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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 135

but on occasions I was asked to accompany a few people to interview some wealthy or influential person. Among many others I went to see the late Lord Allen of Hurtwood. He was very charming but I came away empty-handed. There would be weeks when salaries were delayed. Towards the end, the money for printing had to be found for each issue before the printer would put it on the machine. Many a time I was informed at luncheon hour on the Monday when we went to press that there was no money to print. Miraculously it turned up.. 2!

The fact that the money to pay the printer kept on turning up for as long as it did was due less to the intervention of supra-mundane forces than to the efforts of the central group who went on regular ‘money runs’ around the country, wheedling money out of wealthy individuals and loyal New Britain groups. Watson Thomson was later to recall one such run he made when he hired a car and sped around the country searching for funds, including £10 from the then Archbishop of York, William Temple; returning to London within 48 hours with just over £700 in time to prevent the printer refusing to put the paper to press.

It could not be sustained, and the August 8th 1934 issue which came out during the second national conference at Glastonbury was the last “weekly organ of national renaissance” to be published under the banner of the New Britain Movement, although a fortnightly newsheet Eleventh Hour Emergency Bulletin for New Britain continued to be published.

Glastonbury has long been renowned as a spiritual centre of Britain and the significance of the venue for the second national conference of the New Britain Movement was not lost on those who gathered there over the weekend of August 4th-6th 1934. Although the coffers to finance the weekly paper were empty, delegates from around the country arrived in good heart and high expectations. The Rugby group, which by this time was publishing its Own occasional magazine (New England), addressed a personal message to all New Britain groups in the issue of July 25th:

All men and women who have the vision of New Britain before them, shall make the Glastonbury Conference of August 1934 great history. For this we shall take personal responsibility.

Unaware that the seven leaders that had been nominated at the Leamington Conference had, in fact, never met together as a body, the gathering of nearly 200 looked forward to a thorough discussion and examination of the constitution and statement of New Britain aims that had been promised them the previous spring. A document emanating from the central group