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Edward R. Pease’s The History of the Fabian Society is a scholarly chronicle of the British socialist movement from its early stirrings in the 1880s through the First World War. The work opens with a dense catalogue of topics, housing, education, electoral politics, municipal trade, and a litany of personalities such as H. W. Macrosty, J. F. Oakeshott, and H. G. Wells, followed by a sweeping narrative that situates the Society’s development against the backdrop of contemporary debates on poverty, labour representation, and the rise of syndicalism. Pease draws on a wealth of primary sources, from parliamentary reports to Fabian tracts, and concludes each chapter with detailed appendices that list executive members, publications, and illustrations, offering a comprehensive reference for the movement’s institutional evolution.
The book’s voice is that of an early‑20th‑century insider, marked by a formal, documentary style that blends factual enumeration with reflective commentary on ideological currents. Its language reflects the period’s academic tone, replete with citations of contemporary periodicals such as The Spectator and The Nineteenth Century. Readers who relish meticulous political histories, scholars of British socialism, or anyone interested in the intellectual origins of gradualist reform will find Pease’s methodical account both informative and engaging.
The opening · free to read
Housing--"The Education muddle and the way out"--Supporting the Conservatives--The Education Acts of 1902 and 1903--Feeding School Children--The Labour Representation Committee formed--The Fabian Election Fund--Will Crooks elected in 1910--A Fabian Cabinet Minister--Resignation of Graham Wallas--The younger generation: H.W. Macrosty, J.F. Oakeshott, John W. Martin--Municipal Drink Trade--Tariff Reform--The Decline of the Birth-rate.
The controversy described in the preceding chapter was not the only business that occupied the Society at the period of the South African War.
Amongst minor affairs was a change of premises. The office first taken, in 1891, was at 276 Strand, in the island at that time formed by Holywell Street which ran between the churches of St. Clement Danes and St. Martin's in the Fields. At the end of 1899 the London County Council acquired the property for the Kingsway and Aldwych clearance scheme, and we found new quarters in a basement at Clement's Inn, a pleasant couple of rooms, with plenty of light, though sometimes maliciously misdescribed as a cellar. At the end of 1908 we removed into three much more spacious rooms at the same address, also in "a dismal basement," where we remained until in 1914 the Society rented a house at 25 Tothill Street, Westminster.
Another undertaking was a conference on Housing. Although the first public effort of the Society was its conference at South Place Chapel in 1886, this particular form of propaganda has never commended itself to the Executive, chiefly no doubt because conferences, to which numerous representative persons are invited, are most useful for promoting moderate reforms which have already made themselves acceptable to the members and officials of local governing bodies. Such reforms the Fabian Society does not regard as its special business; it prefers to pioneer; it is true that it uses its machinery for spreading a knowledge of local government in all its forms, but that is mainly a matter of office routine.
However, for once we took up an already popular proposal. The Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 was an admirable measure, but it was hedged about with obstacles which rendered it very difficult to work in urban areas and virtually useless in rural districts. We had drafted an amending Bill for rural districts in 1895, which was read a first time in the House of Commons on the day of the vote on the supply of cordite, when the defeat of the Liberal Government led to the dissolution of Parliament.
The Act of 1890 was singular in one respect. Part III was headed "Working-Class Lodging Houses," and was drafted accordingly, but the definition of lodging-houses was made to include cottages with not more than half an acre of garden, thus enabling houses to be provided by local authorities in town and country, apart from clearances of insanitary areas. For years this definition was overlooked, and very few people were aware that cottages could be built in rural districts by the Guardians, and later by Rural District Councils. Our Leaflet No. 63, "Parish Council Cottages," issued in 1895, was almost the first publication drawing attention to the subject, and with one exception no use was made of these powers of the Act in rural districts before that year. Our Tract 76, "Houses for the People," published in 1897, explained the Act in simple language, and was widely circulated.
In 1900 an amending Act, chiefly to simplify procedure in rural districts, was promised by the Government; and the conference we called was intended to agitate for widening its scope and strengthening its provisions. The papers, read by Clement Edwards (afterwards M.P.), Miss Constance Cochrane, Alderman Thompson, and others, were first discussed at a preliminary private meeting in December, and then submitted to the Conference, which was held on March 1st, the day following the Conference at which the Labour Party was established. By choosing this date we secured a large number of delegates from Trade Unions, and these were reinforced by numerous delegates from Vestries and other local authorities, altogether numbering about 400. At the close of the proceedings a National Committee was formed with headquarters at the Fabian Office, which had however only a short career. The Conference papers were printed as a bulky penny tract, "The House Famine and How to Relieve It," which rapidly went through two editions. We also published "Cottage Plans and Common Sense," by Raymond Unwin, which describes how cottages should be built--an anticipation of garden suburbs and town-planning--and a compilation of everything which Parish Councils had done and could do, including housing, prepared by Sidney Webb and called "Five Years' Fruits of the Parish Councils Act," which in 1908 was revised and reissued as "Parish Councils and Village Life." A speech by W.C. Steadman, M.P., who was a member of the Society, was printed under the title "Overcrowding and Its Remedy." Our agitation was not without results. The amending Acts of 1900, 1903, and 1909 have done much to remove the unnecessary administrative complexities of the Act of 1890, but in fact the problem is still unsolved, and the scandalous character of our housing, both urban and rural, remains perhaps the blackest blot in the record of British civilisation.
The Society had always been concerned in public education. Its first electoral success was when Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam were elected to the London School Board in 1888, and except for one interval of three years Mr. Headlam has sat on the School Board and its successor, the London County Council, ever since. Sidney Webb was Chairman or Vice-Chairman of the L.C.C. Technical Education Board from its foundation in 1893, almost continuously until the Board came to an end in 1904, after the London Education Act. Graham Wallas was elected to the School Board in 1894, and from 1897 onwards was Chairman of the School Management Committee; he had been re-elected in 1900, and was therefore filling the most important administrative position on the Board when the Education question was before the Society.
The educational scheme of the Society was not, however, the joint production of its experts. It was entirely the work of Sidney Webb. Headlam and Wallas, and the members who took part, contributed their share as critics, but as critics only, and for the most part as hostile critics. It was in part a struggle between the County Councils and the School Boards and in part a controversy over the denominational schools. Wallas opposed our proposals in the main because he regarded them as too favourable to sectarian education: Headlam was against them on both issues. They put up a vigorous fight, but they were beaten every time in the Society, as the defenders of School Boards were beaten ultimately in Parliament and in the country.
The first step in the controversy was taken in May, 1899, when a Members' Meeting was held to discuss "The Education Muddle and the Way Out," in the form of sixteen resolutions, six on "General Principles" and the remainder on "Immediate Practicable Proposals." These were introduced by Webb, and the "General Principles," advocating the transfer of education to the local government authority and the abolition of School Boards, were adopted. Amendments by Graham Wallas were defeated by large majorities, and the discussion on the second part, the immediately practicable proposals, was adjourned.
At the adjourned meeting in November, 1899, the resolutions were put aside and a draft tract was submitted. Graham Wallas again led the opposition, which was always unsuccessful, though serious shortcomings in the proposals were revealed and it was agreed to meet the criticisms wherever possible. Finally it was decided to appoint a Revision Committee, on which Wallas was placed. Thirteen months passed before the scheme came before the Society again; in December the tract as amended was submitted, and this time the chief critic was Mr. Headlam. On the main question of principle he found only one supporter, and with minor amendments the scheme was adopted.
It is unnecessary to describe the Fabian plan, because it is substantially the system of administration, established by the Act of 1902, under which present-day education is organised. The main difference is that we presented a revolutionary proposal in an extremely moderate form and Mr. Arthur Balfour found himself able to carry out our principles more thoroughly than we thought practically possible. Our tract advocated the abolition of all School Boards, but anticipated, incorrectly, that those of the twenty or thirty largest cities would be too strong to be destroyed: and whilst insisting that the public must find all the money required to keep the voluntary schools in full efficiency, we only proposed that this should take the form of a large grant by County Councils and County Boroughs, whilst Mr. Balfour was able to make the Councils shoulder the cost.
How far the draughtsmen of the Bill were influenced by the Fabian scheme cannot here be estimated, but the authorities at Whitehall were so anxious to see it that they were supplied with proofs before publication; and the tract when published was greedily devoured by perplexed M.P.'s.
It must be recollected that the whole complex machinery of educational administration was in the melting-pot, and nobody knew what was to come out of it. It had been assumed by nearly everybody that education was a department of local government which demanded for its management a special class of representatives. The Liberal Party was attached to School Boards, because their creation had been one of the great party victories of Mr. Gladstone's greatest Government, because they embodied a triumph over the Church and the virtual establishment of nonconformity in control of half the elementary schools of the country. Socialists and the vague labour section took the same view partly because they believed theoretically in direct election for all purposes and partly because the cumulative vote, intended to secure representation to minorities, gave them better chances of success at the polls than they then had in any other local election. The Board schools, with ample funds derived from the rates, were far better than the so-called voluntary schools; but more than half the children of the nation were educated in these schools, under-staffed, ill-equipped, and on the average in all respects inefficient. Every year that passed turned out thus its quota of poorly educated children. Something had to be done at once to provide more money for these inferior schools. It might be better that they should be abolished and State schools everywhere supplied, but this was a counsel of perfection, and there was no time to wait for it. Then again the distinction between elementary education for the poor, managed by School Boards and by the voluntary school authorities, and other education controlled and subsidised by Town and County Councils, was disastrous, the more so since a recent legal decision (the Cockerton case) had restricted the limits of School Board education more narrowly than ever.
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