Postwar British Socialism and the Fabian Society

Postwar British Socialism and the Fabian Society Mercatus

After Labour‘s landslide victory in the 1945 election, in Castle‘s words, "What we set out to do was to ensure that this system of fair shares and the planning and controls continued after the war, and when we won, that‘s what we did." She was right about the "fair shares" (government rationing) and controls. Prices controls and rationing of consumer goods continued for years after the war. Labour‘s postwar program of nationalization was the fruit of many decades of intellectual activism by the Fabian Society, a democratic socialist movement long led by Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, and George Bernard Shaw. In Labour‘s 1945 election victory, over 200 members of the Fabian Society were elected to Parliament. The shift from the doctrine of free markets and free trade to the doctrine of extensive government control was partly caused by the influences of the Fabian Society in Great Britain.