William Travers Symons

William Travers Symons (1879–1976)[1][2] was an English Social Credit and Christian Socialist writer, known as a member of the Chandos Group and journal editor.

Early life

He was the son of Henry (Harry) James Symons (c.1851–1918), son of Peter Travers Symons of Greenwich, and his wife Charlotte Jean Stewart (c.1854–1922), daughter of Archibald Stewart of Old Kent Road.[3][4] His father, later of Lee, London, was a broker with Lloyd's of London, a member from 1886.[5] H. J. Symons & Co. still operated from London's Alie Street into the 21st century.[6][7] William Travers Symons subscribed to Lloyd's in 1914, with H. J. Symons & Co.[8]

Desmond Hawkins wrote that as the son of a marine insurance broker, Symons "had a conventional and reasonably affluent career", but "was unconventional in his sympathies and used his financial strength as a discerning patron of the reformist causes with which he identified himself."[9] He worked for his father's firm from 1893 to 1903. In 1904–5 he was farming in New Zealand.[10] In 1905 he was involved in the Hampstead branch of the Right to Work National Council, as Financial Secretary.[11]

Before the outbreak of World War I, Symons and C. W. Daniel belonged to the Tolstoyan group at Whiteway Colony: Symons was based there from 1905 to 1910.[12][13] Daniel was a close friend, and Symons later became a director of C. W. Daniel & Co., his publishing house.[14] At this period Symons joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and was on good terms with Keir Hardie.[13]

From 1910 to 1915 Symons was working in insurance in Calcutta, India. He returned to England, and subsequently worked in the family firm.[10] He involved himself again with the ILP. He also took up the ideas of A. R. Orage, presented in The New Age, in particular Social Credit.[9]

1920s and the Chandos Group

Symons wrote later that he first met Orage at a Social Credit conference (Jordans) in 1921.[15] Orage, Symons and Charles Marshall Hattersley, three journalists, were considered the major British publicists of Social Credit ideas.[16] Maurice Reckitt met Symons at the "big [i.e. Swanage] social credit conference" in 1921.[17] That meeting was also attended by Hewlett Johnson.[18] Orage considered it important that the Labour Party should adopt Social Credit. Labour set up a committee to look at it, in 1922; Orage and Social Credit's founder C. H. Douglas refused to deal with it.[19] In October of that year, Orage left the country, and spent the rest of the decade working for the Gurdjieff Foundation.[20]

With the Labour Party in power a few years later, Symons was on the Finance Inquiry set up by the ILP National Council, and in 1925 dissented, with James Maxton, from its first report. The committee, chaired by Clifford Allen, consisted mostly of Members of Parliament, with also E. F. Wise.[21]

At the May 1926 meeting convened by Dimitrije Mitrinović, which founded the Chandos Group, Symons was one of those present.[12] He has been credited as the founder.[22] The Group has also been seen as a branch of the Christendom Movement. The name was taken from the Chandos Restaurant, in central London.[23] It was on St Martin's Lane, and the Group met there regularly, every two weeks. Maurice Reckitt, another of the founders, emerged as its unofficial leader.[24]

Symons agreed with the comment of Reckitt that "finance was openly warring against civilization".[25] He and Reckitt were among the seven authors of Coal: A Challenge to the National Conscience, (1927), an early product of the Group, published by the Hogarth Press.[26]

By 1928, the Chandos Group had allied itself with the Adler Society of London (International Society for Individual Psychology); and the latter developed into the New Europe Group of 1931, another Mitrinović vehicle, which had Patrick Geddes as President.[27][28] In this way the Chandos Group was linked also to the Sociological Society of Geddes.[22] Symons was treasurer to the Adler Society, and handled day-to-day operations with Rose Graham, wife of Stephen Graham, and Lilian Slade.[29] In 1935, he was also the convenor of the Chandos Group.[30]

1930s

From 1932, there were in the United Kingdom a variety of local Social Credit organisations, and the National Credit Association set up by Lord Tavistock.[31] In 1933 Gorham Munson described leading British Social Credit publications, including Purpose edited by Symons and Philip Mairet, others being Kibbo Kift's The Front Line, and the British Crusader.[32] That year, in reply to prompting from Symons, C. H. Douglas set up an official Social Credit Secretariat.[31]

In 1934 Orage died, and the Chandos Group set up a committee to find an editor for his New English Weekly. On it were Symons and Reckitt, with T. M. Heron, and Albert Newsome. The result was that Mairet was given the post.[33]

The Labour Party had set its face against Social Credit, from 1922. They did look again, in 1934–5. The Social Credit Secretariat were not interested in dealing with them. Symons, with Mairet and Newsome, attended a meeting at this time with a party subcommittee.[34]

Works
  • Compensation or Confiscation? The Speeches of H. Dalton & J. Maxton at the I.L.P. Conference Together with the Speeches of W. Graham & W. T. Symons (1925). With Hugh Dalton, James Maxton and William Graham.[35]
  • The Just Price: A Financial Policy for the Independent Labour Party (1926), with Fred Tait.[36]
  • A Living Wage Or a Living Income: An Attack Upon the "living Wage" Programme and an Alternative Policy for the Independent Labour Party (1927).[37][38] A pamphlet critical of the ILP, by Symons who was a "utopian" supporter.[39]
  • Coal: A Challenge to the National Conscience (1927). With V. A. Demant, Philippe Mairet, Albert Newsome, Alan Porter, Maurice Reckitt, and Egerton Swann.[26] The work was in the tradition of The British Public and the General Strike (1926) by Kingsley Martin.[40]
  • Politics: A Discussion of Realities (1929), a further Chandos Group collective pamphlet. Those mentioned most prominently (James Viner Delahaye and Hilderic Cousens), as well as Mairet, were group members; others involved were Demant, Newsome, Porter, Reckitt and Symons.[41][42][43][44]
  • The Coming of Community (1931)[45]

Editor of Purpose

Purpose, a quarterly literary magazine, was set up in 1929 by Charles William Daniel. Initially, he edited it himself, under the pseudonym "John Marlow". By 1930, Symons was running it: with Mairet to 1935, and then with Desmond Hawkins, to 1940.[46][47]

In 1939, Symons as editor provided space for Henry Miller, whom he had met in 1937 when Miller visited Alfred Perlès in London, to write about the theories of Eric Graham Howe (1897–1975).[48][49] Miller commented on how much Symons—a "gentleman"—had done, with Claude Houghton's works, to change his ideas on England.[50] Perlès, who stayed with Symons, wrote in his autobiography that there was "something regal" about him.[51]

Family

In 1902, Symons married Margaret (Mary) Ann Williams in Hampstead; she is known as Margaret Travers Symons.[52][53][54] The couple had separated by 1906.[55] Margaret filed to divorce her husband in 1910 for his adultery; and the divorce was granted in 1911.[54]

Notes
  1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  2. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  3. "Marriages". The Hour. 2 July 1875. p. 8.
  4. "Deaths". Brockley News, New Cross and Hatcham Review. 26 May 1922. p. 1.
  5. Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Wyman and sons. 1906. p. 906.
  6. Rew, John; Sturge, Charles; Sandy, Julian (31 July 1989). Macmillan Directory of Lloyd's of London. Springer. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-349-10861-9.
  7. Miller, Robert (13 January 2016). British Invisible Export Council Year Book. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. 652. ISBN 978-1-349-11350-7.
  8. Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Wyman and sons. 1919. p. 1037.
  9. Hawkins, Desmond (1989). When I Was: A Memoir of the Years Between the Wars. Macmillan. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-333-48968-0.
  10. Conford, Philip (2001). The Origins of the Organic Movement. Floris Books. p. 238.
  11. "The Unemployed". Hampstead & Highgate Express. 9 December 1905. p. 6.
  12. Conford, Philip (2001). The Origins of the Organic Movement. Floris Books. p. 116.
  13. Conford, Philip (2001). The Origins of the Organic Movement. Floris Books. p. 196.
  14. "Archives Charles William Daniel Company". search.iisg.amsterdam.
  15. New English Weekly & the New Age. 1934. p. 116.
  16. Hansen, Alvin Harvey (1936). Social Credit Proposals. Association of Reserve City Bankers. p. 1.
  17. Reckitt, Maurice Benington (1941). As it Happened: An Autobiography. J.M. Dent & sons Limited. p. 189.
  18. Johnson, Hewlett (1968). Searching for Light: An Autobiography. Joseph. p. 55.
  19. Redman, Tim (29 March 1991). Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. Cambridge University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-521-37305-0.
  20. Zilboorg, Caroline. "Orage, Alfred Richard (1873–1934)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35322. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  21. Independent Labour Party (Great Britain) (1925). Report of the Annual Conference. p. 57.
  22. Edgell, Derek (1992). The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, 1916-1949, as a New Age Alternative to the Boy Scouts. Vol. II. E. Mellen Press. p. 506. ISBN 978-0-7734-9197-7.
  23. Phillips, Paul T. (1 February 1996). A Kingdom on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity, 1880-1940. Penn State Press. p. 110 note 91. ISBN 978-0-271-04383-8.
  24. Harding, Jason (2002). The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-war Britain. Oxford University Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-19-924717-2.
  25. Wollenberg, Bruce (1997). Christian Social Thought in Great Britain Between the Wars. University Press of America. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-7618-0496-3.
  26. "Coal A Challenge to the National Conscience. Modernist Archives Publishing Project". www.modernistarchives.com.
  27. Scott, John; Bromley, Ray (19 April 2013). Envisioning Sociology: Victor Branford, Patrick Geddes, and the Quest for Social Reconstruction. SUNY Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-4384-4732-2.
  28. Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (1 January 2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. p. 355. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
  29. Rigby, Andrew (1984). Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović. East European Monographs. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-88033-056-5.
  30. Hawkins, Desmond (1989). When I Was: A Memoir of the Years Between the Wars. Macmillan. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-333-48968-0.
  31. Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (1 January 2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
  32. Munson, Gorham (1933). "The Douglas Cure for Economic Ills". Current History. 38 (2): 185. ISSN 2641-080X. JSTOR 45337174.
  33. Diaper, Jeremy (2014). "The New English Weekly and the British Organic Husbandry Movement: A Reassessment". Agricultural History. 88 (3): 338. doi:10.3098/ah.2014.88.3.336. ISSN 0002-1482.
  34. Burkitt, Brian; Hutchinson, Frances (14 April 2006). The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism. Routledge. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-134-75583-7.
  35. Compensation Or Confiscation? The Speeches of H. Dalton & J. Maxton at the I.L.P. Conference Together with the Speeches of W. Graham & W. T. Symons. I.L.P. 1925.
  36. Symons, W. T. (1926). The Just Price: A Financial Policy for the Independent Labour Party. W. T. Symons and Fred Tait.
  37. Symons, W. T. (1927). A Living Wage Or a Living Income: An Attack Upon the "living Wage" Programme and an Alternative Policy for the Independent Labour Party. Blackfriars Press.
  38. Bullock, Ian (30 November 2017). Under Siege: The Independent Labour Party in Interwar Britain. Athabasca University Press. p. 135 and note 42. ISBN 978-1-77199-155-1.
  39. Blaazer, David (22 August 2002). The Popular Front and the Progressive Tradition: Socialists, Liberals and the Quest for Unity, 1884-1939. Cambridge University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-521-52115-4.
  40. Southworth, Helen (8 May 2012). Leonard and Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-7486-6921-9.
  41. Delahaye, James Viner (1929). Politics. A Discussion of Realities. Initiated by J.V. Delahaye, in Company with Hilderic Cousens, Philippe Mairet [and Others], Etc. London.
  42. Demant, V. A. (18 April 2018). The Penumbra of Ethics: The Gifford Lectures of V. A. Demant with Critical Commentary and Assessment. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-4982-9779-0.
  43. Eliot, T. S. (17 November 2015). The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume II: Practical Cats and Further Verses. Faber & Faber. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-571-32941-0.
  44. Peart-Binns, John Stuart (1988). Maurice B. Reckitt: A Life. Bowerdean. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-85420-001-3.
  45. Symons, W. T. (1931). The Coming of Community. C.W. Daniel Company.
  46. Walter, Nicolas (2011). Damned Fools in Utopia: And Other Writings on Anarchism and War Resistance. PM Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-1-60486-222-5.
  47. Watson, George; Willison, Ian R. (1972). The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. CUP Archive. p. 1367.
  48. Miller, Henry (1969). The Henry Miller Reader. New Directions Publishing. p. 386. ISBN 978-0-8112-0111-7.
  49. Durrell, Lawrence; Miller, Henry (19 September 1998). Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-1980. New Directions Publishing. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-8112-1730-9.
  50. Miller, Henry (1969). The Books in My Life. New Directions Publishing. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-8112-0108-7.
  51. Perlès, Alfred (1946). Round Trip. D. Dobson. p. 43.
  52. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  53. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  54. "Divorce Court File: 279. Appellant: Margaret Ann Symons. Respondent: William Travers..." 1910.
  55. Elizabeth Crawford (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 669–670. ISBN 1-135-43402-6.
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