As part of the Churchmouse Campanologist series on leftist thought, it’s important to look at the Fabian Society, founded in London in 1884.  Pictured is their famous stained glass window.

Keep this window in mind as you read the rest of the post. The top banner says ‘Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.’  The crest near the centre reads ‘Pray devoutly, hammer stoutly’.

Another well-recognised Fabian symbol is that of an angry turtle underneath which is a banner that reads, ‘When I strike, I strike hard’.

The Society derives its name from the Roman general Fabius, who fought lengthy battles of attrition and harrassment in order to break his enemies, most notably the formidable Hannibal. The Fabians hoped to spread clean and simple living.  They were not, however, clean-living or religious people. Among them were free thinkers and the first sexologists.  Margaret Sanger had incredible intimate encounters with the Fabians she met.  She also learned how to use non-threatening language and slow motion to push her Planned Parenthood forward.  Even the name she chose for her abortion-eugenics organisation has the whiff of the Fabians about it.

The Fabians were elitists.  They had scant regard for servants, factory workers or the poor. Their plan was to control these people through societal measures and programmes, such as eugenics. The goal, as in General Fabius’s strategy, was to break people down bit by bit and engineer their behaviour without them being conscious of it. They called this societal plan the Third Way.  If that sounds familiar, it is because former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair used it in the 1990s.  People found this term quite novel, but it was simply Fabianism. 

Fabians, of course, must have had a good laugh. After all, they founded the Labour Party (1900) a few years after they founded the world-renowned London School of Economics (LSE) in 1895.  They have had extensive input into British thought for some time. They were also instrumental in influencing in shaping the goals of the United Nations. Have a look at the Fabian Society Archive Online, hosted by … the London School of Economics.

The Third Way, mentioned in the previous paragraph, is another term for communitarianism.  Yes, when Blair was PM, there were countless articles in the international press asking if the Third Way really was communitarianism.  And, if so, how grand it would be.  It seemed as if we would all be one big global family from our neighbourhoods to faraway countries.  That’s not what it means, however.  In order to succeed, communitarianism relies on a network of local institutions — no doubt including churches — to patrol and police personal behaviour.  Everyone becomes part of a collective, whether they like it or not.  Individualism goes out the window for the greater good of society. This includes the way we raise our families, spend our leisure time and work. Work is a big part of it, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Of course, the Fabians, Tony Blair and the rest of the elites wouldn’t have to follow those rules.  We would be there to serve them. 

This six-minute video explains it nicely.  You don’t need to turn on the sound, but if you like Pink Floyd’s ‘Us and Them’, you may want to:

Of course, you may not realise how Fabianism is creeping into your life. You’re working too many hours and are too tired at the weekends to have what 20th century social commentator Thorstein Veblen called ‘idle curiosity’. Believe me, it’s no accident you’re working that long and hard.  It’s part of the plan.  You end up too tired to care.  As long as you have a bit of telly and a beer to relax you at the end of the day, that’s all you need. Fabianism, like the theories of the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci, affects not only the British, but everyone.  The turtle may move slowly, but when it strikes, it ‘strikes hard’.  By then, it may be too late to resist.

Incidentally, how many Britons are aware how much some notable MPs from all three main parties loathe the English?  Centurean2’s Weblog has done some research and uncovered newspaper links, not all of which are on the Internet.  Have a look at these quotes:

From Labour MPs:

Jack Straw (English):  ‘The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent.’

John Prescott (Welsh): ‘There is no such nationality as English.’

Gordon Brown (Scottish): ‘the Nations & Regions of Britain’ where ‘regions’ refers to England

From Conservative MPs:

David Cameron (English — current Prime Minister): ‘I’ll take on the sour Little Englanders, I’ll fight them all the way.’

William Hague (English — current Foreign Secretary): ‘English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism.’

From a Liberal Democrat MP:

Charles Kennedy (Scottish): Said that breaking England up into EU Regions is good because ‘it is calling into question the idea of England itself’.

Bringing England down is akin to bringing the Catholic Church down.  It would be a fantastic victory over 50m+ people, chipping away at their heritage until the final stroke of the axe.  This is an example of Fabian tactics in action.

And then, of course, we have MPs and Lords who were avowed Marxist-Leninists before they got serious about politics.  Again, from Centurean2’s post:

Lord Peter Mandelson (former First Secretary of State and Labour Supremo) — from his BBC biography:
‘Mr Mandelson was born into a Labour family – his grandfather was a Labour Cabinet minister Herbert Morrison – but he rebelled and joined the Young Communist League after Labour supported the United States’ intervention in Vietnam. It was during this period that he attracted the well-documented attention of the MI5 intelligence service.’

Alistair Darling (outgoing Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer) — from the London Evening Standard:
‘Darling attended the University of Aberdeen and earned a Bachelor of Laws. In 1977, Darling was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, part of the Trotskyist Fourth International.’

Alan Johnson (former Labour Home Secretary) — from his New Statesman biography:
Johnson, currently Home Secretary, is quoted as saying: ‘I wasn’t a Trot,’ he insists. ‘I was more CPGB [Communist Party of Great Britain]. I did consider myself to be a Marxist – I read more chapters of Das Kapital than Harold Wilson.’

John Reid (one time Labour Minister of Defence, Home Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary) — from a letter to the Guardian:
‘I have known John Reid as a Communist, as a member of the Scottish Labour party and now as a general in the New Labour Army. His march across this ideological battlefield has been seamless with not a hint of embarrassment. But John is an able person, one of the most able in New Labour’s high command. They put him up to deliver the message. And they are right, he is a very capable, articulate figure,’ said George Galloway, the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin.

There are more examples at the link.  All these chaps come across beautifully on television and radio, believe me, which is why I (once again!) advise you to be very careful in researching political candidates — new and incumbent — no matter where you live.

Then, there’s what the everyday chap thinks.  A poster on Political Betting — MrJones — did a great job of summing it all up (excerpted below) when discussing the upcoming Labour Party leadership contest. Incidentally, ‘Zanu’ (as in Zanu PF) refers colloquially to ‘New Labour’, as in ‘Zanu Labour’:

There are broadly four ‘lefts’ in decreasing order of importance:

1) Nomenklatura left
The growth of the welfare state followed by all the big state offshoots over the years has created a whole caste of public sector middle class who administer and support the system ranging from BBC millionaires to quango bosses. This group’s economic self-interest is tied up in the big state and they do very well out of it …

2) Zanu left
Identity politics. Comprised of two sections.
a) Identity groups acting in the self-interest of their identity group: feminists …, gay rights activists …, ethnic minority groups … etc.

b) White Zanus who are a kind of inverted Nazi with a genocidal hatred of their own people. Obviously they don’t want to take out this hatred on their own immediate kith and kin so they work on the genocide of working class people as a substitute.

3) Union left
Old Labour. Supposedly looking after the interests of yer actual workers … Main purpose is to keep the union bosses in sun bed money. Secondary purpose defend public sector.

4) Socialist left
Myriad strandlets of ideological obsessives. Mostly exist outside Labour nowadays. Almost no significance within Labour except as an echo. Original good version was poisoned by Marxists and Fabians who ended up as the New Piggies in (1). Only way back would be to go back to libertarian, mutual aid, co-op type roots.

The Blairites represent (1).
The Brownites are more (3).
The Zanu left is now bigger than the Union left in numbers but not cash.
A lot of people are a mixture of more than one group.

[David Miliband] perceived as (1)
[Ed] Balls perceived more as (3)
[Ed Miliband] is also perceived more as (3) … Liable to take support off Balls imo (which i assume was [Lord Mandelson]’s idea but could be wrong).
[Andy] Burnham seen as (1) and liable to hurt DM i’d have thought unless he has other ideas where to position himself.
[Diane Abbott] seen more as a mixture of (2) and (4)

Finally, let us not forget the UK’s teachers, who are steeped in leftist theory and praxis (practice).  These is one quote in the same Political Betting thread cited above and a few more from another thread. Posters discuss teachers from the 1980s to the present (priceless quotes — hope they don’t mind my borrowing them):

MrJones: ‘We had a teacher who spent all his lessons teaching us about Marxism but no one took any notice because he was a hippy. More rabid lefties in schools than in the Labour party.’

Robusticus: ‘It was only years after Thatcherism that I realized that people like Heseltine and Ken Clark were supposedly ‘moderate’ Tories. When I was at school, the lefty teachers treated these people as ideological soul mates of Hitler.’

James Kelly: ‘… you might not entirely approve of the jig a teacher performed for me in the school library upon hearing that Mrs Thatcher had just resigned? In fact, the most sober political analysis I heard that whole day was from a schoolgirl who groaned and said “oh no, that means … the Tories will win the [next] election”. Tragically, spot on.’

Robusticus: ‘Teachers wearing CND badges … posters in the foyer calling for the boycott of the Murdoch papers, you name it.’

Simon: ‘My housemate, who is a newly qualified teacher (and a Tory) was asked by some of her students how she had voted. Apparently one of the other staff members had told them to ask all their teachers that question – because if they had voted Labour they would be proud and admit it – if they refused to answer it was because their teacher was an evil Tory and too ashamed to admit it. So yes, there is (even on the anecdotal level) evidence of a left-wing bias within the teaching profession.’

What more can one say?  We just need to be discerning about what we support.  We also need to have open lines of communication with our children concerning these matters.