Principles and aims of the New Atlantis Foundation

Society soon wanted to take their psychological studies to a practical conclusion by engaging in political action. It was from this that the New Britain Movement emerged in 1932. It was a proposal for national renaissance based on the recognition that the technological revolution had made material plenty possible for all, and on the need to re-order society so that the necessary co-operation for the realisation of plenty could be achieved together with the greatest possible individual freedom. The principles on which this New Order was to be based were: first, the devolution of power and responsibility to the smallest possible units of society, right down to the individual, and the federation of these units into progressively larger units, all the way up to the world whole; secondly, that power and responsibility should be given to individual persons and groups only on the basis of their function, whether economic, cultural or political; and thirdly, that the realms of economics, culture and politics should each be autonomous, so that economics should be separated from politics, and culture no longer dominated either by economics or by politics.

The practical programme of the New Britain Movement was thus a revolutionary one: radical change of the financial system based on the work of Professor Frederick Soddy; workers’ control in industry through National Guilds as proposed by S. G. Hobson, and a House of Industry independent of the House of Commons; Cultural Guilds with an autonomous House of Culture in place of the House of Lords; and radical devolution and federation, national, European, Commonwealth and world-wide. Groups were started all over the country and the whole movement was supported by a weekly paper called New Britain and later by the Eleventh Hour. As the Movement developed, some members became increasingly aware that the changes being proposed in the social constitution would necessarily involve profound changes in personal relationships.

The New Britain Movement came to an end as an active political movement in 1935-36 soon after the papers ceased publication for lack of funds. The New Europe Group activities, however, continued and some of the group stayed together with Mitrinovi¢é, determined to work out between themselves the personal problems which they realised must be resolved to make possible the social state as they envisaged it. In the conflict between those who want to work directly for a change in the structure of society and those who believe that individuals must change their personal lives before any social reforms can be effective, they did not take one side against the other but saw that both are equally necessary to bringing about change. Mitrinovi¢ used the phrase ‘se change for world-change’,