Man is a one among many obstinately refusing reduction to unity.
Harold J. Laski
The Public Record
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy-threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 UK general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
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There are realms of conduct within which, to be free, I must be permitted to act as I please; to be denied self-expression there, is to be denied freedom.
Where mistakes are made, where there is corruption, or dishonesty, or abuse, it can be brought home forthwith to its authors.
In a time of crisis, particularly, when the things we hold most dear are threatened, we shall find the desire to throw overboard the habits of tolerance, almost irresistible.
The case for the view that freedom of thought and speech is a good in itself is fairly easy to make.
Every religious body really means by blasphemy an attack upon its fundamental principles.
Even Lincoln supported his generals in completely indefensible attacks on civilian rights.
If no such news is at hand it will be manufactured.
If he stands alone, he has neither the knowledge nor the power to secure for himself proper protection.
There is no danger that the general strike will ever be other than a weapon of last resort; the occasions when it can be successfully used will be of the utmost rarity.
I cannot accept the position that government is always entitled to count on industrial peace, whatever its policy.
Nor do I see why it is unconstitutional for Labour, as in 1926, to withdraw from work in an orderly and coherent way.
But when trade unions seek for what they regard as justice, one of their most powerful sources of strength is the awakening of the slow and inert public to a sense of the position.
I can see no justice in such a denial of freedom.
And there are certain types of political action by trade unions--a strike against war, for example--which I do not think they ought in the interest of the community itself, to abandon.
Right and wrong in these matters are matters to be defined in each particular case.
I cannot, therefore, agree that the community is entitled, on any terms, to put its convenience first, and the workers’ freedom afterwards.
Any such Procrustes’ bed of definition as this principle suggests seems to me, therefore, a quite wanton and foolish interference with freedom.
In all this realm, the denial of liberty seems to result in the slow maximization of unhappiness.
That has been the case with bootleggers in America and with night-clubs in London.
Tyranny flows easily from the accumulation of petty restrictions.
It is important that each should have to prove its undeniable social necessity before it is admitted within the fabric of the law.
There is no liberty without freedom of speech.
It is a decision made after evidence has been collected and weighed, distortion allowed for, prejudice discounted.
But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.
Politicians like Harold J. Laski
