The Errol Flynn Blog

The Fabian Society was founded in the 1880s by members of the Victorian cultural ‘elite’, including the poet Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, an early ‘sexologist’, and the idealistic Socialist Richard R. Pease.

The society was named after Fabius Maximus, the Roman General who defeated Hannibal by just waiting around, and that gives you an idea of its flavour.

The Fabians were just a little too impractical and off with the fairies. They advocated things like vegetarianism and the ‘renewal of Renaissance ideals ‘, which would not have impressed your average Cockney labourer. In fact, it was all a bit Marie Antoinette milking the cows, and ‘Fabianism’ was regarded by many Socialists, especially those involved in politics, with suspicion.

In the 1890s, the Fabian Society was essentially taken over by Sidney and Beatrice Webb – and their names are the ones most people associate with Fabianism. Sidney Webb was resoundingly middle class and was called to the Bar in 1885. Sidney looked a bit like his friend and fellow Fabian Bernard Shaw, only both he and his beard were much shorter. Beatrice came from quite a privileged background and was a bit of a society beauty.

Beatrice rather outshone her husband, actually. She was not only striking but rather brilliant and witty, the sort of woman Errol would have adored. After her marriage she declared: ‘Sidney and I are now one – and I’m the one!’ .

But even in the early 20th Century, the Fabian Society didn’t always adhere to Socialist principles. As I have said, many British Socialists at that time were pacifists. Fabians proved a grave disappointment when they favoured an international entente against Germany, which pacifists saw as an act of ‘aggression.’

I would call Fabianism ‘Salon Socialism’ – or what would later be called ‘Champagne Socialism.’ Later Fabians, and we are now moving into the 1950s, included renowned ‘Champagne Socialists’ Roy Jenkins and the dashing Labour Foreign Secretary Antony Crosland.

Both these men were friends of my father, and Tony Crosland was the most expensively turned out man in London. When he and my father were at Oxford, he once tried to throw my papa into a fountain because he was not wearing full evening dress.

Orwell, though he did not, as he sometimes pretended, come from a poor background — he was educated at Eton – was more austere. His socialism was not that social; in short, his interest in parties didn’t really extend to the non-political kind.

I imagine he would have regarded the Fabian Society as a bit beneath his notice. I am being equivocal here, because I have not come across any strong Orwellian views for or against it.

However, he did form a close and surprising friendship with David Astor. Astor was a millionaire and highly social, but he was also the editor of The Observer newspaper (owned by his father). In 1945,The Observer sent Orwell to Europe as a War Correspondent.

This is where we get on to British Intelligence. In 2000, shortly before he died, Astor gave an interview. In it, he said that Orwell had expressed a wish to travel to Europe before the war ended, so that he could see at first hand a totalitarian state. He added, however, that by the time Orwell got to Germany ‘it had blown away…he was looking for something that was no longer there.’

Orwell’s biographer, W J West, claims, on the other hand, that his motives were financial, and that Orwell wanted to earn some extra money so he could move his family to Jura, a Scottish island.

But Astor had undoubted links to Intelligence. He served with the covert military intelligence force, called The Special Operations Executive, during the war, and maintained a close association with British Intelligence.

Astor denied (as he would) that Orwell had anything to do with that kind of thing, but no-one has ever been sure either way. In Paris, for instance, Orwell met with groups of people whose only common denominator was that they had links with intelligence.

The MI5 file on Orwell, which was released in 2005, does not say very much, only that he was not considered a ‘security risk.’ On balance, I don’t think Orwell did anything significant for British Intelligence ,or was ever asked to do so. This is also the view of the Orwell Society.

There is the ‘list’ , of course. In 1949, Orwell put together a list of writers and other figures whom he considered to be Communists, for the Information Research Department, a Government body that acted as a sort of propaganda department at the start of the Cold War.

However this was pretty run of the mill stuff. So, was Orwell a spy? Not bloody likely, to quote Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle.