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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 123

about the culture which had been handed down over centuries—and which I was invited to condemn as bourgeois—was necessarily wrong and degenerate just because it had been the preserve of richer people rather than the poor. Nor was I willing to accept that all poorer people were necessarily ‘goodies’ and all who were better off were necessarily ‘baddies.’ So I saw no reason mindlessly to ally myself with one particular class of society called ‘the working class,” because I saw no reason to believe that a mass movement of the working class would produce a world much better than the existing one.

Consequently I was in a difficult situation. I felt very strongly the need to be active doing something about the social problem, but I found no body of people with whom I could unconditionally ally myself, because they all seemed to be grinding a partial and divisive axe. And it was in this situation that one afternoon I picked up the first number of the New Britain Quarterly in the Junior Common Room. I was really thrilled by it. Here was a journal which really stood for social justice and had a serious and radical programme, and at the same time maintained the best values of human culture . . .

I did not at that time make any move to get in touch with anyone in London. I bought the next two numbers of the Quarterly and when the New Britain weekly came out in May 1933 I bought it first thing every Wednesday morning and did nothing else until I had read it almost from cover to cover. One thing I found most exciting, having in my studies gained a great admiration for Plato’s Republic as an ideal state, was that it made serious proposals for putting the main principles of the Republic into practical effect. Although people were invited to start groups in the provinces, I did not myself volunteer to start a group. 1 was still too diffident. But when I saw that one was started I got in touch.

The Rugby group had been formed after a number of those who had been in on the founding of the movement, including Gladys MacDermot’’ whose son Niall was then a pupil at Rugby School, held a public meeting in the town. Amongst those who attended were a group of engineers who worked at the B. T. H. factory in Rugby. Some of them were also members of the Independent Labour Party. One of the women was particularly impressed by Watson Thomson’s lead article in the first issue of New Britain Quarterly’*: “There was something there that I had never read anywhere else—and I liked it.” The friends began to meet regularly in each others homes. Eventually some of them determined to pay a visit to London to meet members of the founders’ group at 55 Gower Street.

We went into this very large room. There were two or three people who greeted us very warmly and made us feel less nervous than we might have been. In a very short time there seemed to be quite a number of people who had gathered