Title: A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950

Author: Rachel Barrowman

Publication details: Victoria University Press, 1991, Wellington

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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Modern Books, Wellington

The specific political purpose stated by the Progressive Book Society in its 1937 prospectus contrasts significantly with the statements of aim of its Wellington counterpart. Whereas Progressive Books identified its constituency as those who are 'critical of the present order . . . [and] convinced of the need for social change', the Wellington Co-operative Book Society addressed itself to 'everyone . . . who is concerned with the affairs of culture and liberty' and who has 'the interests of human and social progress at heart'.⁹¹ It emphasised that its 'scope is wide; it has no sectarian aim; its interest is in books of all sorts that have the stuff of life in them', and defined its educational role not in terms of education for socialism but, more loosely, 'to promote thought and discussion—not merely in politics or economics, but in whatever concerns the mind of man.'⁹²

While encompassing in these statements the broad policy of all of the co-op bookshops, the wider frame of reference and less specific political purpose reflect a difference between Modern Books and the Auckland and Christchurch shops in more than just name. This is not to say that the 'politics versus art' debate was not heard in the meetings of the Modern Books' management committee. On the contrary, it was in Wellington that these issues developed into overt conflict.

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The most vocal of the society's own critics was R. F. Griffin, who was a member of the management committee from 1938 to 1944. Griffin was a communist of 1920s vintage and had been the Party's delegate to the sixth Comintern congress in 1928. He was also a founder and long-serving executive member of the SCR. A loquacious Irishman with strongly-held opinions—'turbulent, thorny but talented'⁹³ —he was expelled several times by the Party (this was not an uncommon experience), receiving his final marching orders in 1942. By trade Griffin was a publisher's representative and he was also a member and outspoken critic of the Progressive Publishing Society, Other Party members on the WCBS committee shared his disapproval of the bookshop's character. Correspondence from Griffin and fellow Party member Chip Bailey to Modern Books' manager in 1942 pointed to the lack of adequate supplies of 'popular and topical progressive pamphlets' in comparison with the other cooperative bookshops, despite the need for material of this nature having been recognised by the selection committee. In his reply the manager enclosed a list of left-wing publishers and distributors with whom the society held standing orders, noting the number of these with whom contacts were irregular and from whom supplies were unreliable, and observed that some publishers were wary of the society because of large debts that had been run up by the old International Bookshop. He also remarked on the distinct origins of the three shops to account, in his view, for this difference: Progressive Books, developing out of the literary section of the FSU, had a basis in pamphlets and established contacts with suppliers of such material, while 'Modern Books basis has been books since a majority of its members were more interested in books than in political pamphlets.'⁹⁴

The manager's assessment of the literary interests of the membership of the Wellington society was at least true of most of those involved in its formation. The WCBS prospectus and other publicity material oudined a wide range of literature, encompassed by the term 'progressive', to be sold by the new shop, but without the emphasis on the political, just as it gave a very broad definition of the movement's political/cultural purpose. The shop would 'specialise in progressive political, economic and social literature, as well as in books expressing contemporary trends in art, prose and poetry', with selection to be made by experts in the categories of 'Politics, Economics, Foreign Affairs, Philosophy, Social Topics, General Scientific Works, Prose, Poetry, Art Works and Plates, The Best in Contemporary Fiction'.⁹⁵ As early as 1939 the management committee heard a 'lengthy' policy debate similar to that engaged in by the Christchurch society, prompted by a letter from shareholder, trade unionist and Left Book Club organiser, WJ. Nye, suggesting that the shop feature pamphlets on 'trade unions and allied topics'. The committee reaffirmed a policy of 'giving expression to all shades of progressive opinion' and the necessity, as Rhodes page 117 stressed in Christchurch, of maintaining 'a balance between stocks appealing more especially to people of purely intellectual interests and those people whose interests lay primarily in left wing political publications'.⁹⁶

But it was literature rather than politics which was the principal interest of the shop's first manager, Roy Parsons. Formerly a bookseller in London, Parsons was recruited for the job of manager of Modern Books after the position was advertised in British newspapers. He was vetted by Victor Gollancz; the New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner in London; and A.G.B. Fisher, former Otago University Professor of Economics who was then working in London for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Parsons arrived in New Zealand in May 1939 and took over the management of Modern Books a month later.

Within a year of Parsons' appointment Bart Fortune resigned from the management board. For him the balance between 'purely intellectual interests' and the left-wing had begun to tip too far. While Fortune's own interest in taking on the International Bookshop in 1933 had been primarily in Marxist literature it was his intention that the reorganisation of the shop into a cooperative society would broaden the range of material, with the aim of strengthening the anti-fascist movement. This was a balance which required some concession on his part, as he comments:

I was naturally concerned to see that marxist publications held a place among the liberal-cultural stock and this was so for the initial period, although anything that might be considered strident by lesser committed people was, with my goodwill, omitted.

But he found himself increasingly frustrated by the 'softening' influence of this 'liberal-intellectual' element, ironically the very people he himself had invited into the organisation—people such as J. C. Beaglehole and W. J. Scott who in Parsons' opinion were also motivated primarily by literary interests—and particularly with a manager who he felt was not only 'clearly antipathetic to' but 'boycotted the left'.⁹⁷

Parsons himself resigned from Modern Books in February 1946, after three years in the airforce (during which time he was replaced at Modern Books by Communist Party member Jean Ferguson), and that year he started his own bookshop, a move prompted in some part by the conflict of interests identified by Fortune. It is Parsons' opinion that the 'removal' of J. C. Beaglehole from the chairmanship of Modern Books in 1940 and his replacement by Martyn Finlay was initiated by the left. Whether or not this is strictly true, his recollection of a left 'coup' at this time reveals a perception of a left-wing faction with interests at odds with his own. During the years of his management there were a number of Communist Party members on the committee, forming a majority in one year.

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In Parsons' view the two sectors of the society, the left and the liberal-intellectual, were 'really at cross-purposes',⁹⁸ The establishment of Parsons' bookshop drew away a degree of 'high cultural' influence and custom from Modern Books in the second half of the 1940s, and the left continued to have an influence in the shop. At the end of 1946 Ferguson was replaced as manager by the Wellington Communist Party branch secretary, Ray Nunes. But the shop retained a wider base than its Auckland and Christchurch counterparts, a more cautious policy regarding left material and a less political image.

Evidence of the shift in balance in the early years is provided by a breakdown by category of books ordered in the year 1942-3. 'English Literature & Fiction' constituted 27 per cent of all books ordered, twice the proportion of'Polities', while children's books, an area in which Modern Books was to gain a considerable reputation, were stocked in the same numbers as Marx and the People's Voice (13 per cent). The library had a similar composition: purchases made for the library in 1941 numbered 131 in the fiction category, 69 political and topical, 58 general and 54 scientific.⁹⁹ Statistics of this kind are not available for the other shops but a comparison of the booklists published in Co-op Books for the period 1943-5 confirms the greater emphasis on cultural material in Wellington. In the first issue of Co-op Books Modern Books advertised a wide range of poetry, had separate sections on children's books and science, and in the 'general' category an anthology of Romantic literature and Drawings by Augustus John (at 22/6). In the same issue Progressive Books listed titles on British trade unionism, The Real Russia, Soviet Strength, and in its fiction section Proletarian Literature in the United States, Fairy Tales by Karel Capek and works by Michael Gold. The January 1944 Modern Books catalogue had critical works by Q. D. Leavis and T. S. Eliot, poetry by MacNeice and de la Mare, 'an amusing collection of light verse, parodies and epigrams' by Allen Laing and a collection of English poetry from Chaucer to Arnold. The Christchurch Co-op Bookshop listed W. H. Auden, John Lehmann and Stephen Spender. Another significant difference was the separate section on the Soviet Union in the Auckland and Christchurch, but not Wellington, lists. A 1947 booklist had four political titles and a total of 35 titles in the categories of novels; drama, fine arts, literature and poetry.¹⁰⁰

A number of extra-curricular activities organised by the Modern Books committee further reinforced the stronger 'liberal-intellectual' character of the Wellington shop. Musical evenings were held. Approaches were made to the New Zealand Society of Artists and 'the Auckland pottery people' in 1941 with a proposal to sell New Zealand art and crafts in the shop. A picture lending library was opened in 1943, although this proved uneconomic and was discontinued after a year. A 1941 Modern Books newsletter includes paragraphs on a discussion evening to be held on New Zealand literature and a suggestion of forming a periodical group for those interested in cooperating in the purchase of page 119 journals such as The Studio, Scrutiny, Partisan Review, Poetry Atlantic Monthly, Political Quarterly, Kenyon Review and Architectural Forum. By contrast, the first issue of the Co-operative Book News contained short items on the treatment of writers and artists under fascism, news of progressive happenings in the literary world (libraries in China, the publication of the biography of a Korean revolutionary, and so on) and a column entitled 'In the Soviet Union' citing evidence of cultural progress in the first socialist state.

The more literary image presented by Modern Books can be seen to reflect the proportionately greater influence of the 'intellectual liberal-left' within both the management and the membership of the society. The prominent involvement of academics, civil servants and professional people in the society was maintained throughout the 1940s. Conversely, the WCBS did not maintain the informal links with the trade union movement that its Auckland and Christchurch counterparts did. Although two unions—the printers' and carpenters'—were shareholders in the society there was only one trade union official on the management committee in this period (Ken Baxter of the printers' union, 1938-9). This lack of union input was not entirely for want of trying. An approach was made 'to the industrial movement and other organisations' when the society found itself in financial difficulty in 1939.¹⁰¹ The society considered approaching the LRC and Trades Council about speaking at their meetings and having space in union journals. But an offer to carpenters' union official Bill McAra in 1943 of a position on the management committee was declined with the comment that 'closer relations between the Book Society and the Trade Union movement could best be achieved by the amendment of your rules to permit an appointee of the Trades Council to sit on the Committee'.¹⁰²

The WCBS did advertise in labour publications, although less consistently than Progressive Books. Advertisements were placed in the Transport Worker in 1940 and in the Industrial Worker regularly through 1941. They also advertised in the Public Service Journal (and would later introduce a 5 per cent discount for PSA members), but here they were looking to a different market. It was observed in the annual report of 1944 that circulars sent to trade unions (and other institutions), as opposed to libraries, were not particularly effective. The conclusion was drawn that 'trade unions. . . do not appear to be interested in books.'¹⁰³

The virtual absence of trade union or working class representation on the management committee of Modern Books was paralleled by the composition of the Wellington society. Only 8.8 per cent of WCBS shareholders whose occupations have been established were of working class background, compared with 36 and 32 per cent respectively in Auckland and Christchurch. By corollary, a greater proportion were white-collar workers—teachers, civil servants, academics and professionals.¹⁰⁴

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The predominantly white-collar nature of the Wellington society (as of the Left Book Club there) reflects in part the city's large civil servant population, and its smaller working class, with industry concentrated in the Hutt Valley. Similarly, one can see in the character of the cooperative book societies in Christchurch and Auckland distinctive features of those cities' social and cultural structures. The strongly class-stratified nature of Christchurch and its larger working class population has elsewhere been discussed as the prerequisite for the development of a distinct working class and left-wing culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.¹⁰⁵ In Auckland, the interest of a number of trade unions in the Progressive Book Society, and as we shall later see, in left-wing theatre, indicates a degree of union or working class interest in political/ cultural activity which also contributed to the more political and working class character of the WEA in Auckland.¹⁰⁶

The Wellington Co-operative Book Society also contained a greater proportion of university graduates. Although the figures that can be quoted here are only approximate, they show a dramatic contrast. Approximately 36 per cent of the membership sample have been identified as graduates compared with 12 per cent of the Auckland society and 16 per cent in Christchurch. An anonymous donation made to the WCBS in 1946 of 50 shares to be allocated to university and teachers' college students made some contribution to these statistics. But the strong academic interest in Modern Books is also an indication of the high profile maintained by the university and the Wellington Teachers' Training College within left-wing and liberal-left cultural and intellectual activity in Wellington generally. A little ironically, this influence may be explained partly by Victoria's tradition and reputation for having the most politically radical student body of the four university colleges. Modern Books indeed owed its origins to this radical intellectual climate. Throughout the 1920s Victoria's Debating Club and Free Discussions Club had provoked alarm and moral outrage from the city fathers and the university authorities, and as we have seen it was from his involvement in the Free Discussions Club in the early 30s that Bart Fortune went on to run the International Bookshop and initiate the WCBS. Of the handful of university 'little magazines' which sprang up in the depression years, Student, which Fortune edited for the Free Discussions Club, was the most politically-oriented and outspoken. It was banned by the student executive after its first two issues, and when it defiantly produced a third in 1933, this time edited by Gordon Watson, the club was disaffiliated from the students' association.¹⁰⁷

Wellington Teachers' Training College, meanwhile, enjoyed an even greater reputation in these years as a 'Hotbed of Revolution'. The college had been closed at the end of 1932, a victim of the depression, and reopened in 1936; the resulting older age of the students in the later 1930s may be one factor in the page 121 climate of outspokenness and independent thought which distinguished the college in these years. It was for these qualities that the institution was fondly remembered by its former teachers and students in the centenary issue of its magazine, Ako Pai, years later. Needless to say, at the time some sections of the community perceived these virtues as dangerous political tendencies. As we shall see later, in the second half of the 30s both the teachers' college and Victoria College maintained their public image as 'radical' institutions particularly through theatre: Victoria with its witty and very political capping shows, and the teachers' college with a series of contemporary and politically progressive plays produced by English lecturer WJ. Scott.

Scott and Victoria's 'radical' History lecturer J. C. Beaglehole both played a prominent role in the formation and formative years of the Wellington Cooperative Book Society. Scott was a member of the management committee from 1939 to 1942; Beaglehole was on the committee from 1938 to 1944 and was president of the society for the first three years. Their involvement in Modern Books reflected as much as Bart Fortune's the intellectual and political atmosphere within the halls of higher education in the 1930s. Theirs, however, can be described as a cultural more than a political interest, and demonstrates the differing ideals and motivations which formed the cooperative book movement. Modern Books, in so far as it realised a socialist ideal, for them drew on Morris rather than Marx. It expressed an ideal which combined a love of good books for their own sake, the ideal of the free circulation of the best of literary culture, and an instinctive reaction against the influence of capitalism and industrialisation on culture, in the tradition of nineteenth century guild socialism.

An apprenticeship at Whitcombe and Tombs during the first world war instilled in J. C. Beaglehole a love of good books and fine printing which became the basis of a long-term interest in typography. He was typographical advisor for the centennial Historical Surveys, and in his involvement with the Progressive Publishing Society was concerned principally with its technical side as chairman of its typographical committee. An exhibition of fine printing held at Modern Books in the early 1940s was his initiative. So too was a display of banned books. After studying at the London School of Economics under the tutelage of Harold Laski, he had returned to New Zealand at the end of the 1920s with a political philosophy founded on the principle of freedom of thought and expression, a principle which soon lost him his job at Auckland University College. His was a political/cultural ethos which would have found its clearest expression not in Marx but in Milton's Areopagitica—republished in a limited edition by the Caxton Press in 1941 shortly after the introduction of wartime regulations requiring the licensing of publications, hand set 'in 14-point Caslon Old Face, with Perpetua for titling' and printed on 'Francis antique laid paper'.¹⁰⁸

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For WJ. Scott the primary intellectual influence was F.R. Leavis and the New Criticism. Many years later, reflecting on his teaching career, Scott described himself when he was appointed to the staff of Wellington Teachers' Training College in 1936 as:

politically fairly radical, culturally an almost fanatical highbrow, and educationally a firm believer in the necessity of making students aware of the cultural influences in their lives and those of children—newspapers, comics, magazines, films, radio—and of helping them to measure the quality of these influences by the standards and values derived from knowing and responding to good literature of the past and present.¹⁰⁹

Taking Leavis and Thompson's Culture and Environment as his text he overhauled the History of Western Literature-style syllabus to concentrate instead on contemporary cultural developments, the influence of 'mass' culture and the need to preserve cultural and critical standards. He impressed upon his students the importance of rigorous critical awareness and the independence of thought for which not only 'Eng. Lit.' but the college as a whole was known. The atmosphere was one of intellectual and cultural, rather than political, radicalism, despite official and public conceptions to the contrary.

It was this Leavisite concern with maintaining critical standards and a cultural tradition which underlay Scott's article in Tomorrow on the newly-formed WCBS, entided 'Books and Readers', in which he described Wellington's sorry literary climate. Lamenting the rise of the culture 'industry' and the 'tragic surrender to the middlebrows', he accounted for the establishment of the cooperative book movement as 'an indication of the deep dissatisfaction felt by many of us with the inadequate supply of good books': as one bulwark against the insidious effects of capitalism, against mediocrity and cultural poverty, the cooperative book societies promised to make more readily available serious, quality literature of all kinds—'books of all kinds that have the stuff of life in them'.¹¹⁰ It was not a political revolution he advocated, but a revolution in the standard of bookselling and in the cultural climate of Wellington. A statement of the society's 'Aims and Policy' adopted at the inaugural meeting expressed the same theme:

The policy of the Wellington Co-operative Book Society shall be to provide readers with books, pamphlets and periodicals that try with honesty, skill and thoroughness to make the life of men in society intelligible to them. Recognising the difficulty of preserving a sound judgment of literature and art in a world in which so much of it has been debased for profit, the members of the Society look to their bookshop to help them and the public generally to this end; they regard it as a means of developing the critical intelligence that the understanding and treatment of human conditions to-day so urgently need.¹¹¹

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This statement reveals a different conception of the relationship between the 'political and cultural problem' of the time (the rise of fascism), and a different understanding of the role of the intellectual in this moment of crisis from that held by Selwyn Devereux, or by Winston Rhodes.

As was the experience in the other centres, the Wellington shop found it necessary in times of financial difficulty to carry 'certain lines not traditionally stocked by our shop, such as digests, popular periodicals, and "best-selling" novels'. This report went on to apologise for the society's submission to the forces of Mammon, reassuring members: This is regarded as an expedient which we hope will be temporary. The committee is as anxious as anyone to maintain Modern Books' reputation for quality.'¹¹² The 1947 annual report also had a slightly apologetic tone when it observed: 'While ordering mostly the more saleable tides in such series as the Modern Library and children's books, we have also stocked works of scholarship which no other bookseller in Wellington has retailed.'¹¹³ The Christchurch Co-op Bookshop and Progressive Books were just as averse as Modern Books to compromising their socialist principles to balance the books. They too recognised the importance of 'bookshops that attempt to hold up intellectual standards, and to maintain bastions against Chaos', in the words of a Progressive Books leaflet of the late 1940s.¹¹⁴ But their priorities were different, with more emphasis placed on the sale of political literature and less on the theme of maintaining standards.

In its emphasis on cultural standards the WCBS also had a different conception of its audience. In its 1938 prospectus, while referring to 'the average reader' and the aim of making important literature available 'at low cost', the society directed its appeal to a 'specialised', and by implication minority, reading public. Commenting on the deficiencies of the current book trade, wherein 'selection is by no means as comprehensive or as meritorious as it might be', it proposed: 'If it were possible to organise a section of the public whose reading tastes were similar, much might be done to sift the worthwhile publications and make available the very best of reading matter.' The 'us' in Scott's 'Books and Readers' article remained undefined, or was perhaps assumed given the medium for which he was writing, but here the newly-formed WCBS addressed itself, by implication if not by intention, to a defined class of reader. The idea of a 'Readers' Bookshop'—the title of a similar leaflet issued by the WCBS in 1939— is not the same as the 'People's Bookshop' envisaged by Winston Rhodes. When it described the cooperative book movement as 'action by organised readers'¹¹⁵ Modern Books placed the principle of cooperative bookselling in a narrower framework than did Rhodes' popular cultural ideal: intervention in the literary marketplace does not necessarily imply a socialist practice and goal in Rhodes' terms.

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Arguably as a result of its broader nature and appeal the Wellington Cooperative Book Society was by far the largest of the four societies, with 908 members in 1944 and 1400 by 1948. It was also prospering financially at the end of the 1940s, in marked contrast to the Christchurch society, despite a population, and potential market, of roughly equal size. The Wellington society did experience some decline in enthusiasm and active involvement on the part of its members in these years, and the 1950 annual general meeting passed a motion that 'strongly deplored the apathy and inactivity of members'; the president had commented in his report of the previous year that, with a number of members 'by this time largely scattered throughout New Zealand, something of the earlier enthusiasm of harder days has inevitably been lost by diffusion and dilution'. But he was also able to attribute this loss of enthusiasm 'in some degree, [to] the spiritual corrosion of material success'.¹¹⁶ Modern Books' sales figures roughly equalled those of Progressive Books throughout this period. In the first year of trading it made a net profit of £150 with sales of £3000. Sales increased steadily throughout the 1940s to £9723 for the year to March 1948.

Success was achieved in spite of particular difficulties. In the mid 40s Modern Books faced a number of problems which culminated in a financial crisis at the end of 1946. The small size of its Manners Street shop precluded its carrying profitable, non-literary merchandise such as stationery, and because of very high rent it had 'an excessive overhead in comparison with the other shops'.¹¹⁷ Tenancy problems, aggravated by the failure of the publishing society in 1945, prompted a suggestion to the annual general meeting in November 1946 that the society be wound up. It had also been forced to sell its library the previous year (an action which brought bitter protest from two shareholders, who felt, perhaps unfairly given the extenuating economic circumstances, that 'it is now evident that as far as the Society is concerned, the economically under-privileged are confined to the pulp chain-store library or the over-crowded municipal institution'¹¹⁸ ). Nevertheless, in spite of these adversities, in its 1949 report the society was able to congratulate itself on 'another twelve months of progress. . . . a successful trading year. . . . Stock has attracted increasingly large numbers of the public into the shop'. It also noted that sales to non-members had increased while those to members had decreased. Net profit for the year was £1029.

It would seem significant that Modern Books should thrive while the more politically-oriented Co-op Bookshop found its financial position worsening in the post-war years, when the demand for left-wing literature had slowed. Like Progressive Books, Modern Books benefited from its central location. Its Woodward Street and Manners Street premises were close to the retail centre of the city and to the white-collar population which comprised the bulk of its membership, and probably its clientele. Modern Books did retain its left-wing component, but, knowing its market and its limitations, also retained its page 125 broader basis. As the manager, Ray Nunes, observed in 1952 following complaints from R. F. Griffin about political pamphlets being kept at the back of the shop, it was 'not possible to make profits quickly from this material.'¹¹⁹