LSE’s foundational relationship with the Fabian Society — most prominently via founding members Beatrice and Sidney Webb — is well known. The LSE South Asia Centre, with Professor Michael Cox (who is currently writing a new history of the LSE) will collaborate with the Fabian Society to curate a series of events that will unravel the complexities that underpinned the Fabians’ engagement with and about South Asia, their influence in Labour’s articulation of decolonisation in post-World War 2 Britain, and of the longer term association of several LSE Fabians with the region.
From the retrospective advantage of our current hindsight, several actions of LSE Fabians in Britain seem counterintuitive, grate against our good senses, and complicate our understanding of them. There is a deeper and lesser known story here; our events will explore this tension, tangled in the wider context of race, class, eugenics, Empire, imperialism, historiography, and attendant debates, motored by global political imperatives and intellectual movements of the 19th-20th centuries.
By focusing on South Asia through the membership of the Fabian Society, the events hope to locate actors and their actions both at home and abroad, between divergent interests, to show that this was an invested and intricate engagement walking a peculiar tightrope along a slippery slope: if some Fabians supported eugenics, they also supported opportunities for education for all — the Webbs travelled the world to raise funds to set up a liberal institution like the LSE focused on understanding the economics underlying poverty, inequality and class, and a gift from the Indian businessman Sir Ratan Tata established 'The Ratan Tata Department of Social Justice and Administration’ at LSE where Clement Attlee was appointed Lecturer; LSE Director Henry Beveridge was the architect of the modern welfare state in Britain, and the academic Richard Titmuss the founder of the study of Social Administration (now Social Policy); there were those at LSE who spoke critically of Empire and opposed colonialism (Sydney Olivier), Harold Laski was openly supportive of independence of the Indian subcontinent and engaged with prominent Indians like Krishna Menon, while Nicholas Kaldor continued a friendly, and advisory, association with Nehruvian India in the 1950s.
There were other Fabians, not part of LSE, but no less engaged with South Asia: those who advocated self-rule in the colonies (Virginia & Leonard Woolf), and Annie Besant, who made the subcontinent her home for decades, leading the Theosophical Movement there.
LEONARD WOOLF: Voicing 'Ceylon'?
Wednesday, 9 June | 3.30pm UK | 8pm Sri Lanka
Speakers: Alexander Bubb (@sikandar_bubb) is Senior Lecturer in English at Roehampton University, and is a specialist in 19th-20th c. British literature & its encounter with South Asia; Minoli Salgado is Professor of International Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the author of Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place (2012), and two works of fiction set in Sri Lanka; Peter Wilson is Associate Professor of International Relations at LSE, and the author of The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism (2003).
Moderator: Andrew Harrop (@andrew_harrop) is Secretary, Fabian Society.
Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.
This event is part of the LSE 125 Years celebrations, and is in collaboration with Fabian Society.
Please click here to watch the video-recording of the event.
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Harold Laski and India’s Freedom Struggle
Thursday, 18 March 2021 | 3pm UK | 8.30pm India
Speakers: Michael Cox is Professor, LSE IDEAS, and author of a new history of LSE, 'The School: LSE and the Making of the Modern World' (forthcoming); Jeanne Morefield (@JeanneMorefiel1) is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Birmingham, and has written on Laski's 'Habits of Imperialism'; Brant Moscovitch is Resident Fellow, McGill University, Montreal, and has a DPhil on Laski, international students at LSE and anti-colonial activism; Tejas Parasher (@TejasParasher) is Junior Research Fellow, King's College, University of Cambridge, and researches on Laski's Indian students; Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) is Member of Parliament, Karnataka, India, and author of A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon.
Moderator: Andrew Harrop (@andrew_harrop) is General Secretary, Fabian Society.
Chair: Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science, and Pro-Director (Research), LSE.
This event is part of LSE 125 Years anniversary celebrations, and in collaboration with Fabian Society.
Please click here to watch the video-recording of the event.
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Beatrice & Sidney Webb: The Race for LSE
Tuesday, 17 November | 4 pm UK
Speakers: Michael Cox is Professor & Co-Founder of LSE IDEAS where he is currently Senior Fellow, and author of a new history of LSE, 'The School: LSE and the Making of the Modern World' (forthcoming); Sue Donnelly is Archivist, London School of Economics and Political Science; Kevin Morgan is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History, University of Manchester, and has published extensively on the Webbs; Chris Renwick (@ChrisRenwick) is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of York, and author of British Sociology’s Lost Biological Roots: A History of Futures Past and Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State.
Moderator: Andrew Harrop (@andrew_harrop) is General Secretary, Fabian Society.
Chair: Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.
This event is part of LSE 125 Years anniversary celebrations, and in collaboration with Fabian Society.
Please click here to watch a recording of the event.