Introduction

This chapter examines Titmuss's political activism in the 1930s, a difficult decade for British society, and into the early part of the Second World War. Throughout the 1930s fear of another war was ever-present, and the Depression after the 1929 crash further exacerbated socioeconomic disruption in the ‘traditional’ industrial areas. A sense of foreboding was compounded by psychological ideas which stressed the irrational, unconscious, dimensions of human behaviour. For instance, the psychiatrist John Bowlby and the Labour politician Evan Durbin co-authored a book entitled Personal Aggressiveness and War which discussed, among other things, what they described as ‘irrational acquisitiveness’. Titmuss and Bowlby were already acquainted by this point, and their paths were to cross on various occasions over the coming years. Both were to be signatories, for example, to a letter to the Prime Minister in 1965 on the extent of child poverty. 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’. 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.