(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.

 

Harold Laski

The Spanish Civil War