The Schumacher Enigma The Tawney Legacy The Goldsmith Agenda Human Scale Governance Job Sharing Yes to A Nobler Europe return to top page PAPWORTH & KOHR In his review of a new edition of 'The Breakdown of Nations' in 'Fourth World Review No. 107' (May 2001) John Papworth wrote as follows:
'I first met the author by chance when he was a neighbour in the lovely Cotswold hamlet of Slad. He was out walking with his partner, Diana Lodge, and, quite unaware that I was meeting one of the most original and challenging minds of the 20th Century, I invited them in for a cup of tea. Talk was general and it was only a few days later, when going to dinner at their house across the valley that I learned Leopold had already returned to his university teaching post in Puerto Rico.
The talk with Diana remains a clear memory. I was, by then a disillusioned Labour Party member, former local party secretary, ex-parliamentary candidate and had recently turned down the offer of a safe Labour seat in the industrial north. I had begun to see that the problem of radical politics was not the policies of mass parties but of their size, and I was beginning to write down (at the late Professor R.H. Tawney's urgings) my ideas of alternative politics; in terms of community power.
Explaining some of this to Diana she said, 'but Leopold is saying exactly the same things; you should read his book'. And so I became the owner of one of my most prized possessions, a copy of the first edition of 'The Breakdown of Nations'. At the time, on reading it, my main reaction was one of joy in discovering that I was not alone in the general direction my thought was taking, and that a university professor expounding similar unorthodox ideas could actually get his work published.
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