"I read R.H. Tawney's book, The Attack, which is a series of pieces written over the course of his life... Reading it, I realised that the right wing of the Labour Party, that is to say the Croslands and the Hattersleys, have really stolen Tawney and made him their apostle, whereas when you actually read what he had written you find he was an intensely radical man. I have been asked to write a preface for the new issue, and I intend to try to get him reinstated as the spokesman for the mainstream, democratic, Christian socialist left... The more I read Tawney, the more I become convinced that his words would be helpful and comforting to us now and would assist in preventing the so-called Social Democrats from breaking away from the Labour Party."
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Historians from EnglandAcademics from EnglandSocial criticsEconomists from EnglandEducators from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
Tony Benn, diary entry (7 February 1981), quoted in Tony Benn, The End of An Era: Diaries 1980–90, ed. Ruth Winstone (1992), pp. 83-84
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney
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R. H. Tawney
Richard Henry Tawney (30 November 1880 – 16 January 1962) was an English academic, economist, historian, and a leading advocate of Christian socialism.
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