The Fabian's Society intimate relationship with the Parliamentary Labour Party -particularly since 1945 - is indicated by the fact that numerous MPs could always be counted among its members, including the leader himself and representatives of his Front Bench team. But since the ideological conditions of membership of the Society are exceptionally loose, nothing can be inferred about the measure of its influence on Labour policy. It has, however, been argued that the price of this intimacy has included a lack of critical distance - notably a reluctance to ask searching questions about the party's power structure. If this old complaint is true, there is a certain irony in the fact that during the post-war period policy-making in the party has become increasingly centralised around the parliamentary leadership - a process which leaves the modus operandi of the society and its dues-paying membership looking quaint and even irrelevant. Though the Society has always tolerated an ideologically eclectic membership and formally prohibits any expressions of a collective Fabian view-point, its executive is able to determine the research agenda and the authors of its research output - thus establishing the basic thrust of Fabian work. This, it is argued, is often an accurate mirror of the ideological changes in the wider party, at any given time. For the most part the society's efforts to remain in tune with thinking in the party and concern itself with policies that could be the concern of the 'next Labour government'- in short, to be both relevant and sensible - have served to keep it away from the imaginative and the 'unthinkable', as well as the merely silly.
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