Lothian, Curtis, Kimber and the Federal Union Movement (1938-40

Abstract

The idea of a European federation enjoyed a brief period of success in Britain in the year leading up to and the early part of the second world war. During this period, a large and powerful literature was produced by a number of distinguished representatives of liberal and socialist thought, such as Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Lord Beveridge, Lionel Curtis, William Curry, Ivor Jennings, Ronald Gordon Mackay, James Meade, Kenneth Wheare and Lord Lothian. This literature, which had a direct or indirect influence on British political thinking at the time, has been almost completely forgotten in Britain today. But it is held in high regard by continental scholars, especially in Italy, where it is referred to as the 'Anglo-Saxon Federalist School' and thought of as the most illuminating contribution to the evolution of European federalist thought.' The renaissance of the federal idea on the continent from 1943 owed much to the writings of Lothian, who, in Great Britain, is generally remembered for his role in the evolution of the British Empire into the Commonwealth and in the forging of closer links with the United States. On the continent, however, his importance lies in his writings for the federalist movement a facet of his career neglected in Great Britain. The most influential and dynamic starting-point of federalist resistance was probably the island of Ventotene, off the coast of Naples, where Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi were confined as anti-fascist militants. At the beginning of 1939, Luigi Einaudi (later to become President of the Italian Republic), who was then Professor of Economics at the University of Turin and one of the very few liberal intellectuals to whom the fascists accorded a certain freedom of speech, sent Rossi some books by British federalists which he had received from the Federal Union. Among them was Pacifism is not Enough. Spinelli explained why these writings had influenced him: