his belief that the Society's principle of entente (in this case, between countries allying themselves against Germany) could lead to war.

At the core of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Together, they wrote numerous studies^[7] of industrial Britain, including alternative co-operative economics that applied to ownership of capital as well as land.

The first Fabian Society pamphlets^[8] advocating tenets of social justice coincided with the zeitgeist of Liberal reforms during the early 1900s. The Fabian proposals however were considerably more progressive than those that were enacted in the Liberal reform legislation. The Fabians lobbied for the introduction of a minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a universal health care system in 1911 and for the abolition of hereditary peerages in 1917.^[9]

Criticism

In the early 1900s Fabian Society members advocated the ideal of a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. This is credited to the passage of the Half-Caste Act, and its subsequent implementation in Australia, where children were systematically and forcibly removed from their parents, so that the British colonial regime could "protect" the Aborigine children from their parents. In an article published in The Guardian on 14 February 2008, (following the apology offered by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd to the "stolen generations"), Geoffrey Robertsoncriticised Fabian socialists for providing the intellectual justification for the eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.^[29][30] Such views on socialism, inequality and eugenics in early 20th century Fabians was not limited to one individual, it was a widely shared view in Fabian Society.^[31][32]

This is what they did for the edification of ethnic minorities:

Half-Caste Act was the common name given to Acts of Parliament passed in Victoria and Western Australia in 1886.^[1] They became the model for legislation of Aboriginal communities throughout Australia, such as the Aboriginal Protection and restriction of the sale of opium act 1897 inQueensland.^[2]