New Britain Movement

The New Britain Movement was a short lived political organization in 1930s Britain. It advocated a heterogeneous collection of political ideas including guild socialism, European federalism as a first step to world Federalism, a three way parliament based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and a monetary reform that would abolish banks. By the end of 1933 it grew to 77 branches, and its eponymous weekly newspaper had a circulation of 32,000 copies. However the group soon split into four different factions and dissolved in 1935.^[1]^[2]

The movement was spun out from periodicals edited by Alfred Orage, and proposed a social state, the conception of which was influenced by Benchara Branford, brother of Victor Branford.^[3]^[4] The quarterly New Britain was launched in 1933 with articles by Gerald Heard, Frederick Soddy, and George Scott Williamson, and essays by Samuel George Hobson and Philip Mairet.^[5] New Britain Weekly was then launched in May 1933.^[6]

Among those involved as organisers were George Catlin, Hobson and J. T. Murphy.^[1] W. J. Brown, a Member of Parliament who declared himself an independent, joined the movement as Catlin did, via the New Party.^[7]

For a time John Macmurray was prominent in the movement, with Williamson and others such as Aubrey Thomas Westlake (1893–1985), like Williamson a physician, who went on to involvement in the early days of British organic farming.^[8] Membership overlapped with a number of groups of the time with similar aims, in the case of Westlake with Grith Fyrd.^[9]

Among its successors were the House of Industry League, involving Hobson;^[10] and the People's Front Propaganda Committee, involving Murphy.^[11]

References

1 2 Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (1 January 2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. p. 355. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
↑ Europe in Love, Love in Europe: Imagination and Politics in Britain Between the Wars London : Tauris, 1999 pp.130-1
↑ Scott, John; Bromley, Ray (19 April 2013). Envisioning Sociology: Victor Branford, Patrick Geddes, and the Quest for Social Reconstruction. SUNY Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-4384-4732-2.
↑ Scott, John. "Branford, Benchara Bertrand Patrick (1867–1944)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97276. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
↑ "New Britain". Nature. 131 (3306): 358. 1 March 1933. Bibcode:1933Natur.131S.358.. doi:10.1038/131358c0. ISSN 1476-4687. S2CID 4075231.
↑ Rigby, Andrew (2006). Dimitrije Mitrinović: A Biography. William Sessions Limited. p. 150. ISBN 978-1-85072-334-9.
↑ Worley, Matthew (2007). "What Was the New Party? Sir Oswald Mosley and Associated Responses to the 'Crisis', 1931–1932". History. 92 (1 (305)): 57 note 103. doi:10.1111/j.1468-229X.2007.00385.x. JSTOR 24428698.
↑ Conford, Philip (2005). "Organic society: agriculture and radical politics in the career of Gerard Wallop, ninth Earl of Portsmouth (1898–1984)" (PDF). bahs.org.uk. p. 81 note 9.
↑ Costello, John E. (2002). John Macmurray: A Biography. Floris Books. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-86315-361-7.
↑ Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (1 January 2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
↑ Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (1 January 2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.

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