Canada and the World
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Last update
12 January 2011
Fabian Society
Think Tank Influences Policy
The inequalities of Victorian society prompted a group of progressive thinkers to start a group to press for change
Quintus Fabius Maximus was a Roman general famous for avoiding direct battle. He developed the tactic of quick, minor attacks and delaying the enemy’s progress. To a group of British socialists in the late 19th century he seemed the perfect model so they borrowed his name when they formed the Fabian Society.
Socialist Group Founded in Victorian London
Edith Nesbit and Hubert Bland married in 1880 just prior to the birth of their child,
the conception of which would have been quite the scandal in polite society. But,
Bland 
and Nesbitt cared little for the opinions or conventions of polite society;
they were socialists and, in 1884, they formed The Fabian Society along with a Quaker
friend Edward Pease (left), who later wrote a history of the group.
The Fabians were a debating society and they soon attracted some of the luminaries of the late Victorian period. Among its early members were sexologist Havelock Ellis, Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx, playwright George Bernard Shaw, and the economist Sidney Webb and his wife, sociologist Beatrice Webb.
Fabians Aimed for an Egalitarian Society
Surrounded by evidence of the exploitation of workers by factory owners, the Fabians aimed to rebuild society along more equal lines. They wanted to put a stop to the inequalities that led to children growing up in squalid slums such as those of the Gorbals in Glasgow (below).
They rejected Karl Marx’s notion of revolutionary class struggle and favoured a peaceful and evolutionary change to socialism. They chose education and gradual acceptance of socialist thought, instead of forced, violent indoctrination.
They held lectures, discussion groups, conferences, and summer schools, carried out research into political, economic and social problems, national and international, and published books, pamphlets, and periodicals. They promoted equality through collective ownership and democratic control of the nation’s resources.
Fabian Society Guides the Political Agenda
At the start of the 20th century more liberal notions of social organization were taking hold in the United Kingdom.
The Fabian Society’s ideas were more progressive than was considered acceptable to political elites. It called for a minimum wage, a national education system, replacement of slums with decent housing, universal health care, and an end to inherited titles and privileges.
In 1900, its members were in at the start of Britain’s Labour Party and every prime minister from that party since has been a member of the Fabian Society.
Fabians still Influential Today
There are Fabian Society chapters all over the world and more than 6,000 members
in the U.K. It remains a think tank for centre-
According to The New Statesman (May 2009), the Society’s “influence has grown under current general secretary Sunder Katwala… In recent times, its research and publications have focused on economic inequality, child poverty, progressive taxation, and constitutional reform.”
The Fabian Society is not a political party and does not run candidates in elections. Its members do, however, work on the election campaigns of parties that share its goals.
Sources
Fabian Society
“Fabian Society.” New Statesman, May 29, 2009.
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The Fabian Society sprang from another group called The Fellowship of the New Life. Britain’s first socialist prime minister Ramsey MacDonald was a member, and later of the Fabians, and he said the Fellowship’s main influences were the American authors Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
FAMOUS FABIANS
Playwright George Bernard Shaw
Novelist H. G. Wells
Women’s right activist Annie Besant
Educator Graham Wallas
Author Virginia Woolf
Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst
Philosopher Bertrand Russell