The strangled cry john strachey biography

Historical Manuscripts Commission

Summary report on the papers

of

Evelyn John St Loe Strachey (),
Labour politician and socialist thinker

in private possession

(reference: GBStrachey)

K Morgan, July
Historical Manuscripts Commission

Table of Contents

Access 

Introduction 

Summary report

Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Papers
Writings and lectures
The Strangled Cry
Other publications c
Army affairs and civil aviation
Miscellaneous undated material
Papers on his death
Papers of Celia Strachey

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Access

Enquiries concerning access should be addressed in the first place to the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

Introduction

Of the leading figures in the Attlee governments, few can have had so volatile nor so intellectually distinguished a career as John Strachey.

See full list on nationalarchives.gov.uk He had realised that it might last ten, perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty years, until the world was ripe for a fresh wave of revolution. It seems possible to believe that Edmund Wilson was right when he ended his review of Zhivago with these words:. No 1 sat somewhere at the lower end of the table, four-square and heavy. Again and again he writes as if decent, sensitive, cultivated men and women should have nothing to do with this dirty business.

The son of John St Loe Strachey. the editor of the Spectator, Strachey received his education at Eton and Oxford, leaving the latter without a degree in Although known at Oxford as a Conservative, Strachey joined the Labour Party and its more radical affiliate the ILP in the winter of , As a scion of the establishment he was almost immediately offered the labour nomination for the Aston constituency in Birmingham.

with he contested unsuccessfully at the general election.

The Birmingham Labour Party also enjoyed the services of another highly-placed convert to socialism in Sir Oswald Mosley, and it was with the future Fascist leader that Strachey struck up his most significant political relationship of the s. The so-called Birmingham proposals of and Strachey�s first book Revolution by Reason, both of which were intended to address the glaring inadequacies of Labour�s economic thinking, were the first fruits of this collaboration.

See full list on nationalarchives.gov.uk A cold repugnance and despair is hidden in the pretty pages. The Russians have found interpreters more eloquent than any the world has known. When the BUF staged another demonstration of 3, Fascists in Hyde Park , London, on 9 September , Strachey's committee organised a major counter-demonstration by 20, anti-Fascists. There is something intangible, marginal, we both understand and feel in the same way.

For a time Strachey edited both the ILP�s Socialist Review and the Miner and then in he contested Aston again, this time successfully. As an MP he associated himself with Mosley�s criticisms of the MacDonald government for its timidity and its financial orthodoxy and in was one of six Labour MPs who resigned to form the New Party. Later that year, however, he broke with Mosley over the latter�s increasingly right-wing outlook and in a world beset by political reaction and economic crisis Strachey found a new allegiance in Communism.

While never officially a member of the Communist Party, Strachey was throughout the s one of the most effective popularisers of Marxist doctrine and of the CP�s immediate policies.

Through books like The Coming Struggle for Power and The Theory and Practice of Socialism Strachey had an enormous influence on the left both in Britain and in the USA, while from he made a major contribution to the Left Book Club as one of its three selectors and as a pungent political commentator. Towards the end of the decade he came increasingly to be influenced by Keynesianism and Roosevelt�s New Deal.

It was this profounder divergence over the possible scope for reforming capitalism that underlay his split with the Communist Party over the character of the war in

The latter part of the war Strachey spent as a public relations officer with the RAF and as a propagandist with the Air Ministry. During this period he rejoined the Labour Party and in , as the newly-elected member for Dundee, he became Under-Secretary of State for Air in the first Attlee government.

See full list on nationalarchives.gov.uk In one of the very worst years an English visitor to Moscow is said to have somehow got hold of his telephone number and rung him up. Few would be killed … Crossman asked Strachey for his advice … The next day in the smoking room at the House of Commons, Strachey gave his approval to Crossman. Rex quondam , Rex futurus. The farmers had been compulsorily cartelised and subsidised under statute.

Subsequently he became Minister of Food and Secretary of State for War, although he was never given a seat in the Cabinet.

Back in opposition in the s, Strachey once more had time to devote to substantial works of political theory and analysis and with the books Contemporary Capitalism, The End of Empire and On the Prevention of War made a major and distinctive contribution to "revisionist" thinking within the Labour Party.

At the same time he remained active in political life. By now very much identified with the Labour right, he would certainly have enjoyed high office in any incoming Labour administration but for his death in at the age of sixty-two.

Few papers of Strachey�s survive from the s but all the subsequent phases of his career are well represented in the papers with his family.

The period in which he embraced Communism and the early s are particularly well covered.

The strangled cry john strachey biography How can their fond countrymen compare such books with the furious polemics of continental political controversy? It is the most important single truth of our time that neither the revolutionary ideal nor the personal-success ideal will suffice. The fact is that the torture-chambers were filled, the springs of objective truth defiled and the socialist vision debased, and all in order to carry through the process of primary industrialisation in just about the time forty years which it usually takes nowadays. On the contrary, after nearly half a century wasted in a denial that we had anything to learn from the Russian system, we are now in danger of being unnecessarily overawed by its achievements.

The papers were drawn on extensively by Strachey�s two biographers, Hugh Thomas (Eyre Methuen, ) and Michael Newman (Manchester University Press, ),

The papers were arranged and boxed at Reading University in the s and the following summary listing follows that arrangement. Listed first is a chronological sequence of personal correspondence and miscellaneous papers including publishers� correspondence and agreements, bills, royalty statements, legal and financial papers etc.

only some of the more notable correspondents are mentioned here,

The listing is based on an inspection made on 9 July and the Commission is most grateful to Elizabeth Al Qadhi and Charles Strachey for their permission to consult the papers.

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Summary report

Papers

Correspondents include Aneurin Bevan (); Sir Evelyn Cecil (); Hugh Dalton (, ); R Palme Dutt (); Louis Anderson Penn (); Victor Gollancz (); Arthur Horner (); John Maynard Keynes (); Stephen King-Hall (); J Ramsay MacDonald (); JT Walton Newbold (); Harry Pollitt (); RW Robson (); Andrew Rothstein (); William Rust (); Shapurji Saklatvala (); Joseph Southall (); John Wilmot (); EF Wise (); Leonard Woolf ().

 

Papers

Correspondents include Charles Chaplin; Sergei Dinamov, International Union of Revolutionary Writers, Moscow; Dutt; Gollancz; VL Gray; Lionel Robbins; Clough Williams-Ellis; Allan Young.

 

Papers (2 boxes)

Correspondents include Sir Richard Acland; Emile Burns; Margaret Cole; Dudley Collard; Maurice Dobb; Dutt; Hymie Fagan; Aitken Ferguson; WZ Foster; Joseph Freeman, New Masses; Gollancz; Horner; Leo Huberman; Douglas Jay; Michail Koltsov, Pravda; Jurgen Kuczynski; Kingsley Martin; AL Morton; R Osbert (R Osborn); Henry Parsons, Lawrence & Wishart; Pollitt; Edgell Rickword, Lawrence & Wishart; T Hanhope Sprigg (brother of Christopher Caudwell); Charles Trevelyan; Beatrice Webb; Clough Williams-Ellis; RS Young; Konni Zilliacus.

 

Papers

Including notebook , TS notes on Keynes and on the Left Book Club.

Correspondents include Robert Boothby, Burns, Dobb, Gollancz, Kuczynski, Young.

 

Papers

Correspondents include Burns, Dobb, Evan Durbin, Dutt, Gollancz, Wal Hannington.

Francois Lafitte, Ivan Maisky, Ivor Montagu, Pollitt, Raymond Postgate, Rust, Webb.

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Papers

Including TS radio broadcasts and other Air Ministry papers ; papers relating to general election ; letters of congratulation on his appointment as minister of Food , correspondents including George Catlin, Seymour Cocks, Zita Crossman, Haydn Davies, Patrick Gordon-Walker, Harold Laski, Dora Russell.

 

Papers

Including some constituency correspondence and miscellaneous ministerial papers; TS notes on Arnold Toynbee�s Study of History with correspondence with Toynbee

 

Papers (4 boxes)

Including ministerial papers.

  • See full list on nationalarchives.gov.uk
  • The Strangled Cry: A Literature of Reaction by John Strachey 1961

  • constituency correspondence, Labour Party correspondence; papers relating to general election; TS draft of "The economic prospect"; notes for speech at Enfield and related correspondence.

    Correspondents include David Astor; PMS Blackett; James Cameron; Richard Crossman; Tom Driberg; Yves Forges; Martha Gellhorn; Gollancz; Lord Layton; Jean Mann; Toynbee; Sir Angus Watson; Amabel Williams-Ellis; Clough Williams-Ellis; Kenneth Younger.

     

    Papers (4 boxes)

    Including TSS speeches at Dundee , Keighley Cumnock,, Laurencekirk , Dundee with related papers.

    Correspondents include Frank Allaun; Clement Attlee; Richard Crossman; Percy Cudlipp; John Freeman; Leslie Hale; Peter Howard; Sir Alan Lascelles; RWG Mackay; Leah Manning; Duncan Sandys; GM Thomson.

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    Papers

    Including TS articles on the army for John Bull.

    Correspondents include Astor; Gollancz; Allen Lane; Lascelles; Thomson.

     

    Papers

    Correspondents include Thomas Balogh; Blackett; Colin Clark; Hugh Gaitskell; JK Galbraith; Gollancz; Nicholas Kaldor; Robbins; Sir John Slessor; Geoffrey Stevens; Watson; Amabel Williams-Ellis; Harold Wilson.

     

    Papers

    Correspondents include Gellhorn; Gollancz; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Lord Nathan.

     

    Papers

    Correspondents include Sir Anthony Buzzard; Gollancz; Liddell Hart; EJ Kingston McCloughry.

     

    Papers

    Correspondents include Astor.

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    Papers

    Correspondents include Gollancz, RT Paget, EP Thompson.

     

    Papers (4 boxes)

    Including TS of "The future of the British left".

    Correspondents include Astor; Alastair Buchan; Buzzard; Joe Corrie; Geoffrey de Freitas; Dutt; Gaitskell; Gollancz; Henry A Kissinger; Arthur Koestler; Melvyn Lasky; Liddell

    Hart; Reinhold Neibuhr; Paget; Toynbee; George Urban, Radio Free Europe.

     

    Papers

    Correspondents include Fenner Brockway; Liddell Hart; Urban.

     

    Writings and lectures (3 boxes)

    TSS of The Frontiers (written , published ); The Just Society (); Contemporary Capitalism (); The Challenge of Democracy (); also first draft of On the Prevention of War () and MS of an unpublished book on the Blackwater c

    TSS of radio talks on "Security in the air" c; "Democracy", three talks for Radio Singapore c; "The challenge of democracy", series for Radio Free Europe

    TSS of five lectures delivered in Singapore ("What was imperialism?", "Lenin�s theory of imperialism reconsidered", "Will new empires arise?", "The hare and the tortoise", untitled).

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    The Strangled Cry

    Papers relating to The Strangled Cry () including TS of the title essay; correspondence with Victor Gollancz Ltd (prospective publisher), the Bodley Head Ltd (eventual publisher) and Denys Kilham Roberts, Society of Authors ; correspondence with readers and reviewers including WH Auden, Stephen Spender, JK Galbraith ; cuttings.

    Other publications c

    Contracts, articles, reviews, correspondence with publishers etc relating mainly to Contemporary Capitalism, The End of Empire (), On the Prevention of War.

     

    Army affairs and civil aviation

    Papers relating to army affairs including correspondence relating to conscription and army pay ; correspondents include LJ Cuming, No Conscription Council; Sydney Elliott; Gaitskell; Liddell Hart; William Rodgers, Fabian Society; Christopher Soames.

    Papers relating to civil aviation

    Institute of Strategic Studies circulated papers

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    Miscellaneous undated material (3 boxes)

    Notebooks (3) with political and economic notes s.

    Address book cs.

    Draft articles, memoranda etc including statement on People�s Front s; notes on anti-Semitism; synopsis of Allen Hutt�s Post-war History of the British Working Class with annotations by Strachey and Dutt c; synopsis of "What is to be done?" (published in as What Are We To Do?); "Proposal for a new association,� ; "Labour�s way ES win the war and the peace" c; memorandum to Attlee on proposed 4-power meeting January ; "Cyclical changes in man�s nature" s; notes on industrial democracy s; untitled novel.

    Undated correspondence including with Anthony Crosland, Gollancz.

    Philip Jordan. Amabel Williams-Ellis.

    Papers on his death (3 boxes)

    Letters (c) to Celia Strachey on his death; correspondents include Austen Albu; Tony Benn; John Biggs-Davison; George Brown; Buchanan; James Callaghan; Barbara Castle; Crosland; Richard Crossman; Tam Dalyell; Sir Maurice Dean; Geoffrey de Freitas; Indira Gandhi; Gollancz; Douglas Jay; Roy Jenkins; Arthur Creech Jones; Jennie Lee; JPW Mallalieu; Dick Mitchison; Toynbee; Shirley Williams; Young.

    Obituary notes and cuttings.

    Transcript and tape recording of interview with Strachey broadcast posthumously on BBC Third Programme

     

    Papers of Celia Strachey

    Correspondence relating to Strachey�s official biography with Amabel Williams-Ellis and Hugh Thomas c

    Notebook containing part of a MS autobiography.

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