Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John

poverty.² Titmuss, too, was concerned with ‘acquisitiveness’, and saw psychological factors as contributing to international conflict. Gloom and doom, though, was not the whole story. Compared to continental Europe, Britain was politically stable, with the National Government, dominated by the Conservatives, elected in 1931, and returned to power in 1935. Some parts of the country, including London, saw the development of new industries, and new ways of living characterised by improved living standards leading to higher levels of home ownership, and the acquisition of new consumer goods. Yet this, in turn, highlights significant regional differences, and, overall, there was a highly charged political and cultural atmosphere. It was in this unsettling environment that Titmuss became politically active.

The Liberal Party and the Fleet Street Parliament

In spring 1932 Titmuss was welcomed into Hendon Young Liberal Association by its honorary secretary, J.M. Henderson, who told him that Liberals were ‘few and far between in Hendon, but we are very keen’.³ This would appear to be the J.M. Henderson who, a few years later, was to become Titmuss’s literary agent, acting on behalf of the company Stephen Aske.⁴ Titmuss became an enthusiastic Liberal activist. In summer 1935, for instance, he sent a long piece to his local newspaper, outlining his views about the party’s current position. Titmuss conceded that many people could not remember living under a Liberal government and, since 1918, liberalism had been ‘fighting the reactionary movements engendered by the War’. The British people had ‘witnessed and endured the spectacle of two pitiful Labour Governments, both timorous, both fearful and both failing to fulfil their pledges’. These minority administrations had been in power in 1924 and 1929–31 respectively, with the latter ultimately brought down by the economic catastrophe of 1929. The National Government had overseen an increase of those on poor relief, while ignoring evidence about distress among the unemployed. Demands for a foreign policy more attuned to the maintenance of peace had likewise gone unheard. The country did not want ‘Socialism’, but this would be forced upon it unless the Liberal Party could be revived. More positively, the latter endured because ‘it represents the English mind at its best’.⁵ The Liberal Party was undoubtedly struggling. Already in third place after the Conservatives and Labour, and badly divided, it had split further in the early 1930s when a group under Herbert Samuel had left the National Government. Membership was declining, in some areas local councillors were forming anti-socialist alliances with Conservatives, and parliamentary representation was to be further reduced, to a mere 21 MPs, at the general election of November 1935.⁶

Undaunted, Titmuss did his bit. In the late 1960s he recalled being shouted down in the East End of London ‘when I tried to speak against the Mosley invasion’.⁷ This refers to Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, and suggests Titmuss’s presence at the so-called Battle of Cable Street when the fascists were defeated in their attempt to stage an especially provocative march. If so, this was courageous, given the Blackshirts’ propensity to violence. A more congenial environment for political debate was provided by the Fleet Street Parliament, a debating society modelled on the House of Commons. It met at the St Bride’s Institute in Fleet Street, Central London. By 1935 Titmuss was being described as ‘The Leader of the Liberal Party’, and in this capacity he wrote to the Liberal MP for Middlesbrough, and Herbert Samuel supporter, Ernest Young, about a debate the latter was to lead. Titmuss’s preference was that Young ‘attack the Socialists’ Programme. They are very strong in the [Fleet Street] Parliament and since last October we have had a succession of Bills nationalising the Banks, Industry, Transport and so on’.⁸ Young duly spoke in favour of a motion denouncing the ‘principles and policy of the Socialist Party’ as ‘incompatible with the needs of a progressive nation’. If enacted, they would result in a ‘condition of reaction’ gravely prejudicial to ‘the best interests of the British people’.⁹ Titmuss clearly thought this event successful, telling a colleague that ‘Liberalism was very much alive and fighting last night’.¹⁰ Titmuss evidently thought little of the Labour Party. Although Labour had suffered a traumatic defeat in 1931, it had won control of the London County Council (LCC) in 1934. Under Herbert Morrison’s leadership, it was pursuing policies on matters such as healthcare which were, by contemporary standards, radical.¹¹ Titmuss would have been well aware of such developments but, nonetheless, saw Labour as spineless, even reactionary, with only the Liberals offering a progressive alternative to the National Government.

International affairs: ‘Crime and Tragedy’

Titmuss’s political interests were not only domestic. As we saw in the previous chapter, he and Kay attended peace conferences in Geneva and Birmingham in 1936. The international situation, and the National Government’s handling of foreign affairs, were of considerable concern to those on the liberal and progressive left, who, consequently, tended to support the League of Nations. The League, based in Geneva, had been set up after the First World War as an intergovernmental body aimed at resolving international disputes on a peaceful, cooperative, basis. It sought to prevent the sort of misunderstandings, and military alliances, which, it was widely believed, had resulted in the immensely destructive conflict which had broken out in 1914. By the mid-1930s, however, the League had suffered a number of blows. For example, the US had always stood apart, and shortly after coming to power the Nazi regime in Germany had quit. British supporters of the League were organised in the League of Nations Union, one of a number of bodies seeking stable and peaceful international relations. It conducted the so-called ‘Peace Ballot’, the result of which was announced in July 1935. This showed overwhelming support for, among other things, the use of economic sanctions by League members against any country pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, and continuing British membership of the League.¹²

Another organisation concerned with peaceful international relations, the Council for Action for Peace and Reconstruction, was set up in July 1935 at a convention held at London’s Caxton Hall. The driving force here was former Liberal leader and Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and the founding meeting attracted over 2,500 delegates, including 82 MPs. Addressing the meeting on its first day, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, a leading figure in the creation of the League of Nations, told delegates that the ‘Abyssinian question’ – Abyssinia is now called Ethiopia – ‘was the most serious foreign complication … since the War’. The convention’s resolution supporting all moves towards a peaceful resolution of international disputes therefore had a particular sense of urgency.¹³ The following day Lloyd George, in what The Times described as his ‘Call to Arms’, proposed that efforts should be made to secure the return of MPs, irrespective of party affiliation, who supported the Council’s aims. He also suggested that the current international situation was worse than that of 1914 while, on the domestic front, there was an urgent need to tackle unemployment.¹⁴

Titmuss attended the Caxton Hall meeting, writing in its aftermath to the Council’s organising secretary. A special meeting of the Fleet Street Parliamentary Liberal Party had been held, had unanimously endorsed ‘the resolutions adopted by the Council of Action … in regard to Peace and Reconstruction’, and had pledged itself to ‘support the