A wolf in sheep's clothing hidden in plain sight?
The Fabian Society, then and now
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
In the context of this post…
I was recently reminded that the original coat of arms of the Fabian Society featured a wolf in sheep’s clothing:
The Fabian Society then
According to the organisation’s Our History webpage:
The Fabian Society derives its name from the Roman general Quintus Fabius, known for his strategy of delaying his attacks on the invading Carthaginians until the right moment. The name Fabian Society was explained in the first Fabian pamphlet which carried the note: “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”
I found no direct reference on the website to the wolf in sheep’s clothing, but the same Our History page does refer1 to:
the Fabian window, a stained-glass image of early Fabians, designed by George Bernard Shaw
That Fabian window link is to a post by LSE Archivist Sue Donnelly featuring this picture of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiling the said window:
The post is a short article about “the window’s creation and its chequered history”:
On 11 January 1911 an illustration of the Fabian Window appeared in The Sketch entitled “GBS in stained glass: a remarkable window containing portraits of Messrs George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Edward Pease and other prominent Fabians. The window “the work of Miss Caroline Townsend [sic] has been presented to Mr George Bernard Shaw”…
G Bernard Shaw is well known as a writer, Fabian Society member, close friend of Sidney and Beatrice Webb and one of the School’s co-founders. The artist Caroline Townshend (1878-1944) was also part of the Fabian network…
Here is a clearer picture (with an additional arrow). It’s worth looking at it carefully:
This description (emphasis mine) from Sotheby’s auction house provides some background information:
(Please note that bidding is closed.)
For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently… but when the time comes you must strike hard… to forge a New World Order…?
Hmm.
The Sotheby’s link goes on to describe the context for the appearance of writer H G Wells at the bottom on the far left (no pun intended) and then concludes with these two paragraphs:
At the unveiling of the Fabian Window in 2006, Blair was recorded as saying that:
Despite all the very obvious differences in policy and attitude and positioning... a lot of the values that the Fabians and George Bernard Shaw stood for would be very recognisable, at least I hope they would, in today’s Labour party.
I wonder what Blair would make of this clip of Bernard Shaw (transcript below):
I object to all punishment whatsoever. I don’t want to punish anybody. But there are an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill. Not in any unkind or personal spirit. But it must be evident to all of you. You must all know half a dozen people at least who are more trouble than they are worth. And I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as he might come before the income tax commissioner, and, say, every five years or every seven years, just put him there and and say, sir, or madam, will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social world, if you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the big organisation of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use.
If you want to know a bit more about where I am coming from politically, I set out some of my thoughts in this article:
The Fabian Society now
The modern-day logo of the Fabian Society looks like this:
I can’t help wondering if someone was paid to design it.
But in any case, Fabianism is apparently on the rise. According to the Society’s Twitter/X account, 141 Fabians were elected as MPs in the July 2024 UK General Election:
It’s not easy to find a list of those 141 MPs, but this Fabian Society LinkedIn post cites states General Secretary Andrew Harrop saying that:
My tenure started in the coalition years as Labour was coming to terms with opposition and ends in celebration as the party returns to government. With over 140 Fabian MPs elected to Parliament, Fabians making up half the Cabinet and our ideas peppered through yesterday’s King’s Speech, now is the right time for me to hand over the society’s leadership. [Emphasis added]
And the Fabian Society’s Our History page states in its After 2010 section that:
The fall of the Labour government and the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010 marked a new era for the society. During the 2010-2015 parliament Labour was led by Ed Miliband, a prominent member of the society…
Labour’s defeat at the 2019 election saw the party turn back towards its Fabian roots. The Labour leadership passed to Keir Starmer MP, the first time a serving member of the Fabian Society executive had become leader of the party. Starmer relinquished his position on the the society’s executive but the committee continued to include senior shadow cabinet ministers Wes Streeting and Anneliese Dodds. The broader Fabian membership contained over half the Shadow Cabinet, including Starmer, Angela Rayner (deputy Labour leader) and Rachel Reeves (shadow chancellor and another former executive committee member).
In 2020 Fabian membership increased to an all time high of over 8,000. Since then the society has been as close to the heart of Labour policy thinking as at any time in its history…
General Secretary Harrop set out some Fabian Ideas for Transforming Britain in this 2023 policy document Plans for Power:
While the policies under those chapter headings might sound harmless enough, in the context of Fabian ideas I can’t help being reminded that a wolf in sheep’s clothing also looks harmless enough. Maybe we should judge them by their fruit?2
I also noticed this on page 9 re “long-termist perspective”:
A long-termist perspective is also needed to secure permanent change. Some of the best achievements of the last Labour government were quickly undone by its successors. Policies have the best chance of standing the test of time if they are enshrined within strong institutions and are understood and cherished by the public. So a new government must build popular institutions not just pull levers that can be reversed. In particular, creating more dispersed centres of power within the public sector and stronger partnerships involving businesses, unions and the third sector will make it harder for the right to unpick progress in the future, that has been built through shared endeavour by a varied tapestry of actors.
The challenge will be to work out where immediate action is needed, and where long-term plans need to be put in place…
Stepping back, I wonder to what extent current members of the Fabian Society would identify with the views of its founders.
Keir Starmer — “a serving member of the Fabian Society executive” as well as a member of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission — is on record as preferring Davos over Westminster.
And Davos is the sort of place where you might hear the likes of Yuval Noah Harari:
Currently a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harari is the author of popular science bestsellers such as Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the children’s book series Unstoppable Us, and this World Economic Forum article:
Here is a clip of him talking about the future he envisages (transcript below):
In the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, what humanity basically learned to produce was all kinds of stuff like textiles and shoes and weapons and vehicles. And this was enough for a very few countries, that underwent the revolution fast enough, to subjugate everybody else.
What we are talking about now is like a second Industrial Revolution, but the product this time will not be textiles or machines or vehicles or even weapons. The product this time will be humans themselves. We are basically learning to produce bodies and minds. Bodies and minds are going to be the two main products of the next wave of all these changes.
And if there is a gap between those that know [how] to produce bodies and minds and those that do not, then this is far greater than anything we saw before in history. And this time, if you are not part of the revolution fast enough, then you probably become extinct. Once you know how to produce bodies and brains minds… cheap labour in Africa or South Asia or wherever, it simply counts for nothing.
…The biggest question, maybe in economics and politics, of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don’t think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce enough food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom and… what to do with them and how they will find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless. My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games.
I wonder how Harari would get on with George Bernard Shaw.
I only hope that the Prime Minister — and the rest of the Fabians in government — have a more positive vision for our children.
Dear Church Leaders articles (some of which, including this one, can also be found on Unexpected Turns)
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered
About a quarter of the way down
See Matthew 7:15-16