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In 1883 a small group of Socialists organized what they called the Fabian Society.

In time it included such eminent persons as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant, George Bernard Shaw, Ramsay MacDonald and others. These Englishmen believed that if socialism was to be brought to England it would have to be done gradually and not by violent revolutionary means. They decided they would make the attempt through political methods. They adopted the policy of the Roman general, Quintus Fabius, who held the only way to defeat Hannibal was to avoid a general engagement and by clever withdrawals lure him to battle in small sectors and defeat him in sections. Hence they called the movement the Fabian movement. Their strategy as well as their program became known as Fabian Socialism. Sidney Webb, their great statesman, later known as Lord Passfield, saw clearly that if socialism was to make any headway against the solid rock of British opinion it would have to do so by constitutional processes. The cause must move one step at a time, he insisted, taking care never to offend the moral sense of the masses who must be offered only so much at each stage as they would accept. This Fabian Society never had more than 4000 members. Yet it was this small group that made the whole amazing triumph of socialism possible in England. This triumph was not gained through sheer luck or accident. The Fabians early outlined a definite plan. They did not, of course, invent it out-of-hand in a session or two around a conference table. It grew in their minds a little at a time. It was probably not until around the turn of the century that they saw it clearly in all its parts. This plan may be briefly summarized as follows: 1. The first feature was the Fabian Society itself, which be- came the political planning machine that made the plans, was the training school for Socialist leaders, schooled speakers and writers and leaders, directed the national educational program and acted as the general staff of the movement. 2. The Fabians began by advocating not a Socialist State but a Welfare State as the prologue. 3. They resolved to offer their program in small successive sections--by means of gradualism, as it came to be known. 4. They decided against total State ownership of land and industry. They proposed State ownership of the great basic functions --credit, electric power, transportation, basic metals. The balance of the economic system would be left in private hands but operated under plans made by the State. 5. They held they must capture the mind of the working class and to that end must take over the apparatus--that is, the officialdom--of the labor unions. 6. They decided to form a political arm--a party--which later became the British Labor Party. 7. They decided to begin by cooperating with the Liberal Party, which corresponded to our Democratic Party, until their own Labor Party acquired strength enough to displace it. 8. They agreed they must penetrate and capture the instruments of public opinion and information--the writers, the churchmen and the schools. This plan had one thing to be said for it. It succeeded. Its central aim was to bring on socialism without mentioning that odious word--to offer to the voters one small part of the Socialist machine at a time without the Socialist label on it; to smuggle socialism into the social fabric without arousing the suspicions of the masses. Whatever may be said for it, it was a sneak attack. Now let us see, briefly, how it worked. Actually the movement did not get well under way until about 1905. Behold at that moment the majestic edifice of Great Britain--from her sea-girt citadel extending her sway over a vast empire spreading over all the continents, her navy patrolling the seven seas of which she was the mistress, her factories sending out mountains of products to every land from which in turn flowed golden streams of raw materials and money, her pound sterling the very symbol of financial stability, her might invincible, her very name a synonym for wealth and power. Edward VII sat upon his solid throne and England's ancient aristocracy ranged around it in grandeur and security at the heart of what was supposed to be the best of all possible worlds. It was into this immense and virile organism that this small coterie of Socialist doctrinaires thrust themselves. They got in motion around 1905, the year the Liberal Party came to power under Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Asquith and Lloyd George. Nine years later the Labor Party had representatives in the British cabinet. Four years after that their party was the official opposition, having pushed the old Liberal Party aside. In five more years their leader, Ramsay MacDonald, was Prime Minister of England. In this year 1949 a Socialist government rules supreme in England and England has become one of the Socialist nations.

---------------------John T. Flynn.The Road Ahead, New York: The Devin-Adair Company,1945, 13-15

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