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

126 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

At least a part of the frustration to which Purdom gave vent in this article can be attributed to a piece that had appeared in the paper a fortnight previously and which had obviously been penned either by Mitrinovi¢ himself or one of his close associates. Addressing the readers in the fashion of a Papal nuncio it was announced that:

the New Britain Movement, the New Britain Alliance, is not a party. A party, political or otherwise, the New Britain Alliance can never become. It shall not be a party. All parts and parties of our nation shall be contained in our New Spirit, in our New Way . . .°°

For Purdom such a stance was totally unrealistic. Moreover, there was more than a suspicion that such a view was little more than a manifestation of the selfish concern of those who had initiated something which had grown at such a pace that they were no longer able to control it—protective parents who had just discovered that their children intended to follow their own pathways in the world. In concluding his demand for the creation of a formally organised national movement the editor observed that such a step would involve the “surrender of egotism, the giving up of cherished ideas, and the painful effort of getting down to earth . . . It is the end of private property in the ideas which the movement exists to further . . . we have to trust not only the people we know but those we don’t know and the unseen powers.”°!

It was clear to the informed observer that a split was developing within the ranks of the young movement. At its core the conflict centered on the nature and form that the New Britain movement was to take: whether it was to remain as a ‘spiritual movement’ concerned with propagating new ideas for the new individuals that would be at the heart of a New Britain, or whether it should be transformed into a conventional political movement, actively engaged in organising not only to promote new ideas but eventually to attain the political power to implement such ideas and proposals through conventional parliamentary processes. In terms of personnel the split was between the original founding members centered around Mitrinovic and based at Gower Street, the Central Group, and certain activists who had joined the movement and whose strength was reflected in the London group and certain of the Yorkshire groups, Leeds and Sheffield in particular.

Mitrinovié once remarked that he was a Bakuninist rather than a Marxist. In his attitude to the issue of organising for change he certainly revealed similarities with the nineteenth century revolutionary anarchist. Both were opposed to hierarchically organised political movements that aspired to capture state power. Like Bakunin, Mitrinovic believed that revolutionary