Archive: Power Politics and the Labour Party

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published in New Fabian Essays, edited by
R.H.S. Crossman, Turnstile Press, 1952.

That external factors would one day dominate British politics was never conceived
by the founders of British Socialism. Apart from one reference to the foreign policy
of the Manchester School, the original volume of Fabian Essays never mentions
the world outside Britain except to point to a domestic moral. Indeed, this sort of
parochialism was the Fabians’ greatest strength. They found socialism wandering
aimlessly in Cloud Cuckoo land and set it working on the gas and water problems
of the nearest town or village. The modern Welfare State is their monument.

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