Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is an independent left-leaning think tank and membership organisation founded in 1884. We influence political and public thinking and provide a space for broad and open-minded debate. 

The society aims to promote: greater equality of power, wealth and opportunity; the value of collective action and public service; an accountable, tolerant and active democracy; citizenship, liberty and human rights; sustainable development; multilateral international cooperation. We publish insight, analysis and opinion; conduct research and undertake major policy inquiries; convene conferences, speaker meetings and roundtables; and facilitate member debate and activism across the UK.

We are one of the original founders of the Labour party and are constitutionally affiliated to the party as a socialist society. We have a stake in Labour’s democratic processes at local, regional and national level. But we are wholly independent of the party editorially, organisationally and financially.

We are a membership movement, active throughout Britain and open to everyone on the left, with over 7000 members. We don’t have organisational policy views but believe radical long-term goals are best advanced through empirical, practical, gradual reform.


Latest reports

In tandem

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society puts forward the case for coordinated economic policymaking. The daunting array of economic problems facing Britain – low growth, inadequate investment, stagnant productivity, accelerating climate change and suppressed wages – are closely connected. Yet since 1997, the institutions most responsible for addressing them, the Treasury and...

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Working Nein to Five

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at what the UK can learn from Germany about work-life balance. Poor work-life balance is bad for our health, bad for the economy and steals time we could spend with loved ones. Yet it is endemic in the UK: nearly half of the workforce said...

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Plans for power

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at Fabian ideas for transforming Britain. Think tanks are not political parties. Most of the time we examine policy problems one by one. It is not our role or responsibility to construct comprehensive political programmes. But there are occasions when it is important to take...

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Leading the way

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at lessons for Labour from Europe. The Fabian Society and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) asked politicians and activists from across Europe for words of advice for UK Labour. The responses bring together insights from as far afield as Galați in eastern Romania...

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Lawful and fair

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at building a better migration system. Migration policy in Britain is failing. It does not work for communities, it does not work for the economy, and it does not work for migrants themselves. The British public want a sensible, workable, middle-ground solution – a fair...

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Support guaranteed

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society provides a roadmap to a national care service.  Plans for a National Care Service were first presented 13 years ago in the dying days of the last Labour government. Since then no detailed work has taken place to flesh out what the service might look like...

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Britain reconnected

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at a foreign policy for security and prosperity at home. We are no longer living in a world where foreign policy and domestic policy are clearly distinct. In every village, town and city across the UK, the impact of the changing international landscape is visible....

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In time of need

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at building employment insurance for all. The UK’s system of income replacement – financial protection when people leave a job or stop working temporarily – is totally inadequate. According to the latest OECD figures for 2022, jobseeker’s allowance or the basic rate of universal credit...

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Healthy Britain

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at a new approach to health and wellbeing policy. The evidence is overwhelming: health and wellbeing are not just desirable outcomes in and of themselves, but essential components of a programme for growth, productivity, national renewal and opportunity for all. In this new report, Kim...

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Green and pleasant

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at rebuilding rural Britain. Rural and coastal communities are seldom given the attention they deserve in British politics. This edited collection seeks to change that, exploring how the 'peripheral' geography of rural and coastal areas shapes the challenges they face and laying the groundwork for...

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Reclaiming freedom

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at the case for a 21st century bill of powers and duties. Freedom was the left's first cause. Now, Liam Byrne MP argues, it is time for Labour to reclaim freedom as its own, with tangible liberties: freedom from poverty and from fear and freedom...

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Breaching the sea wall

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at Labour's support in coastal towns. Not enough attention has been paid towards coastal towns, the opportunities and challenges they face, and what people in these places want from politicians. This briefing aims to change that by developing a new constituency grouping based on coastal...

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Levelling up? Lessons from Germany

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at Germany’s relatively successful attempts to rebalance regional growth since reunification. For 150 years, centralised government has allowed regional inequality to accelerate. The so-called ‘north-south’ divide in fact describes economic under-performance of most of the south west, the midlands, the north of England, Wales, Scotland...

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Good pensions for all

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at the left's agenda for private pensions. Workplace pensions have come a long way in the last few years. But after two decades of debate and reform, private pensions still do not offer the prospect of an adequate retirement income for most people. This report...

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The equality question

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at why Labour should re-embrace its egalitarian roots. In this pamphlet, Stewart Lansley shows how poverty and inequality have once again become deeply institutionalised – and at a growing social, economic and human cost. He makes a powerful case for Labour to return to its...

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