Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

148 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

condition of the world, it remained vitally important that one should act and talk as if social transformation was just around the corner. If one’s ideals were ever to become real, then it was imperative that one act as if they were ‘realistic’; not only in order to embody them in microcosm in the here-and-now but also in order to galvanise other people into action, to break the fetters of their taken-for-granted views of the world and its future.

It was to the training and preparation of a group of individuals for that far-off social order to which, it was hoped, they would help give birth that Mitrinovic devoted most of his time and energy from 1935 until the outbreak of war. Indeed, there are some grounds for arguing that a major role of the New Britain Movement for Mitrinovi¢ was as a recruiting exercise whereby possible senators might be discovered and drawn into the central group gathered around him in London. After the demise of the movement the amount of energy spent on public initiatives was substantially reduced, as was the concern with working out the framework of the Social State at the theoretical level. It was a period in which Mitrinovic and those around him attempted to work out the personal and interpersonal disciplines and standards which would be necessary for the realisation of senate. As part of this process they also attempted to evolve the pattern of an organic social order within the group itself.

The members of this group numbered between 30 and 40, although the actual personnel changed over the years as people dropped out and the new recruits were drawn in. They included close associates of Mitrinovic such as Valerie Cooper, Gordon Fraser and Lilian Slade who had been involved in his life and his work for many years. There were also those like Watson Thomson and Rex Campbell who had been involved with the New Britain Movement right from the start. The bulk of those who shared a group life with Mitrinovi¢ and each other during the latter half of the 1930s, however, were a younger generation of idealistic men and women, many of them university graduates, who had become actively involved in New Britain as a political movement and had gradually become involved with the central group at the heart of the movement. Although most of them, to begin with, were only dimly aware of the process of personal and group development which Mitrinovic was to orchestrate for them, such was the impression he made upon them that they were prepared to throw in their lot with him and accept his guidance.

One of those who became actively involved in the New Britain Movement, and who came under the ‘spell’ of Mitrinovicé was Alan Watts. In 1934 he had been active in the Bromley group of New Britain. He was later