Chapter Seven - A Fabian Abroad 1906-1912

George had joined the Fabian Society in his first year at Cambridge, and, when a branch of the Society was formed there the next year, in 1906, he joined that. The Cambridge University Fabian Society was the first Cambridge society to have women members from the beginning.
H. G. Wells spoke at one of the first meetings of the society and everyone was terribly impressed by him. He was then in the midst of the controversy he had created with his ideas for the reform of the London Society. But what got the attention of the young people was that although a married man with a family, he openly stated his belief in sexual freedom – an unheard of public admission in those days, when a mere ten years before Oscar Wilde had been sent down after being convicted of being a homosexual. But it was not this lurid drivel which drew George to Wells, and his lifelong appreciation of him – it was to the radical social ideals he espoused, which found an answering pulse in George’s own heart.

In January 1884, the Fabian Society was founded by Edith Nesbit, Hubert Bland, the Quaker Edward Pease, Frank Podmore, and Havelock Ellis, the great literary critic and psychologist. It was named after Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who advocated the destabilising the political opposition by harassing operations rather than pitched battles. Their founders were earnest, romantic and middle class, and their object was the reconstruction of society on the highest moral principles.

They believed that capitalism had created an unjust and inefficient society but rejected the revolutionary socialism, the ‘street brawls’ of the Socialist Democratic Federation, of which William Morris was a member, and wanted to make the conversion to socialism as painless as possible. They were a middle ground between the violent Socialist Democratic Federation and the too-religious Fellowship of the New Life Society, from which many of the founders came. Fellowship of the New Life was a commune with utopian ideals, which educated the intellectuals, bohemians and disillusioned clergy of England in the art of infiltrating the government and using the machinery of government for their own socialist ends. The first Fabians had almost all been lapsed Anglicans from Evangelical homes. Dissenting clergymen to found a place in the Fabian Society and the London Progressives.

Frank Podmore met Edward Pease at one of the Spiritualist séances that were the vogue in London, and they became close friends. In this same period a group of young dons from Trinity College, Cambridge, were also turning to psychic research as a substitute for their lost Evangelical faith. In February 1882, Podmore took Pease to a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research. The progenitor of the Society for Psychical Research and the Fabian Society was the Cambridge University Ghost Society, founded in 1851. Among the members of the Society was Arthur Balfour – later the Tory Prime Minister.

George Bernard Shaw said of the Fellowship of the New Life Society that the process of reforming society along socialist lines would prove too slow if it depended on the members perfecting themselves first. The new Fabians relied on factual argument, rather than emotion, to sway people to their cause, and were by and large pacifists, not militants as were the Marxists, though they had been tarred with that brush.

Formed in the wake of the London Match Girls strike and the Dock strike, their first pamphlet Why are the Many Poor? focused on the thirty percent of London’s population who lived below the poverty line. Early in their history they began a series of fortnightly lectures which have continued ever since. Early lectures ranged from How Can We Nationalise Accumulated Wealth and Private Property to The Economics of a Postivist Community and Personal Duty under the Present System. The Fabian Essays, which followed, edited by George Bernard Shaw, were wildly popular, and focused on righting the inequality in society, finding alternative means to industrialisation, trades unionism, and universal suffrage for women. Among the members were Sydney Olivier, William Clarke, Eleanor Marx, Annie Bessant (the spiritualist), Graham Wallas, J.A. Hobson, the Webbs Sidney and Beatrice, J.R. Clynes, Harry Snell, Clementina Black, Edward Carpenter, Clement Atlee and Ramsay MacDonald (both Prime Ministers), Emmeline Pankhurst, Walter Crane, Arnold Bennett, Sylvester Williams, Clifford Allen, Amber Reeves, Charles and George Trevelyan, Hugh Dalton (another climbing friend later to become a member of the government), Geoffrey Keynes, and Rupert Brooke.

William Morris, the great master of the Arts and Crafts Movement, a former member of the Socialist Democratic Federation, and founder of the Socialist League, strongly criticised the Fabian Essays. He disagreed with what he called ‘the fantastic and unreal tactic’ of permeation which ‘could not be carried out in practice, and which, if it could be, would still leave us in a position from which we should have to begin our attack on capitalism over again’. Morris believed that education was the main function of any socialist organisation.

They were not confrontational with Morris. According to Edith Nesbit, one of the founders, ‘The talks after the Fabian meeting are very jolly... I do think the Fabians are quite the nicest set of people I ever knew. Mr. Pease's people are Quakers and he has the cheerful serenity and self-containedness common to the sect.’ But all was not so jolly. A few years later, Sidney Webb received a letter from a solicitor naming him as executor of the estate of one Mr. Henry Hutchinson from Derbyshire. According to his wife, ‘All he knew of the man (whom he had never seen) was the fact that he was an eccentric old gentleman, member of the Fabian Society, who alternately sent considerable cheques and wrote querulous letters about Shaw's rudeness, or some other fancied grievance he had suffered at the hands of some member of the Fabian Society.’ When Sidney heard he was made executor, he expected that the old man had left something to the Fabian Society. He left nearly £10,000 to be spent in ten years. Then poor old man blew his brains out. Part of that considerable sum went to the founding of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The influence of Morris and of artists such as John Ruskin, and of socialism in general on the political life of the country was palpable. Clement Attlee, the Prime Minster responsible for establishing the National Health Service after the Second War, told of his earliest encounters with socialism and the Fabians,
‘My elder brother, Tom, was an architect and a great reader of Ruskin and Morris. I too admired these great men and began to understand their social gospel. My brother was helping at the Maurice Hostel in the nearby Hoxton district of London. Our reading became more extensive. After looking into many social reform ideas – such as co-partnership – we both came to the conclusion that the economic and ethical basis of society was wrong. We became socialists. In October, 1907, we went to Clements Inn to try and join the Fabian Society. Edward Pease, the Secretary, regarded us as if we were two beetles who had crept under the door, and when we said we wanted to join the Society he asked coldly, “Why?” We said, humbly, that we were socialists and persuaded him we were genuine. I remember very well the first Fabian Society meeting we attended at Essex Hall. The platform seemed to be full of bearded men: Aylmer Maude, William Sanders, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw. I said to my brother, “Have we got to grow a beard to join this show?” H. G. Wells was on the platform, speaking with a little piping voice; he was very unimpressive.’

George had less of a difficult time of it – he went into the Society’s office with Rupert and Geoffrey Keynes on a trip to London one weekend in the Michaelmas term and the three of them signed on with no difficulties. They were, moreover, given handfuls of tracts to disseminate at their Colleges. Perhaps Attlee and his brother looked somehow suspicious, posers.

George, as I have said, adored Shaw, which was one of the first things to delight me about him, unpopular as the great playwright was in my father’s house. He went to one of Shaw’s many lectures when the great man appeared at Trinity and wrote home to his father about the evening, which, not unnaturally, alarmed Herbert Mallory a good deal. Shaw was no more popular with George’s father than with mine. Shaw had always been a brilliant speaker as well as a provocative writer. During the early years of the Fabian Society he spoke constantly at public meetings, drawing crowded audiences. Charles Trevelyan said of him that Shaw was ‘very much what I hoped and expected, excessively talkative, genial and amusing, and not unduly aggressive or cynical. He is not full of praise for anything or anybody – but is the perfection of real good nature.’

I went to one of those Tuesday night lectures the Fabians put on, when George was pressing tracts on me, and Shaw was speaking. He made an indelible impression, but not for what he said. I cannot recall that for the life of me. It was the man himself that lingered in the mind: his physical magnificence, splendid bearing, superb elocution, the unexpected Irish brogue, and brilliant wit were the chief memories of his speech. Truthfully, I was more awed that here was the author of Major Barbara than anything he said about women’s suffrage or vegetarianism or whatever his subject was.

What alarmed the older generation most I suppose was the appearance of the young people, for at these meetings, there were a large number of young women with short hair and young men with long. But a good many of the older Fabians were as settled in their ways as their more traditional counterparts. The old pioneers who had been active in the movement before the young people were born thought that what Keir Hardie had said in the year one and the resolution passed by a conference in the 1890s was gospel and that it was sacrilege to alter it for something more practical in the ‘10s and ‘20s. Socialism for them was still of the Utopian kind, a mixture of Robert Owen, William Morris and of the mid-Victorian social reformers. But they believed in democracy and thought that by propaganda a Parliamentary majority could be obtained for revolutionary changes.
What I got from George was far more practical than utopian dreams. The Fabian Manifesto, The True Radical Programme, The Impossibilities of Anarchism, Fabianism and the Empire and best of this lot, Socialism for Millionaires – appealing perhaps to my upbringing. But I was never sure if I was meant to share it with my father. Perish the thought! It would have given my poor unemotional, Temperance-loving religious father a stroke. Although, perhaps in the end, the way things worked out for my family, I should have done. But, much less general were the sort dealing with women’s place in society. I have several of these still, one written by Shaw which when George gave it me was positively incendiary. It is called Freedom for Women, and runs:
Unless woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself. It is false to say that woman is now directly the slave of man: she is the immediate slave of duty; and as man's path to freedom is strewn with the wreckage of the duties and ideals he has trampled on, so must hers be.

We had a bit of row about it after I read it. We were sitting in Rumpelmayer’s, which was always very crowded. Worse, we were sitting in the great frosted glass window that connected to the atrium on the other side, so we were especially conspicuous.
‘Surely you can’t expect me to take this seriously,’ I challenged.
‘Why ever not?’ He drank his tea with an expression of genuine puzzlement.
‘Because it goes against every bond that holds society together! What would you have done if your mother neglected her duty to you children and went off being a free spirit, looking after her own interests?’
George regarded me with irony. ‘My mother did neglect her duty to us children and went off being a free spirit, looking after her own interests. They were noble interests – charitable works – but her own interests nonetheless. It did us no harm.’
I was quite sceptical of this. ‘Did it not?’ Did his depression and inability to keep appointments or finish a task at anything but the last moment not spring from this neglect? But he didn’t give me time to continue.
‘No. We’re all quite independent and think for ourselves and are not afraid of trying on new ideas.’ He meant this very earnestly, I could see, but I was still not convinced that his mother’s pursuit of her own interests had not done them more harm than good. Traff, for one, was arrogant and touchy far beyond what was normal for a boy his age – a characteristic he carried with him all his life. Avie was like a beautiful caged bird – the world of wife and now mother was too small for her. Only Mary seemed serene, of them all. I said this, frankly, and he paled and regarded at me pensively.

‘That’s not a view of us I had considered,’ he murmured. I had disconcerted him.
‘Besides,’ I continued, warmed to the subject now, ‘would you want a wife like this, yourself?’
‘Yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘No slave to duty, to the round of the nursery and the meals schedule and church fetes and what other people think, but someone who does what she’s good at, is full of expression and eager to know and grow – not ossify into a plaster Madonna a year after the wedding. I’d have expected that you, of all women, would have some sympathy with this view.’ Some nerve had been touched, to elicit this passionate response. Passers-by regarded us curiously. Was he, I wondered, rebelling because this nurturance was what he never got, thus would deny it to all? Alive to this possibility, I tried to soften my words.
‘But, George, my mother’s attention and kindness was the greatest good, the greatest joy of my childhood. She was a refuge. Would you deny a child this?’
He started at this and was visibly taken aback. ‘You misunderstand me! Of course I would not deny a child comfort! But if this attention is not natural to the mother and is a burden done out of duty, then it is hypocrisy and should not be expected.’
‘It is unnatural to no mother I have ever seen,’ I murmured, ‘but part and parcel of the condition.’

He regarded me frankly. ‘Have you been to poorer parts of town? Or, don’t even seek that far! Take a tour of one of our noble houses! You will find mother-love equally absent, I think. To think it is a natural state conferred by biology is naïve.’
‘Thank you.’ I drank my tea. Many a sharp retort crowded my mind in that little while. Finally, I said, ‘I can only judge by my own experience and observation.’
‘Well then you and those you have observed have been extraordinarily lucky,’ George replied. I couldn’t tell if his attitude were based on genuine cynicism, a fleeting depressive mood, or a considered position for the sake of argument. He decided me in favour of the latter with his next words:
‘Don’t you care that women be equal to men in all ways, be emancipated? To work if they want to, at work they want to do, to have equal rights in property and financial affairs, be able to vote?’
I was terribly relieved. ‘Of course I care! But it doesn’t mean tearing apart the fabric of society to do it. What Shaw advocates is purely selfish and unconscionable – and further, any man who did such things would be rightly called a bounder. I cannot believe that you would ever behave this way to your family – your own, or your parents... Would you?’
George smiled now, ruefully. ‘Probably not. I’ve disappointed my father in some ways – not going into the Army, not becoming a clergyman, espousing socialism, but I can’t say that I would neglect my family and friends in the basic ways in their times of need.’
‘I shouldn’t think so!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’ve only ever shown kindness and attention to your friends and family, so far as I’ve seen.’
‘It’s true,’ this with a mock pious expression. ‘I have been rather a saint.’
I shook my head. ‘So, why fobbing Shaw at his most radical on to me?’
He looked at me very directly. ‘I wanted to see how radical you really were.’

Better received were the works of Katharine Glasier. While a Classics mistress in Bristol, Mrs. Glasier gave her story, she was on her way to church when she encountered a demonstration by low-paid women workers, and discovered the extent of their problems. She then joined the Bristol Fabian Society and gave up her prep school job to work at a board school in the working-class district of Bristol. Her pamphlets were, to me, much more welcome, with titles like Socialism and the Home, and The Religion of Socialism. She eventually became a member of the Independent Labour Party, and though she had vowed to have no children when she saw the love that Emmeline Pankhurst’s son showered on her, she gave up this stance. She considered herself a Christian Socialist, and because she did not attempt to throw over the whole structure of society as some of the militant socialists did, she was, to me, much more appealing. There was much in the socialist platform that I could understand and agree with, even if some of it – free love, vegetarianism – left me cold.

The Fabian Society was the foundation for the Labour Party, as the latter readily attest. In the 1900 elections, the Fabian Society joined with the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation Committee. The LRC put up fifteen candidates and between them they won 62,698 votes. Two of the candidates, Keir Hardie and Richard Bell, won seats in the Commons. The party did even better in the 1906 elections, with twenty-nine successful candidates.

During the First War, Fabians and other socialists caused quite a stir by their vocal opposition to the war and refusal to serve in combative capacities. Shaw wrote a series of articles published in the Independent, which eventually became a pamphlet called Common Sense About the War, which was generally lambasted in the papers, and ruined his reputation between the wars. Many of those with progressive ideas, however, took a less obstreperous route and became medical orderlies and ambulance drivers during the war. Geoffrey Young did this. It was by far not without hazard, but it was preferable to blowing one’s fellow man to bits.

Another socialist who opposed the war was Keir Hardie. He had grown up in extreme poverty, and by the age of twelve had gone down the mines to keep his family alive, his step-father being unemployed. He did not learn to read and write until the age of seventeen – he had wanted to join a labour union and was ashamed that he could not sign his name. He helped establish a union at his colliery, which led to his dismissal. He then became a newspaper reporter. A Christian Socialist, he had been a convert to religion from an atheist household, and he was devout all his life. He became an MP, as an Independent Labour candidate, and scandalised everyone in those days of top hats and long coats, by wearing a plain sack suit and flat cap. He would dress no differently to his constituency, he maintained. He was in favour of self-rule for India, equal rights for non-whites in South Africa, and votes for women, and he was attacked in newspapers as a troublemaker. At the beginning of the war, he organised a national strike in protest against the war, but the war fervour was so high that he was called a traitor. He was by this time quite ill, having suffered a stroke in the House of Commons in the early days of the war, and he died soon after the first gas attack in 1915, about a week after my brother Jack.

George never opposed the war openly – on purely practical grounds – and he espoused the broad tenets of Fabianism; he would talk for hours with individuals, debating various points of the benefits of socialist society and government, but he was never a firebrand, he was never a crusader for the cause of some of those mentioned here, or even to the extent that Geoffrey Keynes was. Geoffrey was one of those to organise the camps for underprivileged young people in Wales, which got them out into the open air and into the mountains. This might, at first blush, seem puzzling, for if George cared so much about socialist reform and ideals, and so much about the moral welfare of young people – which he did – then why would he not participate more than he did? The only answer I was ever able to get out of him was that he did not like ‘masses of people’ – he was then still very uncomfortable in speaking before large groups, and had not yet perfected his style of public speaking which was to prove to so popular after the first Everest expedition. As for the Fabian outings, he was as he said ‘not a joiner’ and while he held private views did not wish to be tarred with a brush which would ruin any hopes of acceptance or advancement in areas important to him – in writing and in education. This was perhaps an overcautious view – I thought so in the years before the war – but seeing the public vitriol during and after the war for those who publicly went against the common view, it was wiser than he has been given credit for being by many.