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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 113

autumn. Whilst this was the last number to appear in what might be described as the “New Britain Quarterly series,” a lot had happened in the two years since the publication of the first edition. Amongst other things, the people gathered around Mitrinovic in their Gower Street headquarters had found themselves at the centre of something akin to a mass social political movement—the New Britain Movement (NBM).

This had grown out of the New Britain Group (NBG) which had developed around the quarterly. Initially it differed from the NEG only in emphasisBritain and domestic affairs, rather than Europe and world affairs. “The task of the New Britain Group is literally to conceive a New Britain” it was boldly announced. It was an attempt to plant the seed of an alternative, “above and between” communism and fascism. The universe, it was argued, represented a synthesis of balanced opposites, and civilisation would perish unless a similar synthesis of community and individuality, the forces of cohesion and diversity, could be generated. Communism and fascism both represented efforts to solve this problem

They are obvious over-compensations. Russian communism is a Slav compensation for its own repression of rational thinking over long centuries during which Europe was developing intellectually. Fascism is both an imitation of, and a reaction against, communism. It imitates the method—the sinking of the individual for a common cause—in order to emphasise the necessity for a dictatorship of a different order.

Must our attitude towards both of these take the form of an imitation of, or reaction against? Must we eternally accept a thesis or produce an antithesis? . . .

It is for us to solve this problem of Community versus Individual in our own way.

The New Europe Group exists for this purpose. If England with her tradition of wisdom and leadership will recognise that by facing this problem and helping Europe to face it a new and lasting peace can arise . . .

A deliberate effort directly contrary to the line of least resistance is necessary before we can understand the meaning of England’s significance. The New Europe Group was such an act—a still more conscious act is necessary if that understanding is to be applied. THE NEW BRITAIN GROUP has now been formed.2?

The year in which the New Britain Group was formed, 1933, was the third year of the great depression and also the year of Hitler’s rise to power. Besides the threat of another European war there was also the possibility that nations would be torn apart by violent civil strife between the forces of the right and the left, fascism and communism. Both these creeds, according