It will be recollected that the only direct result of the Special Enquiry Committee, apart from the changes made in the organisation of the Society itself, was the decision to promote local Socialist Societies of the Fabian type with a view to increasing Socialist representation in Parliament. I have recounted in a previous chapter how this scheme worked out in relation to the Labour Party and the running of candidates for Parliament. It remains to describe here its measure of success in the formation of local societies.
The summer of 1905 was about the low-water mark of provincial Fabianism. Nine societies are named in the report, but four of these appeared to have no more than a nominal existence. The Oxford University Society had but 6 members; Glasgow had 30 in its University Society and 50 in its town Society; Liverpool was reduced to 63, Leeds and County to 15, and that was all. A year later the Cambridge University Society had been formed, Oxford had more than doubled its membership to 13, but only five other societies were in existence. By the following year a revival had set in. W. Stephen Sanders, at that time an Alderman of the London County Council, who had been a member of the Society since 1890 and of the executive Committee since 1904, was appointed Organising Secretary with the special object of building up the provincial organisation. By 1910 there were forty-six local societies, and in 1912 the maximum of fifty was reached. Since then the number has declined. These societies were scattered over the country, some of them in the great cities, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, and so on: others within hail of London, at Croydon, Letchworth, Ilford: others again in small towns, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Carnarvon: another was at Bedales School, Petersfield, run by my son and his schoolfellows. The local societies formed at this period, apart from the University Societies, were in the main pallid reflections of the parent Society in its earlier days; none of them had the good fortune to find a member, so far as we yet know, of even second-class rank as a thinker or speaker. One or two produced praiseworthy local tracts on housing conditions and similar subjects. They usually displayed less tolerance than the London Society, a greater inclination to insist that there was but one way of political salvation, usually the Labour Party way, and that all who would not walk in it should be treated as alien enemies. If Socialism is only to be achieved by the making of Socialists, as Mr. Wells announced with all the emphasis of a rediscovery, no doubt the local societies achieved some Socialism, since they made some members. If Socialism is to be attained by the making of Socialist measures, doubtless they accomplished a little by their influence on local administration. Organisation for political work is always educative to those who take part in it, and it has some effect on the infinitely complex parallelogram of forces which determines the direction of progress. Possibly I underestimate the importance of local Fabian Societies; there is a school of thought, often represented in the Society, which regards the provinces with reverent awe--omne ignotum pro magnifico--as the true source of political wisdom, which Londoners should endeavour to discover and obey. Londoners no doubt see little of organised labour, and even less of industrial co-operation: the agricultural labourer is to them almost a foreigner: the Welsh miner belongs to another race. But the business men, the professional class, and the political organisers of Manchester and Glasgow have, in my opinion, no better intuitions, and usually less knowledge than their equivalents in London, and they have the disadvantage of comparative isolation. London, the brain of the Empire, where reside the leaders in politics and in commerce, in literature, in journalism and in art, and which consequently attracts the young men who aspire to be the next generation of leaders, where too are stationed all the higher ranks of Civil Service, is different in kind, as well as in size, from other cities. New thought on social subjects is almost always the product of association. Only those who live in a crowd of other thinkers know where there is room for new ideas; for it takes years for the top layer of political thought to find expression in books. Therefore the provincial thinker on social problems is always a little out of date. Except for one or two University men (e.g. Sidney Ball and Sir Oliver Lodge) practically all Fabian tract-writers have been Londoners. The local Fabian Societies have so far achieved nothing towards the making of a middle-class Socialist party, and they have achieved but little else.