CONTENTS Laying the FOUNDATIONS What started as a distinctly “odd adventure” has flourished into a world-leading social science institution. To mark the end of LSE’s 120th Anniversary year, Michael Cox takes a look at LSE then, and LSE now. W e all know, or by now should know, that LSE left harbour in 1895, venturing forth onto what Michael Oakeshott – a famous LSE professor – would have termed “a boundless and bottomless sea” where there was “neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage”. The story about the School – the brainchild of Fabian socialists (Sidney Webb in particular) and the result of a large and quite unexpected bequest – has been told many times before. Indeed, 20 years ago, one of LSE’s most successful directors – Ralph Dahrendorf – wrote a wonderful and affectionate history of the School that by any measure can be termed “definitive”. But what sort of world was LSE launched into? And what sort of year was 1895 itself? An eventful one by any measure. Indeed, in January, while Sidney was busily planning a new “London School” based on the experience of the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris, France was being torn apart by the Dreyfus affair. In February, Britain and the United States worked out a way not to go to war over Venezuela, laying the foundation for what subsequently became known as the “special relationship” (a relationship that has benefited LSE over the years). Several 1 thousand miles away, in May, Japan was beginning to flex its imperial muscle in Asia (much to the Webbs’ delight if truth be told), while in June, Germany completed the Kiel Canal, proving to many in Britain – though not at first to the Webbs (great admirers of most things German) – that their Anglo-Saxon cousins across the North Sea were up to no good. Finally, in the autumn, LSE opened its doors to all who could profit – “whether men or women” – through the serious study of subjects such as economic history, economic theory, statistics, commercial geography, banking and political science. What Sidney Webb saw as the deficiency in British higher education was about to be rectified. These were the most exciting of times, and especially busy ones for the hyperactive Webbs. In 1893, Sidney had issued his optimistic Fabian pamphlet detailing what he believed would be the inevitable progress made by the “English” towards “Social Democracy”. A year later, he and Beatrice published their truly monumental History of Trade Unionism (through which Lenin learned to understand English). In 1895, both were heavily engaged in politics. But the School took pride of place. It was, in a way, their only 2 24 I LSE Connect I Winter 2015 I child. Born out of a very real dissatisfaction with Oxford and Cambridge, and a keen desire to create something that would help educate the London professional classes (and foreigners too), LSE was indeed what Beatrice Webb called a very great, but distinctly “odd adventure”, with of course no guarantee that it would last more than a few years. As Sidney later admitted in one of his many thousands of letters to Beatrice: “I got nervous last night thinking that it would all collapse like a pack of cards. And if it does collapse, well then it must. We shall have done our best” (28 April 1899). So LSE in its early days was hardly the “lusty child”, as characterised by Janet Beveridge. The project, moreover, faced a good deal of opposition. Even Sidney’s closest comrade in arms – the playwright George Bernard Shaw – attacked his friend for not appointing enough genuine “collectivists” to the teaching staff. Nor did it end there, with Ramsay Macdonald (a future Prime Minister) attacking Sidney a few years on for misusing the original bequest. In fact, ironically, having been 3