¹ Wertheimer, E., Portrait of the Labour party.(1929), ch. 3. Wertheimer was the London correspondent of Vorwärts and Sozial-demokratischer Pressedienst.Google Scholar

² McHenry, D. E., The Labour party in transition, 1931–1938 (1938), p. 155.Google Scholar

³ New Republic, 3 April 1950. For American liberals the indignities of Laski's isolation within the party after the war by contrast accentuated what they considered to be the awesome influence he had exercised over its intellectual and spiritual life before: see Max Lerner, New York Post, 27 March 1950 and 30 March 1953 (reprinted in Lerner, The unfinished country: a book of American symbols (New York, 1959), pp. 506–9);Google ScholarKirchwey, Freda, ‘Harold Laski’, Nation, 1 April 1950;Google ScholarDowning, Francis, ‘The Labor movement: Harold Laski's death’, Commonweal, 7 April 1950;Google ScholarLynd, Robert, ‘Glory and heartbreak’, Nation, 16 May 1953;Google ScholarWilson, Edmund, New Yorker, 16 May 1953 (reprinted as ‘The Holmes-Laski correspondence’ in Wilson, The bit between my teeth (London, fed.)).Google Scholar On what the writer calls the apologetic and embarrassed nature of American commentary on Laski after the war, as well as on the greater esteem accorded to him in America than in England, see Peretz, M., ‘Laski redivivus’, Journal of contemporary history, 1, 2 (1966), 87–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Nettl, J. P., ‘Are intellectuals obsolete?’, Nation, 4 March 1968.Google Scholar Cf. Spender, S., ‘British intellectuals and the welfare state’, Commentary, November 1951;Google ScholarKiernan, V. G., ‘Notes on the intelligentsia’, Socialist Register, 1969 (1969), 55–84;Google Scholar and esp. Woolf, L., ‘The politician and the intellectual’, New Statesman and Nation, 20 July 1940.Google Scholar

⁵ ‘The Newstatesmen’, New Statesman and Nation, 19 April 1963, reprinted in P. Anderson and R. Blackburn (eds.), Towards socialism (1965), under the title ‘The lessons of 1945’ (all references are to the reprinted version), p. 148.

⁶ Ibid. pp. 147–8.

⁷ Ibid. p. 148.

⁸ Ibid. pp. 146–7.

⁹ ‘The future of the Labour party’, Political Quarterly, iii, 1 (January-March 1932), 32–7.

¹⁰ ‘The path and the price’, New Clarion, 11 June 1932.

¹¹ These records were commonly penned by ex-ministers associated with the August Cabinet split: see Webb, S., ‘What happened in 1931: a record’, Political Quarterly, iii, 1 (January-March 1932), 1—17; G. Lansbury, ‘The cabinet crisis of 1931’, typescript, n.d., Lansbury papers, London School of Economics, xxv, fos. 1—17; C. Addison, ‘Notes on the cabinet and the crisis’, typescript summary of minutes prepared by ex-ministers, September 1931, Addison papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 5/55.11.Google Scholar

¹² Dalton to Ponsonby, 19 February 1932, Ponsonby papers, Bodleian Library, c. 672/30–1.

¹³ Ponsonby to Henderson, 13 November 1931, Ponsonby papers, c. 672/128.

¹⁴ ‘The future of the Labour party’, p. 35.

¹⁵ Beatrice Webb, unpublished diary, L.S.E., 10 October 1931; S. Webb, ‘What happened in 1931’. P. 14.

¹⁶ Trevelyan to hon. secretary, Newcastle branch of the Independent Labour Party, 26 February 1932, draft in C. P. Trevelyan collection, University of Newcastle, CPT 145.

¹⁷ Daily Herald, 24 October 1931. Cf. leader, Labour Magazine, November 1931; G. Lathan, New Clarion, 9 July 1932.

¹⁸ Lansbury to Trevelyan, 5 January 1932, Trevelyan collection, CPT 145. Cf. W. Graham to C. Addison, 24 December 1931, Addison papers, 95/54.9.

¹⁹ ‘Why complain of JRM?’, New Leader, 22 January 1932.

²⁰ The phrases quoted in this and the previous sentence come from Fenner Brockway's speech as chairman of the I.L.P. conference, March 1932, New Leader, 1 April 1932. See also Brockway, F., Inside the left: thirty years of platform, press, prison and Parliament (1942);Google ScholarPaton, J., Left turn! the autobiography of John Paton (1936).Google Scholar

²¹ See the correspondence between the Labour party and the I.L.P., 1931 Labour party conference report, pp. 293–303, and 7332 LPCR, pp. 21–3.

²² Tawney to Bishop Bell of Chichester, 5 December 1931, Bell papers, Lambeth Palace Library, Series N (Public Affairs, 1929–34); ‘The choice before the Labour party’, Political Quarterly, iii, 3 (July-September 1932), 323–45.Google Scholar

²³ Ibid. p. 326; Webb, ‘What happened in 1931’.

²⁴ ‘The choice before the Labour party’, pp. 324–7.

²⁵ Ibid. pp. 327, 329.

²⁶ Ibid. pp. 329–30.

²⁷ J. M. Winter, Socialism and the challenge of war: ideas and politics in Britain, 1912–18 (1974), ch. 3.

²⁸ Ibid. ch. 6, esp. pp. 167–72.

²⁹ See Tawney, The acquisitive society (1921), ch. 2.

³⁰ Winter, Socialism and the challenge of war, ch. 3, esp. pp. 85–6.

³¹ Tawney, The acquisitive society, p. 223.

³² Winter, Socialism and the challenge of war, pp. 175–8.

³³ Tawney, ‘British Labor looks ahead’, New Republic, 22 August 1923. In an article in the same journal on the eve of the general election, Tawney underscored his approval of the political strategies of the Webbs: see ‘What British Labor wants’, ibid. 28 November 1923.

³⁴ Tawney, The British Labor movement (Yale University Press, 1925), pp. 38, 42, 147–8. Th book is Tawney's least convincing: it lacks originality and conviction, and contains representations of party policy and strategy that owe more to the Webbs than to Tawney's own insights.

³⁵ Ibid. p. 150.

³⁶ Tawney, Equality (1931), pp. 18–19.

³⁷ Tawney to Bell, 5 December 1931.

³⁸ ‘The choice before the Labour party’, pp. 336–7.

³⁹ Some idea of the singularity of this affirmation of politics by a moralist in reaction against Fabian empiricism can be gathered by contrasting it with the route away from politics taken by a transatlantic connexion of reformist intellectuals a decade or so earlier. See the illuminating analysis of this exchange in Bourke, Paul F., ‘The status of politics 1909–1919: The New Republic, Randolph Bourne and Van Wyck Brooks’, Journal of American Studies, viii, 2 (1974), 173–83.Google Scholar On Graham Wallas, who deeply influenced these New Republic intellectuals, see Wiener, M. J., Between two worlds: the political thought of Graham Wallas (Oxford, 1971), and Wallas’ own essay ‘Socialism and the Fabian Society’, first published in the New Republic in July 1916 and reprinted in May Wallas (ed.), Men and ideas: essays by Graham Wallas (1940), pp. 103—7.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ ‘The path and the price’, New Clarion, ii June 1932. Cf. Laski, ‘A united front for socialism’, ibid. 13 August 1932.

⁴¹ ‘We seek a society of equals’, ibid. 3 September 1932.

⁴² In profiles of Labour candidate William Coxon, Daily Herald, 17 October 1931, and of Arthur Henderson, ibid. 24 October 1931.

⁴³ See Laski, , The crisis and the constitution: 1931 and after (1932);Google Scholar‘The present position of representative democracy’, in Where stands socialism to-day? (Fabian Society, 1933);Google Scholar‘Some implications of the crisis’, Political Quarterly, ii, 4 (October-December 1931), 466 ff.; ‘The new government and the constitution’, Labour Magazine, October 1931.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ R. E. Dowse, Left in the centre: the Independent Labour party, 1893–1940 (1966), ch. 12.

⁴⁵ Brailsford, ‘The class war declared’ New Leader, 9 October 1931; ‘Ourselves and the Labour party’ ibid. 25 March 1932.

⁴⁶ ‘The fall of the Labor government’, New Republic, 16 September 1931.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ ‘Ourselves and the Labuor party’.

⁴⁹ ‘The fall of the Labor government’; ‘Ourselves and the Labour party’.

⁵⁰ ‘The class war declared.’ Cf. Brailsford, ‘The new era’, New Leader, 6 November 1931; E. F. Wise (another leading I.L.P. member in favour of continued affiliation), ibid. 15 January, 19 February 1932.

⁵¹ ‘The fall of the Labor government’.

⁵² ‘The new era’.

⁵³ See esp. Cole. The intelligent man's guide through world chaos (1932), ch. 12, sect. 5.

⁵⁴ M. I. Cole, The story of Fabian socialism (1961), pp. 222 ff.; ‘The Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds.), Essays in labour history, 1918–1939 (1977), 190–203.

⁵⁵ Cole, ‘The old Labour party and the new’, New Statesman and Nation, 14 November 1931.

⁵⁶ The first quotation is from ibid., the second from ‘The policy of the trade unions’, ibid. 5 September 1931.

⁵⁷ ZIP Bulletin (the journal of S.S.I.P.), June 1932.

⁵⁸ ‘The Labour party from within’, Nineteenth Century, no. 110 (October 1931), pp. 397–8.

⁵⁹ Ibid. pp. 398–9.

⁶⁰ Ibid. pp. 400–1.

⁶¹ Ibid.; ‘The old Labour party and the new’. Cf. ZIP Bulletin, June 1932; ‘The end of the Labour alliance’, New Statesman and Nation, 6 August 1932.

⁶² Lenin, V. I., What is to be done? Burning questions of our movement (1902) in Lenin: collected works, v (Moscow, 1961), 347–520.Google Scholar

⁶³ Ibid. p. 374.

⁶⁴ Ibid. pp. 375, 413–14.

⁶⁵ Ibid. pp. 399–400.

⁶⁶ Ibid. pp. 384, 422.

⁶⁷ Ibid. p. 388.

⁶⁸ Ibid. p. 400.

⁶⁹ Ibid. pp. 412–13, but see also Meyer, A. G., Leninism (New York, 1957), ch. 2 on Lenin's ambiguities about the possibility of workers attaining this kind of consciousness.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁰ What is to be done?, pp. 383–4, quoting Kautsky on the Austrian Social-Democratic Party's programme, Neue Zeit, 1901–2. On Kautsky's influence on Lenin's distinction between spontaneity and socialist ideas, see Meyer, Leninism, p. 28.

⁷¹ On a similar degeneration in the idea of consciousness in Lenin's thought, see ibid. pp. 44–56.

⁷² Cole, and Mitchison, G. R., The need for a socialist programme, Socialist League Programme Series, no. 2, n.d. [1933], pp. 1–4; on the irrelevance of party conference, see Cole's reply to Easton Lodge questionnaire, April 1932, Cole papers, 5/5.Google Scholar

⁷³ Lenin, What is to be done?, p. 445.

⁷⁴ Ibid. p. 442.

⁷⁵ Ibid. pp. 448, 451–2.

⁷⁶ For an acute discussion of the tensions in Lenin between the objective of working-class self-emancipation and the immediate necessities of bourgeois leadership, and of Gramsci's attempts to resolve this contradiction, see Karabel, J., ‘Revolutionary contradictions: Antonio Gramsci and the problem of intellectuals’, Politics and society, vi, 2 (1976), 123–72;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Meyer, Leninism, chs. 1–2, and Feuer, L. S., ‘Marxism and the hegemony of the intellectual class’ in his Marx and the intellectuals: a set of post-ideological essays (New York, 1969), 53–69.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Lenin, What is to be done?, pp. 450, 452, 464.

⁷⁸ Lenin himself drew attention to the different conditions confronting socialist parties in countries with ‘political liberty’: ibid. p. 453.

⁷⁹ Tawney, ‘The choice before the Labour party’, p. 340.

⁸⁰ In the early 1920s Tawney had given considerable thought to the desirability of forming an equally exclusive and disciplined community of Christians to help regenerate the social mission of the Church: see Tawney, The acquisitive society, pp. 106, 228, 235–7; speech to the Christian Student Movement, n.d. [early 1920s], Tawney papers, L.S.E., box IV, notes for speeches on various occasions.

⁸¹ Zimmern, Alfred, ‘The choice before the Labour movement: a reply to Mr Tawney’, Political Quarterly, iii, 4 (1932), 509–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸² Tawney's reply to Zimmern in ibid. pp. 521–4.

⁸³ Tawney, ‘The choice before the Labour party’, pp. 333–6.

⁸⁴ Cole, ‘Time ripe for new ideas’, Daily Herald, 5 November 1931; A short history of the British working-class movement, foreword to the one-volume edition (1932), p. ix.

⁸⁵ ‘Socialism, the Labour party, and the ILP’, Adelphi, IV, 6 (September 1932), 824–9; Easton Lodge documents, 1932, Cole Papers 5/5.

⁸⁶ Cole, , ‘Communism for Englishmen’, Adelphi, iv, 1 (April 1932), 444,Google Scholar reviewing Murry, J. Middleton, The necessity of communism (1932).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Cole, ‘Communism for Englishmen’, p. 448; on Murry's ideas about the nature and social origins of ‘disinterestedness’, see his The necessity of communism, chs. 1–4, and ‘The necessity of communism’, Adelphi, III, 5 (February 1932), 259–67.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Cole, ‘Communism for Englishmen’, p. 447. Cole displayed a similar guardedness in his review of Garratt, G. T.'s The mugwumps and the Labour party (1932),Google Scholar which attempted to relate Labour's ill-starred fortunes to changes in its social composition: see Political Quarterly, iii, 4 (1932), 613. For his resistance to the view that such changes in the social composition of the party should be reflected in a revised party structure, see his ‘The policy of the trade unions’, New Statesman and Nation, 5 September 1931.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Published in London in 1934 as Preface to action. Catlin had served on the executives of the Fabian Society, the Union of Democratic Control and the Labour Parliamentary Candidates Association; he had taught politics at Sheffield University and for the Workers’ Educational Association.

⁹⁰ Catlin, Preface to action, pp. 80–2, 99–100, 249–57, 266–71.

⁹¹ Ibid. pp. 94–5.

⁹² Ibid. pp. 143–4.

⁹³ Ibid. pp. 93, 106–8, 124–6.

⁹⁴ Ibid. pp. 118–19.

⁹⁵ Catlin, ‘We need a new morale’, New Clarion, 31 December 1932.

⁹⁶ Catlin, , ‘Expert state versus free state’, Political Quarterly, iii, 4 (1932), 540, 549–50. The second quotation in this sentence Catlin took, with a little imprecision, from Tawney's ‘The choice before the Labour party’, p. 330.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Catlin to Cole, 29 September 1932, Cole papers 5/2.

⁹⁸ Mill, J. S., Autobiography, World's Classics edn (Oxford, 1924), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ M. I. Cole, The story of Fabian socialism, p. 225.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid. pp. 222–33; ‘The Society for Socialist Inquiry and propaganda’, pp. 194 ff.

¹⁰¹ See Bullock, A., The life and times of Ernest Bevin, 1 (1960), chs. 18–19.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Quoted, without date, by M. I. Cole, ‘The Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda’, P. 197.

¹⁰³ See ‘Notes for discussion at Easton Lodge week-end, April 16–17, 1932’, Cole papers 5/7.

¹⁰⁴ See M. I. Cole, The story of Fabian socialism, pp. 223, 225; Cole, G. D. H., History of the Labour party from 1914 (London, 1948), p. 282.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Howell, D., British social democracy: a study in development and decay (1976), p. 50.Google Scholar See also Bevin, E., ‘Straight on through the wilderness’, Labour Magazine, December 1931.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ For an understandably slanted account of this process of takeover see Cole, History of the Labour party, pp. 282–4.

¹⁰⁷ For Cole's own account of his reasons for leaving the Socialist League, and of his subsequent work with N.F.R.B., see ibid. p. 284.

¹⁰⁸ Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘The Fabians reconsidered’, Labouring men: studies in the history of labour (1968), pp. 250–71. There are important differences between the two groups that should not be glossed, in particular their attitudes to the political organization of workers; the value of the argument in the present context is the connexion it draws between the social location of the Fabians and their politics.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Engels to Kautsky, 4 September 1892, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected correspondence (1956), p. 530.

¹¹⁰ It is fair to add that in the second edition of his book Wertheimer modified a little his enthusiasm for the party's absorptive capacity for bourgeois intellectuals, in the light of the hostility displayed to them at the 1929 party conference: see Portrait of the Labour party, 2nd edn (1930), pp. 245–8.