Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian

4. “Permeate”

4 “Permeate” Shaw was welcomed as a valued collaborator in the Fabian strategy of permeation , teaming with Webb and others in a far-reaching campaign to influence units of political power to adopt their melioristic policies. The Fabian Margaret Cole conveys “a Fabian vision of Britain in which every Important Person . . . would have an anonymous Fabian at his elbow or in his entourage who, trained very thoroughly . . . in information, draughtsmanship , and the sense of what was immediately possible, would ensure that the Important Person moved cautiously but steadily in the right direction.” She describes the actual practice of permeation as “honeycombing”: converting non-Fabians who were well placed to act on their own or influence others “either to Socialism or to parts of the immediate Fabian programme, as set out in the continuous stream of Tracts and lectures.” Such converts would be useful “not merely in getting a resolution passed, . . . but in ‘following up,’ in making sure that the resolution or whatever it was did not remain on paper but was put into effect” (The Story of Fabian Socialism, 86, 85). The historian A. M. McBriar outlines specific strategies that were adopted for permeating organizations that might inadvertently (or otherwise) promulgate Fabian ideas: Fabians should join all organizations where useful Socialist work could be done, and influence them. . . . Taking a broad interpretation of the meaning of Socialism and having an optimistic belief in their powers of persuasion, the Fabians thought that most organizations would be willing to accept at least a grain or two of Socialism. It was mainly a matter of addressing them reasonably, with a strong emphasis on facts, diplomatically, with an eye to the amount of Socialism they were prepared to receive, and in a conciliatory spirit. (95–96) Shaw himself put the general goal succinctly: permeation was “the policy of propagating Fabian ideas outside the Society wherever there was a human brain for them to lodge in. Our idea has not been to reform the world our- 42 / Chapter 4 selves, but to persuade the world to take our ideas into account in reforming itself.”1 His own exuberant slant on the process emerges in an 1893 letter to Pease: “My present intention is to go uncompromisingly for Permeation, for noncentralized local organization of the Labor Party, and for the bringing up of the country to the London mark by the supplanting of Liberalism by Progressivism. I feel like forcing the fighting as extravagantly as possible; so as to make it clear to all the new men that the Fabian is the lead for them to follow” (Collected Letters 1874–1897, 377). If Henderson’s undocumented contention can be believed, “Shaw ‘permeated’ all the political parties, and even joined some of them for that purpose on occasion” (George Bernard Shaw, 229). His contribution to this part of the Fabian program was distinctive only in the sense that, more than any other Fabian, he could exploit outlets that were available to him because of his gifts as a literary artist. I will illustrate this point at length, but I want to start by exposing a wrinkle in his more typical permeative activities, one which highlights a singular element of his personality that many of his detractors (and some colleagues) considered deluded overconfidence. Shaw himself would surely have justified it as the free self-expression of an artistic genius. McBriar notes, advisedly, that the term “permeation” had “some flexibility of meaning,” and that over time it was “used flexibly” by Fabians (95). Beatrice Webb’s metaphor for the policy, “inoculation”—inflicting upon susceptible people “the exact dose of collectivism that they were prepared to assimilate” (see page 11)—conveys the two-edged, pain-for-gain nature of the process. The most important variant in applying permeation was the amount of openness and/or underhandedness involved in the strategy. In practice, the two alternatives were often combined. Recalling the Society’s first attempt, in 1885, to permeate both factions of Parliament (“the Government ” and “the Opposition”), Shaw states: “Now, Permeation as applied to Parliament means wire-pulling the Government in order to get Socialist measures passed, and stimulating the Opposition to denounce the Government for neglecting the grievances of the people.” Permeating the Opposition “is a far more public and clamorous affair than the wire-pulling of the Government, which must necessarily be carefully concealed not only from its party but as far as possible from the Government itself.” He adds that this kind of permeation was abandoned by...