ABSTRACT
‘Fellowship is life, lack of fellowship is death’ proclaimed William Morris during 1886, some years into his final, revolutionary marxist phase. Historians have agreed with leading Fabians that the Society catered peculiarly for a ‘new social layer’ of higher clerical employees, junior professionals, civil servants and would-be intellectuals. Determinist strategies had always had an inherent tendency to efface themselves before what were officially no more than their preconditions. In mid-century, very many Owenites had provisionally narrowed their strategy to one of producers’ and consumers’ co-operation. ‘Fellowship’, centrally, was also seen as answering another of the determinist conundra: how to prevent the aim becoming abstract. The new – or, rather, modified – sports helped nurture a number of emphases relevant to considerations about friendship among people of every class. A subverted foundation stone might, apparently, make a close comradeship all the closer.
