Abstract
It is clear that the collapse of the second Labour government in August 1931 made a major impact on Laski’s political thought. However, it has been argued that there was a total break in his attitudes and assumptions at this point. Thus, according to Deane, until 1931, Laski’s commitment is ‘to the methods of rational discussion and peaceful change, and his basic outlook is that of an eighteenth-century rationalist’.1 Thereafter:
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Notes
The Evolution of the Parliamentary System’, in H. J. Laski et al., The Development of the Representative System in Our Times (Librairie Payot, 1928 ).
For example, Neil Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals (Gollancz, 1959) pp. 46–7;
A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–45 (Oxford University Press, 1965 ), p. 348.
For a brief, but unsympathetic, analysis of the Socialist League, see Ben Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge University Press, 1977), ch. 5.
Ibid. See also S. Cripps et al., Problems of a Socialist Government, (Socialist League, 1933 ).
For a detailed critique, see R. Bassett, Nineteen Thirty One: Political Crisis (Macmillan, 1958) pp. 361–3, 393. (At the end of his life, Laski acknowledged that other authorities had not accepted his view of the monarch’s role. Reflections on the Constitution p. 61.)
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© 1993 Michael Newman
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Newman, M. (1993). Democracy in Crisis (1929–32). In: Harold Laski. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376847_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376847_7
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