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

136 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

was in fact presented to the conference and was eventually endorsed. It reiterated the view that the social, economic and political crises facing Britain and the world were all part of a single process, that humanity was now at a turning point in its evolution. A new order was imminent, a new age which could only be brought into being by new methods rather than through the bankrupt policies and programmes of existing parties and institutions. The introduction of this new order was not so much a technical problem (“. .. man has now the knowledge and power to order his communal life in such a way that none need fear want . . .”) as one of creating the necessary will to bring it about—“it is for want of vision that people are perishing” it was pronounced. The way to bring about the wider societal changes was through individual change and a transformation of social relationshipsthe key lay in the creation of situations wherein “each individual gives the same recognition to the personal uniqueness and the opinions and interests of others as he would wish them to grant to him.”

Such calls to love one’s neighbour as oneself, however, remain little more than empty if well-meaning rhetoric, unless they are supported by clear guidelines as to how the structures of society might be reorganised in order to facilitate such a proposed transformation of social relationships. Consequently, the document reiterated the programme and policies of New Britain. It called for the reorganisation of the political decision making system in line with the twin principles of decentralisation and federation; the establishment of the three-fold state with the functional division of power in accordance with the different spheres or dimensions of life—economic, cultural and political; workers’ control of industry and production through the guild system with ownership of the means of production being vested in the community; the establishment of a “universal citizen’s allowance” which would free people from economic insecurity; and the reform of the monetary system along the lines developed by Soddy. In addition, looking forward to the eventual establishment of a world federation the conference called for the transformation of the British empire into a genuine commonwealth of free peoples, the establishment of a Federation of Europe and the conclusion of an Anglo-American Atlantic alliance.

As regards the organisation of the movement itself it was proposed, and eventually accepted after some discussion, that control and direction should be lodged with the central group. However, it was pointed out that membership of the central group was open to all, that it was not a specifically geographical group but was open to those who possessed the necessary degree of devotion to New Britain to acknowledge it “not merely as an intellectual or political programme, but as a way of life, demanding nothing less than their complete