Social Credit History

Extract from
The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism
by Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt, Routledge (1997)

P80

The UK ‘social credit movement’ can be described as three movements which coexisted in an uneasy relationship. First, a self-appointed ‘Social Credit Secretariat’, loosely formed as early as 1921, produced material for study groups which sprang up throughout the United Kingdom. Finlay estimates that by late 1922 thirty-four study groups had been formed across the United Kingdom, centred largely on guild socialism (Finlay 1972: 122). Douglas was drawn into reluctant co-operation with this secretariat in the absence of any other prominent figure. Second, the informal Chandos group encompassed a number of leading artists, journalists and Church figures who shared common links with Orage. Third, John Hargrave and his Green Shirts movement popularised social credit ideas among the disaffected and unemployed in the United Kingdom.

The character of the social credit movement, covered in detail in Part III, heavily influenced the nature of reactions, particularly in the 1930s, when its widespread popularity was perceived as threatening to the established political scene. Indeed, reactions are more accurately described as responses to elements in the publicity and propaganda of the social credit movement than to the Douglas/New Age analysis as a whole. This, coupled with the search for solutions to problems of the time from various vantage points in society – the orthodox liberal economists seeking solutions to depression, the Labour Party seeking political credibility, the unemployed and lowpaid seeking explanations and deliverance – obscured the holistic character of the original texts.

Had the texts contained merely the maverick meanderings of a single mind, the subsequent fate of the ideas would be of little consequence. It is contended here that the Douglas/Orage collaboration synthesised into a coherent framework a constructive alternative view of the relationship between economics and society. The ideas propounded by Orage and Douglas had considerable impact on Meade, Keynes and other major figures in politics and economics in subsequent decades. The central theme of the detrimental impact of the impetus to economic growth and its relentless drive towards the production of armaments and waste arising from a debt-driven financial system was often neglected, even by leading advocates of social credit. In the ensuing debate, proponents and opponents alike failed to acknowledge an alternative framework for freeing the productive capacity of developed nations from exploitation for individual greed and competitive gain. Page 80 The PE

p138-9

A third publication, issued by the recently formed Credit Power Press in 1922 with the title The Community’s Credit: a Consideration of the Principles and Proposals of the Social Credit Movement (Hattersley 1922), arose from a series of papers discussed by the Swinton (Yorks.) group of the social credit movement during the latter part of 1921 and the spring of 1922. The papers were based on Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy, the authorship of the latter book being attributed in part to Orage, ‘late editor of The New Age’. Unlike Cousens, Hattersley asserts that Douglas presents a ‘permanent solution to the present economic difficulties’ – in other words, that his purpose is to put the economy right (Hattersley 1922: i). Two of the three main strands of the social credit movement began to emerge in these three books by Young, Cousens and Hattersley. The Swinton group referred to by Hattersley were one of an estimated number of thirty-four study circles which were formed across Britain in 1921–2 to study and publicise social credit (Finlay 1972: 121–2). Although these groups appear to have centred on the remnants of guild socialism (Finlay 1972: 122), they subsequently formed the caucus of the later network which held ambivalent attitudes towards socialism. Cousens, on the other hand, became a member of the Chandos group of intellectuals who met from the mid- 1920s to discuss social credit from an Oragean perspective. Douglas initiated neither of these developments. ..... P138-9

p140 The Chandos Group

The Chandos group, the second main strand of the social credit movement, first met in May 1926 at the invitation of Dimitrije Mitrinovic, a contributor to the New Age under Orage. The group was formed to explore the possibility of publicising social credit ideas, and the original members were joined at their regular meetings by academics, clerics and business people. G.D.H. Cole, Lewis Mumford and T.S. Eliot were often in attendance (Mairet 1936: 110).

named after the restaurant at which it invariably met fortnightly, the group was influential in the many spheres in which the members and their associates conducted their daily lives. The seven who first dined together on the evening of the termination of the General Strike were joined by three or four others and continued to meet throughout the 1930s. According to Reckitt, one of the original members, the core of the group were W.T. Symons, Philip Mairet and V.A. Demant, with Egerton Swan, Alan Porter and Albert Newsome attending up to the publication of their first joint attempt to explain their stand, Coal: a Challenge to the National Conscience. They were joined by B.T Boothroyd, Hilderic Cousens, R.S.J. Rand and Geoffrey Davis. The latter had a background of distributism and was a member of the Sociological Society. The members of the group were, to a varying extent, contributors to the New Age under Orage and/or active social credit supporters. There was a strong Christian influence within the group. T.S Eliot, ‘that gracious personality of crystalline intelligence’, attended from time to time (Reckitt 1941: 190–5). The group acted as a focus of its members’ interest in social credit, and steered through a couple of minor publications on the social credit theme. Already in the late 1920s, however, ‘it had become evident that “social credit” aroused considerable prejudice’ and neither publication mentioned the term, regarding it as counterproductive (Reckitt 1941: 189–95; Finlay 1972: 168–72). As Reckitt noted, the monetary reform ideas in social credit would not appear attractive to public figures unless or until they were commonly discussed and accepted by the public at large. In effect, that is what happened. Within a few years of the publication of the original texts the ideas were being studied throughout the British Isles, in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia (Douglas 1937: xiii). Following the economic crisis of 1931, finance became news and the work of a host of monetary reformers was subjected to public scrutiny. At this point, the early promotional material enabled the social credit movement to flourish on a worldwide scale (Reckitt 1941: 172–3) p40

See also pages 158++

COMMENT: Copied for John Carlisle and others interested in the history and contemporary relevance of Social Credit and Guild Socialism.