Fabian Society

It broke away on 4 January 1884 from the Fellowship of the New Life, whose members included Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter. It was named after Fabius “the Delayer”, the Roman general who wore Hannibal down by attrition rather than pitched battle, and its emblem was a tortoise, standing for a slow, imperceptible transition to socialism. George Bernard Shaw joined that year and wrote its first manifesto, and it followed Sidney Webb’s strategy of “permeation”, infiltrating people and ideas into the existing parties. Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), edited by Shaw, made its name, and in 1895 the Webbs, Graham Wallas and Shaw founded the London School of Economics. It was a founding body of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, whose constitution, written by Webb, borrowed heavily from Fabian documents. Some members, Sidney Webb among them, advocated eugenics, and H. G. Wells left in 1908 after pressing for cooperation with the Independent Labour Party. Leaders from other countries such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Lee Kuan Yew were members. Today it works as a think tank, one of the socialist societies affiliated to the Labour Party.