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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 125

anything to further the aims of what they had come to know through the New Britain Weekly and what they had learnt in London . .. They would get into the Bentley at 5.30 when they had all finished work and swish up to London as if they were just going into the next village, and come back at 4.00 or 5.00 in the morning, having been further inspired.

Such was the growth of the movement that by November 1933 there was no longer sufficient space in the weekly to print the names and addresses of group leaders around the country. Groups were in existence in 47 towns and centres whilst in addition over 30 groups had been established in the London area. Undoubtedly it all took Mitrinovié and the founder members based at 55 Gower Street by surprise. Purdom, however, quickly realised that the paper had struck a rich vein of political dissent and yearning for change. In order to render this effective in national political terms a political movement, a national organisation, needed to be created that could weld all these disparate groups into a unified whole that could exert pressure and influence in the decision making centres of the land. By August 1933 he was proposing the establishment of just such a national organisation, “Personal Alliance for New Britain,” which would provide the necessary ‘body’ for the ‘spiritual movement’ that had emerged.

His initiative struck an answering chord in many of the new members of the movement, particularly amongst those in the London groups. On October 29th 1933 over 50 delegates from the London groups met at Chiswick to draw up a draft constitution and plan of organisation for the London area. In November Purdom returned to his original theme when, in his capacity as editor, he reviewed the achievements of the paper after six months of publication. He acknowledged the criticism that the weekly had been too vague in its proposals. The reason, he suggested, was that a nationally organised movement had still not emerged to translate the ideas and visions into specific plans of action:

...A New Britain Movement needs to exist. Until a movement is in being with declared aims, a defined policy, and a programme of action, the proposals we discuss in these pages must remain vague. The ideas we put forward depend upon an organised movement for crystallization, and require the backing of an organised body of people to give them reality. That organised movement does not exist. We have called for it, but it has not come. There are groups throughout the country, and now there are coordinated groups with a central committee in London; but an organised national movement is not in being. It must exist or we shall continue to talk in the air.%?