‘Saturated with Biological Metaphors’: Professor John Macmurray (1891–1976) and the Politics of the Organic Movement

Abstract

The connections between the British organic movement and the radical Right in the 1930s and 1940s are now well documented. One major reason for this convergence is what the philosopher John Macmurray termed ‘the organic analogy’: the interpretation of human life and society in purely biological terms. This article outlines Macmurray's critique of the analogy; it summarises his reasons for believing that it led in practice to racialist totalitarianism, and shows how some of the organic pioneers used the analogy to support their views on the importance of kinship for national identity. That Macmurray, though on the Left, was part of a wider network that drew him into the company of organicists is demonstrated through examining his links with various people and organisations. The article also shows how Macmurray influenced the young poet Robert Waller, who later became the Soil Association's editorial secretary and promoted a philosophy of ‘human ecology’ which would go beyond the organic analogy. It concludes by suggesting that the issues that Macmurray and Waller raised are of continuing relevance for the organic movement and environmentalism.

Keywords:

• Macmurray
• Organic
• Waller
• Personalism
• Kinship
• Radical Right

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Richard Moore-Colyer and Dr Mike Tyldesley for their helpful comments on the earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

 [1] See for instance Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement, 146–63 and ‘Organic Society’, 78–96; Stone, Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933–1939, 148–65, and Wright, The Village That Died for England.

 [2] ‘C3’ was a category of military recruitment, indicating a poor physical specimen. See for instance, C3…or A1?, pamphlet issued by the Pioneer Health Centre (undated but probably ca. 1935).

 [3] Barlow, The Discipline of Peace, 25; NEW, 31 August 1944, 152–3. On Jenks, see Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards Mother Earth’, 353–71.

 [4] Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 217. Barlow was secretary to Geddes in the early 1930s and present at his death-bed: Kenneth Barlow, The Diary of a Doomwatcher (unpublished autobiographical memoir; n.d. but probably 1974), 19. Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology. NEW, 20 May 1946, 72; 4 September 1947, 149; 5 May 1949, 39. On Massingham, see Moore-Colyer, ‘A Voice Clamouring in the Wilderness’, 199–224.

 [5] Gardiner, NEW, 22 June 1933, 237. On Wallop, see Conford, ‘Organic Society’. Ludovici, quoted in Stone, Breeding Superman, 39. Pound, NEW, 26 December 1935, 211.

 [6] Costello, John Macmurray, 130.

 [7] On the response to Blair's claim that he had been influenced by Macmurray, see Seldon, Blair, 32–3. On Ayer's failure to acknowledge Macmurray, see Costello, John Macmurray, 307–8. Hampshire's book Thought and Action appeared two years after Macmurray's The Self as Agent, dealt with the same topic and bore similarities to Macmurray's ideas, but made no mention of Macmurray's book. On Macmurray's radio talks, see Costello, 179–82. Horney refers to Macmurray's work in Neurosis and Human Growth. According to Laing's PA Catriona Mirylees, Laing was ‘much influenced’ by Macmurray's work (letter to the author, 2 April 1986). For Buber's closeness to Macmurray, see Costello, 322.

 [8] On Mitrinovic, see Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinovic. On the Tavistock Clinic, see Dicks, Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic. Macmurray was impressed by The Origins of Love and Hate by Tavistock staff member Ian D. Suttie, which he refers to in Persons in Relation, 45. For his influence on Laing, see footnote 7, above. Faber's organic list included such influential works as Stapledon's The Land: Now and To-Morrow, Jacks and Whyte's The Rape of the Earth, Balfour's The Living Soil, Howard's Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease and Picton's Thoughts on Feeding.

 [9] On Mairet, see Conford, Origins, 164–74. Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinovic, 72; see also 70–3, 77–9, 82–5, 90–2 and 152–8. On New Britain and New Europe, see 107–51 passim. Scott Williamson's complex biological philosophy was published after his death: Williamson and Pearse, Science, Synthesis and Sanity.

[10] Mairet, ABC of Adler's Psychology. Macmurray's talk, ‘A Philosopher Looks at Psychotherapy’, was published in Individual Psychology Medical Pamphlets No. 20, (C. W. Daniel Co., London, 1938), 9–22; the response to the talk is quoted in Bottome, Alfred Adler, 299. On Purpose and Health and Life see Conford, Origins, 169–70 and 141–4. For a critique of organicist social thought in Purpose, see Gutkind, ‘The Place of Nature’, October–December 1933, 145–54.

[11] For Heppenstall's memories of the NEW, see his autobiography The Intellectual Part, 21–2; for his memories of Macmurray, see Four Absentees , 88 and 95. Westlake's comment on Macmurray's support for Social Credit can be found in Edgell, The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, 1916–1949, 504. For debates in the NEW on organic politics, see for instance ‘Organic Society’ by ‘Gens’, 16 January 1936, 266–7.

[12] Macmurray's review is in the 20 October 1945 issue of the New Statesman. Marxism , ed. Murry, Macmurray, Holdaway and Cole. On the Christendom Group, see Conford, Origins, 198–9. Mounier, Personalism, refers to Macmurray, xx. Macmurray wrote the foreword to Coates, A Common Faith or Synthesis, and featured as one of Coates's Ten Modern Prophets. See also Coates, The Crisis of the Human Person, 27, 32, 156.

[13] On Westlake, see Edgell, Order; Westlake, 70 Years A-Growing, and Costello, John Macmurray, 204. On Rolf Gardiner, see Moore-Colyer, ‘Rolf Gardiner, English Patriot and the Council for the Church and Countryside’, 187–209. On Macmurray's involvement with the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, and on Byngham, see Edgell, Order, 473, 493–4, 504, 612–24.

[14] Costello, John Macmurray, 205. On bio-dynamic cultivation, see Conford, Origins, 65–80.

[15] On Macmurray's relations with Murry, see Costello, John Macmurray, 240–4. On Murry's ventures in agriculture, see Murry, Community Farm; Byngham, as ‘Dillon’, features, 100–1.

[16] ‘Belief for a Man of the Array’, Wallop archives, Hampshire Record Office (HRO), file 15M84/F178.

[17] Lane, The Alien Menace, 85, 95; Independent, 25 March 2000.

[18] Jewish Chronicle, 24 November 1939, 20. References to Wallop can be found in the issues of 2 December 1938, 40; 23 December 1938, 35; 3 March 1939, 40, and 30 June 1939, 22.

[19] On Stapledon, see Waller, Prophet of the New Age and Moore-Colyer, ‘Sir George Stapledon (1882–1960) and the Landscape of Britain,’ 221–36. Professor Moore-Colyer, who has studied Stapledon's archives, has not come across material relating to Macmurray, and Stapledon's visitors' book for 1939–40, which is in the Royal Agricultural Society of England's archive at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, does not contain Macmurray's name. The reference to Reason and Emotion, which Stapledon had read by 1937, can be found in The Way of the Land (1943), 64. Macmurray's contribution to The Democratic Order was Challenge to the Churches; Stapledon's was Make Fruitful the Land! (both books Kegan Paul, 1941). On Welsh nationalism's links with the far Right, see Griffiths, ‘Another Form of Fascism’, 174–80.

[20] Macmurray, Interpreting the Universe, 103–21.

[21] Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 45.

[22] Macmurray, Conditions of Freedom, 55, 56.

[23] Macmurray, Conditions, 61–2 and 57–8. On Wallop, see Conford, ‘Organic Society’.

[24] For Macmurray's rejection of idealism, see Idealism Against Religion . For his religious philosophy in the 1930s, see Creative Society , and The Clue to History .

[25] Macmurray, Persons, 46. On Mitrinovic's ‘cosmic socialism’, see Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinovic, 74–5.

[26] For Macmurray's impact on Waller, see Waller, Be Human or Die, 60–1 and 66–74. Waller's notebooks of Macmurray's lectures are in the author's possession.

[27] Cripps received an obituary notice in Mother Earth, July 1952, 7. Stephenson's portrait appears in the October 1964 edition of the journal, and his obituary notice on 359 of the January 1967 edition.

[28] Michael Allaby, interview with the author, 28 February 2006. On Jenks's continued post-war support for Mosley, see Craven, ‘Health, Wholeness, Holiness’, 212.

[29] Waller, interview with the author, 3 August 1987.

[30] Mother Earth, July 1964, 227–8. Waller, Be Human, 91.

[31] Waller, Be Human, 103.

[32] DeGregori's web home-page was listed as http://www.uh.edu/∼trdegreg, and his essay was archived at http://agbioview.listbot.com. On the BNP's support for organic farming, see David Aaronovitch, ‘Lunching with the Enemy’, Independent, 2 May 2002. John Tyndall, the BNP's founder, was influenced by the writings of Ludovici: see his article ‘The “Why Should We…?” Syndrome’, Spearhead Online, http://www.spearhead.com/9912-jt3.html.

[33] Lawrence Woodward, Introduction to Lady Eve Balfour, The Living Soil, xxi. (It should be pointed out that Woodward is not an adherent of the organic analogy and is left-wing in his politics.) Costello, John Macmurray, 126.

[34] Spowers, Rising Tides: The History and Future of the Environmental Movement, 332–3.

[35] See Ludovici, under the pseudonym ‘Cobbett’, Jews and the Jews in Britain, and, on Ludovici, Stone, Breeding, 33–61. On the misanthropy in certain sections of the environmental movement, see Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind, 390–1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philip Conford

Philip Conford is the author of The Origins of the Organic Movement (Floris Books, 2001) and is currently researching the organic movement's history since the 1950s. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of History, University of Reading.