Thomas Lewis Horabin (1896–1956)

Published in October, 1944, during the last year of the Second World War, this book is a fierce attack on the Conservative Party; the author, from 1939, was a Radical Liberal (i.e., on the left wing of that small party), and fought his 1939 election to parliament in opposition to Chamberlain's appeasement policy. If you read a lot of the "Left Book Club" books of the 1930s, a lot of the attacks on Tory policy, foreign and domestic, are going to be familiar. Monopoly power, and a desire to turn Germany against Russia (see "Light on Moscow" for further details in that regard by a contemporary M.P. of Horabin). This particular book is something of a campaign document, in that Horabin argues for a conclusive turning out of the Tory party, so that the party would never again raise its head. To a certain extent, that did happen, with Churchill going down to a ringing defeat in the 1945 election. However, for various reasons, Horabin's project of Anglo-Soviet cooperation in post-war Europe did not come to pass. Horabin eventually switched to Labour, though his effectiveness, and his life, was cut short owing to injuries suffered in a plane crash. No really new ground tread here, as I say: all familiar stuff to Left Book Club readers.… (plus d'informations)