Description
In 1940, as London sheltered, a handful of left internationalists gathered to form the Fabian Colonial Bureau (FCB), making claims to an uncertain future, where the Labour party would transform world order by reforming the British Empire into socialist commonwealth. And yet, for all sense of momentum, in the early post-war years, while the visions proposed by the Fabian Colonial Bureau attracted enthusiasm, they were soon mired by controversy among its progressive coalition. What did it mean, after all, to render empire into a socialist commonwealth? Beneath shared policy memoranda and pamphlets, divergences brewed. In this paper, we think through the connected biographies of two lesser-known FCB figures - the reformist Rita Hinden and the anti-imperialist Frank Horrabin. Tracing their intellectual biographies within and beyond the FCB, and reflecting on their friendship as well as disagreements, we underline how connecting intellectual biographies can help us make better sense of the history of international thought as built not by great thinkers, but rather by pluralist coalitions, fuelled by ambivalent horizons.
