Harold
Laski
was born in Manchester in 1893. After
being educated at Manchester Grammar School
and New College, Oxford,
he lectured at McGill University (1914-16), Harvard
University (1916-1920) and Yale University
(1919-20) and contributed to the New
Republic magazine.
In 1920 he joined the staff of the London School
of Economics in 1920 and six years later became professor of political
science. A brilliant lecturer, Laski had a tremendous influence over
his students. Laski was also the author of several books including
Authority in the Modern
State (1919), A
Grammar of Politics (1925) and
Liberty in the Modern State (1930).
Laski was a committed socialist and in 1936 joined with Victor
Gollancz and John Strachey, the Labour
MP, to form the Left Book Club. The main aim was to spread socialist
ideas and to resist the rise of fascism in Britain. Beginning with
a membership of 10,000, numbers rose to 50,000 by 1939. The most important
book published by the Left Book Club, was The
Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
in 1937.
The success of the Left Book Club during the
summer of 1936 encouraged socialists to believe there was a market
for a left-wing weekly. Laski joined with Victor
Gollancz, Stafford Cripps, Aneurin
Bevan, George Strauss and Ellen
Wilkinson joined forces to start publishing a journal they decided
to call Tribune.
Although a strong critic of the leadership of the
party, Laski became chairman of the Labour Party
in 1945. Harold
Laski died suddenly in March, 1950.
(1)
Kingsley
Martin heard visiting lecturer, Harold Laski, while studying at
Cambridge University.
Harold Laski was just back from Harvard, where he had been much abused
as a 'Red' because he had supported the Boston police strike. He was
still in his late twenties and looked like a schoolboy. His lectures
on the history of political ideas were brilliant, eloquent, and delivered
without a note; he often referred to current controversies, even when
the subject was Hobbes's theory of sovereignty. His lectures amounted
to little in substance if one tried to write them down, but they made
every student excited about the subject.
(2)
Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography
(1964)
I now saw H. G. Wells frequently.
After dinner friends arrived, among Professor Laski, who was still
young-looking. Harold was a most brilliant orator. I heard him speak
to the American Bar Association in California, and he talked unhesitatingly
and brilliantly for an hour without a note. At H. G.'s flat that night,
Harold told me of the amazing innovations in the philosophy of socialism.
He said that the slightest acceleration in speed translates into terrific
social differences.
(3)
Ralph
Miliband, Harold Laski, Clare
Market Review (1950)
His lectures taught more, much more than political
science. They taught a faith that
ideas mattered, that knowledge was important and its pursuit exciting.
I like to remember him in the early days of the war, when the School
was in Cambridge. He would arrive every week from London and come
straight to School from the station. The winter was bitter and train
carriages unheated. He would appear in his blue overcoat and grotesquely
shaped black hat, his cheeks blue with cold, teeth chattering, and
queue up with the rest of us for a cup of foul but hot coffee, go
up to the seminar room, crack a joke at the gathering of students
who were waiting for him, sit down, light a cigarette and plunge into
controversy and argument; and a dreary stuffy room would come to life
and there would only be a group of people bent on the elucidation
of ideas: We did not feel overwhelmed by his knowledge and learning,
and we did not feel so because he did not know the meaning of condescension.
We never felt compelled to agree with him, because it was so obvious
that he loved a good fight
and did not hide behind his years and experience. He was not impatient
or bored or superciliously amused... His seminars taught tolerance,
the willingness to listen although one disagreed, the values of ideas
being confronted.
And it was all immense fun, an exciting game that had meaning, and
it was also a sieve
of ideas, a gymnastics of the mind carried on with vigour and directed
unobtrusively with superb craftsmanship.
I think I know now why
he gave himself so freely. Partly it was because he was human
and warm and that he was so interested in people. But mainly it was
because he loved
students, and he loved students because they were young. Because he
had a glowing faith that youth was generous and alive, eager and enthusiastic
and fresh. That by
helping young people he was helping the future and bringing nearer
that brave world in which he so passionately believed.
(4)
Ralph
Miliband,
The Political Ideas of Harold Laski, Stanford Law Review (December,
1955)
He (Laski) did not underestimate how heavily the
legacy of the past must affect any
attempt to reach understanding with the Soviet Union. Nor did he fail
to see how much Russian policies increased the difficulties of such
an understanding. But he also believed that, when all possible emphasis
had been laid on Russia's share of responsibility for the tragic climate
of the post-war era, it remained true that one of
the essential causes of the postwar tensions was the determination
of the West to pursue
its ancient and futile crusade against the idea which Russia had come
to embody. And it
was one of his most bitter disappointments that a Labour Government
should have been willing to pursue foreign policies which only had
meaning in terms
of an acceptance of the values implicit in such a crusade. The first
duty of a Labour
Government, he insisted, was to come to terms, despite all difficulties,
with the Communist
world. Nothing that has happened since he died suggests that duty
to be less imperative or less urgent.
(5)
Herbert
Morrison,
An Autobiography (1960)
In the midst of the (1945) campaign came the Laski incident.
Laski - I always liked him - the new chairman of the National Executive,
made a speech in which he suggested that Attlee's presence at Potsdam
with Churchill was just a gesture; whatever was decided would not
necessarily be confirmed by a future Labour Government because the
Executive Committee would have to be consulted.
Nevertheless,
I must confess that Laski's speech had been ill-advised. We in the
Party had grown used to his views expressed in speech of a formal
character. Laski had considerable influence over the years in Labour
policy and planning. His work at the London School of Economics justified
much confidence in his views. He could always see the other side of
an argument. If he had lived I think he would have found his real
place in the House of Lords. He told me that if he was offered a peerage
he would gladly accept. I urged the idea on Attlee, for although I
often disagreed with Laski I respected him as a man, his ability and
sincerity.
Attlee, however, turned
the idea down. He did not like Laski, a factor which made the latter's
ill-advised speech on the eve of Potsdam more annoying in Attlee's
eyes than the words of it warranted.
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