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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 129

There is a certain amount of satisfaction to be gained by working together along mutual lines to attain a common end, to individually feel this spirit of unity. It is the sort of thing which is behind most religious revivals.

Such a religious revival might conceivably bring about the desired change in environment that I desire but I should be prepared to lay very long odds against It.

Then there is the selfish idea. If I were to join in this New Britain spirit I should gain because of this mutual contact and feeling of unity. In my opinion it is a high form of selfishness. I don’t care a damn about myself and I shan’t last very long in this particular body anyway . . .

You are offering the suffering man in the street relief in the spiritual sense. I am not... We want to concentrate on improving the environment and making the world a better place, a better geographical New Britain with better conditions of working, with more wealth, with less hours of work and with more leisure and always with the means to enjoy the leisure.

You will reply that you want the same. Agreed but your wanting is a means to an end, the end being the individual. I ignore your end and want the objective to be the better conditions.

Now perhaps you realise why we cannot be in the same organisation and why we speak two different languages or to put it better why we mean two different things from the same words. We feel that you ought to have said straight out at the First Rugby Conference. That it is incompatible with our views to organise a New Britain along democratic lines. That we are the founders and that we mean to be the sole authority and that we shall not recognise any other organisation. That the job is a personal one and that the environment is merely a means to secure this personal feeling of unity. We should have saved a lot of time, a lot of money and we should not have had our patience tried by the inconsistencies of Davies or the inefficiency of Lohan . . .®&

The split in the movement was reflected in the pages of New Britain Weekly where, in the space allotted to news of the groups there was a clear division between the London groups that were listed under New Britain Alliance with headquarters at 3 Gordon Square and the section devoted to news from the provinces appearing under the name of the New Britain Movement with ‘Sammy’ Lohan as national organiser based at the central group’s office in Gower Street.

Once the nature and the extent of the division in the movement had become clearer to the parties involved, the scene was set for the first national conference at Leamington Spa which was scheduled to take place over the last weekend in March 1934. It was clear that at this gathering of