Anthony Crosland and Socialism

Abstract

Looking back on it, what was it that made Crosland’s death a public as well as a private tragedy? He had not made his mark as a public personality, like Bevan or Churchill or even ‘Fight, Fight, and Fight Again’ Gaitskell. He had not much of the actor about him, no flamboyance on the platform or in the studio. But he was cut down in full stature rather than when stumbling about in death’s anteroom. Like a much younger man, he was still climbing, faster indeed than at any other period of his life, on the way to the Treasury (where any decisions that can be taken about moves towards greater fiscal equality presumably are).

Our society will look quite different when we have carried through the changes … and the whole argument will then need to be re-stated and thought out afresh, by a younger generation than mine.

(C.A.R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism, 1956)

Written for this volume.