Introduction

Previous chapters outlined a broad political, and social, historical sketch of British society as the 1930s moved towards war. But the points Stefan Collini makes about the era's cultural atmosphere should also be acknowledged. As he puts it, the inter-war period was notable for increasing concerns centred around the notion of cultural decline, alongside anxieties about the morally destructive effects of ‘modernity’. One component of such critiques was ‘a challenge to the category of “the economic” ‘. On one level, this was part of a longstanding rejection, on the part of English radicalism, of traditional political economy, and of related ideas such as the ‘cash nexus’. But what was new was a ‘more sustained questioning of the place of economic activity in human life’, alongside ‘a more wide-ranging exploration of the alleged cultural significance of its accepted centrality in “modern” society’. For this Chapter, what is especially important is that Collini sees R.H. Tawney, an intellectual mentor to Titmuss, as one of the principal exponents of such an analysis. Tom Rogan, in a study which deals in detail with Tawney, likewise suggests that, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, critics of capitalism focused especially on its ‘moral or spiritual desolation’. This was, therefore, an important constituent of the contemporary intellectual environment.

Titmuss was determined to get his views across to as wide an audience as possible, and so sought to broadcast these in both scholarly and popular outlets. His co-authored ‘Penguin Special’, discussed in the last chapter, was an example of a publication aimed at both markets, as well as targeting those of like mind, namely ‘progressive opinion’. This chapter builds on the preceding two as we further examine Titmuss's engagement with progressive opinion in particular. As part of this, we also examine his critique of what he saw as contemporary society’s moral shortcomings, not least the obsession with economic matters at the expense of what was, or could be, truly valuable in human affairs. For Titmuss, this complemented his concerns over population, as well as informing his more overtly political activities.