History and Influence of the Fabian Society

London, 1884.

A group of socialists sit down with a plan that will outlive every one of them.

Remake Britain without a revolution.

Alright, but how?

Well, get inside the institutions.

Influence the people running them.

Change the country, one law at a time.

They called themselves the Fabian Society.

Their method was called permeation.

Councils.

Universities.

The civil service.

Parliament.

Put your people and ideas where decisions are made.

Bring in public ownership and more services run by government.

Bit by bit.

Fabius Maximus was a Roman general known for avoiding the big battle.

Wearing down his enemy and waiting for the right moment to strike.

That's who they named themselves after.

Jesus warned in Matthew chapter 7 verse 15.

Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing,

but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Two years after the Society was formed,

the Fabians put the same image on one of their own documents.

A wolf in sheep's clothing.

Yeah, really.

In 1895, leading Fabians helped found the London School of Economics.

A year later,

Sidney Webb wrote about the breeding of degenerate hordes who were unfit for social life.

Deciding who should have children and who shouldn't.

And this wasn't some nutter who came to a meeting.

Sidney Webb was one of the most important Fabians who ever lived.

By 1900, the Society had helped form the Labour Representation Committee,

the organisation that became the Labour Party.

George Bernard Shaw wrote,

HG Wells advocated controlling the reproduction of people he considered unfit.

And this is where it gets properly dark.

Because in 1910, Sidney Webb called... for preventing the continued procreation of people he described as feeble-minded and degenerate.

His answer,

interfere,

interfere,

interfere.

Just let that sink in.

The same political circle arguing that the state should care for people throughout their lives

was also arguing that the state should interfere with who was allowed to reproduce.

Around 1910, the wolf appeared again in the Fabian window.

George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb are shown hammering the world on an anvil beneath the words,

remould it nearer to the heart's desire.

And above them,

the wolf in sheep's clothing.

By the 1930s, Sydney and Beatrice Webb were praising Stalin's Soviet Union as a new civilisation.

Famine,

forced collectivisation,

political repression,

the purges, the gulag.

Millions were starving,

imprisoned or dead, while the Webb's presented the Soviet system as progress.

They dismissed reports of millions dying in the famine as fantastically excessive.

Even in 1942, they wrote,

Stalin is not a dictator.

Yeah, course not mate.

They also called the Soviet Union,

the most inclusive and equalised democracy in the world.

By 1945, the Fabians had gone from a small group in London,

to 229 members elected to parliament,

many serving under Clement Attlee.

Then the names kept coming.

Harold Wilson,

James Callaghan,

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown.

The Society's own history says every Labour Prime Minister has been associated with it.

Keir Starmer sat on its elected executive.

When Labour won in 2024,

the Fabian Society said Starmer and more than half his shadow cabinet were Fabian members.

Its annual report also said the Society had helped shape Labour's manifesto before it entered government.

Rachel Reeves and David Lammy declared Fabian membership while serving in Starmer's cabinet.

The Society names Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband as prominent Fabians.

Sadiq Khan was Fabian chair and is now one of its vice presidents.

Their accounts name Meta,

Lloyds Banking Group,

Maximus,

the government contractor involved in DWP health and disability assessments,

UNICEF,

RUCI,

insurers, trade

unions. They say funders can't dictate what gets published.

All right.

And funding doesn't prove that any policy was bought.

But fund the report.

Sponsor the conference.

Put your issue in front of MPs,

advisers and future ministers before the public even knows the argument has started.

Money gets you into the conversation.

That's how influence works in Westminster.

The door to influencing policy is wide open.

And now Andy Burnham is prime minister.

He wrote for a Fabian Labour leadership pamphlet and appeared at their events for years.

Around him sit Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting, their former vice-chair.

At least 12 people still serving as ministers had formally declared Fabian membership before the reshuffle.

And that doesn't include every senior figure who held Fabian office, worked for the society,

wrote for it or repeatedly appeared on its platforms.

And the mad bit?

It's all public.

The history,

the members,

the funders, the

route into government.

For more than 140 years, the same method has kept working.

Inside the institutions,

build the network,

wait.

So remember Christ's warning.

The wolf puts on the fleece,

walks through the front door,

takes a seat at the table,

and by the time anybody looks up,

it's helping write the rules.

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