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Eugenics and politics in Britain in the 1930s

G.R. Searle

To cite this article: G.R. Searle (1979) Eugenics and politics in Britain in the 1930s, Annals of
Science, 36:2, 159-169, DOI: 10.1080/00033797900200461

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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 36 (1979), 159-169

E u g e n i c s and Politics in Britain in the 1930s

G. R. SEARLE
School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, Norfolk, England

Received 22 July 1978

Summary
This paper discusses the surprising resurgence in the fortunes of the British
eugenics movement in the 1930s. It is argued that although mass unemployment
may in the long run have discredited that version of eugenics in which social
dependence and destitution were attributed to genetic defect, in the short run the
Depression was often perceived as a vindication of the eugenical creed. In
particular, the attempt to reduce the fertility of the unemployed by popularising
birth control techniques, and the voluntary sterilization campaign aimed at
preventing the propagation of defectives from the so-called Social Problem
Group, satisfied the urge felt by many conservative members from the profes-
sional classes to respond creatively to the country's crisis, without endangering
existing social and economic institutions. It is also shown that not until 1938 did
events in Germany cause substantial damage to the cause of eugenics in Britain.
In fact, the 'German experiment' was actually greeted with approval by certain
British eugenists of an authoritarian cast of mind. However, the Society as a
whole never identified with these right-wing extremists, thanks in part to the
moderating influence exercised by its General Secretary, Dr. C. P. Blacker, whose
prime concern was with psycho-medical problems likely to concern people of all
party persuasions.

1. Introduction
The Thirties was a decade of political turmoil and experimentation in Britain. As
u n e m p l o y m e n t m o u n t e d and all the m a j o r parties d e m o n s t r a t e d their helplessness in
the face of social and economic problems t h a t they could neither understand nor
control, fringe organisations proliferated and new m o v e m e n t s succeeded in recruit-
ing the frustrated and the alienated in their thousands. Black-shirred fascists clashed
in the streets with the forces of the far left; and the green-shirted followers of Major
Douglas p r o p a g a t e d the strange doctrines of Social Credit. B u t although these
m o v e m e n t s h a v e all a t t r a c t e d their historians, there has so far been no discussion of a
parallel development of considerable interest and importance: the revival of support
for eugenics or the doctrine of race-culture. Y e t when in the middle of the Depression,
in October and N o v e m b e r 1931, the B.B.C. invited a n u m b e r o f p r o m i n e n t public
figures to give a broadcast address under the title ' W h a t I would do with the world',
no fewer t h a n three of the speakers went out of their w a y to emphasise the
importance which t h e y a t t a c h e d to eugenics. One of them, L. S. Amery, a former
Conservative Minister, commended the creed as a corrective to the whole trend of
British social and fiscal policy which, he claimed, had been based in recent years 'on a
short-sighted sentimentalism' t h a t had not only tended to 'discourage thrift and self-
reliance' b u t also 'to encourage the actual multiplication of the i m p r o v i d e n t and the
incompetent'. 1

1 Listener, 4 November, 18 November, 25 November 1931.

A.S. K2
160 G . R . Searle

That there was any significant support for eugenics in Britain during the 1930s
seems at first sight somewhat surprising. One might have supposed that the British
Eugenics Society would have suffered an eclipse in these years, as Mark Hailer has
shown was happening to its American counterpart. 2 There are two reasons for
supposing that eugenists would be on the defensive almost everywhere in the
industrial world in the 1930s. Firstly, it had always been central to eugenics that a
large part of social dependence and destitution was the result of genetic defect. The
mass unemployment of the inter-war years, which reached its zenith in 1932, might
reasonably be imagined to have demonstrated the absurdity of this approach; could
it plausibly be argued that there existed in Britain over three million men and
women, of whom a significant number were congenitally 'unfit'? But there was a
second reason why the British might have been expected to look askance at eugenics
in these years. For the Eugenics Society was heavily involved after 1930 in a
campaign for legalising the voluntary sterilization of mental defectives and of
possessors and carriers of other hereditarily transmissible diseases. And in July 1933
the German Government published its own draconian scheme of compulsory
sterilization. British eugenists henceforward ran the very considerable risk of being
found guilty by association.
Despite these difficulties, however, the Eugenics Society was far from being
moribund in the 1930s. True, the Society was in a trough in the immediate post-war
years. The War had dispersed its membership, and most provincial branches were
forced to disband. In 1921 only I1 propaganda lectures were delivered, and other
tell-tale signs exist in the early 1920s which suggest uncertain leadership and flagging
morale. But in the late 1920s a recovery was clearly under way. Membership steadily
built up, until in 1932-33 it reached an all-time peak of 768. 3 Numbers alone, of
course, do not tell the whole story. The Eugenics Society had from its early days been
consistently successful in recruiting members from the ranks of highly esteemed
academics and scientists. 4 In the 1930s this continued to be the situation. J. M.
Keynes, Professor Carr-Saunders, the demographers Dr GIass and Dr Kuczynski,
Julian Huxley, and the well-known doctors Lord Dawson of Penn and Lord Horder,
all took an active part in the Society's work.S If one takes the view that the prestige
of an organisation depends upon the number of professors it is able to attract, then
the Eugenics Society was a very prestigious organization indeed. Of course, the
Society never aimed to make mass converts. It hoped instead to influence the
legislative process by permeating the media, academic institutions and the medical
profession. In the 1930s this strategy met with a modest, but indubitable, success.

2. The eugenists' view of the depression

How, then, are we to account for this resurgence of interest in eugenics and the
attraction which it had for so many members of the British intelligentsia? One part
2 M. Haller. Eugenics: hereditarian attitudes in American Thought (1963, New Brunswick), 179-83.
3 Eugenics Society, annual reports, Eugenics review (hearafter 'ER'), 24 (1932-33), 3; 25 (1033-34),
3-4. New premises were acquired at 69 Eceleston Square in 1933, and formally opened in November of
that year.
4G. R. Searle, Eugenics and politics in Britain, 1900-1914 (1976, Leyden), 11-13, 59-60; D.
MacKenzie, 'Eugenics in Britain', Social studies of science, 6 {1976), 499-532.
5 Keynes delivered the Galton Lecture in 1937, taking as his subject, 'Some economic consequences of
a declining population'. When A. M. Carr-Saunders succeeded W.illiam Beveridge as Director of the
London School of Economies in 1937, the editor of the Eugenics review could claim that 'between this
Society and the School, friendly relations have always existed' (ER, 29 (1937-38), 94). Glass and
Kuczynski were also on the L.S.E. staff.
 Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s 161

of the explanation is to be found in the responses elicited b y the deepening of the

economic depression. Eugenists naturally reacted in various ways to this cata-
strophe, but one quite common reaction was to greet economic collapse as a
striking vindication of the eugenical creed. Had not the eugenists been proclaiming
for a quarter of a century t h a t national decline and racial decay were the inevitable
consequences of the differential birthrate? In the 1930s m a n y of them continued to
sound this warning, only with greater vehemence. Thus the psychologist R a y m o n d
Cattell produced statistics in 1937 to demonstrate that, if the v e r y mentally retarded
were excluded, the mean size of family decreased as one went up the social scale, or
(what in his view amounted to very much the same thing) as one went up the I.Q.
scale, and this led him to his pessimistic theory about a progressive decline in the
'National Intelligence'. 6
Viewed from this perspective the Great Depression acquired a novel significance.
Retribution, it seemed, had at last been visited upon a community which had for so
long obstinately flouted 'the laws of biology'. A pioneer of the Eugenics Society, the
Oxford philosopher Professor F. C. S. Schiller, wrote in 1931 t h a t his countrymen
were suffering 'from what used to be called original sin, but what in the light of
modern science is seen to consist chiefly of weaknesses acquired in the course of
biological history b y inattention to its trends and by lack of efforts to correct them'. ~
And Cattell actually asserted t h a t 'unemployment, persistent, chronic unemploy-
ment' was 'not a post-war problem, but [dated] from about the same period as the
dysgenic birth rate'.s
Of course, it must not be supposed for a moment that all members of the Eugenics
Society subscribed to such theories as these; J. M. Keynes for one was hardly likely to
agree with the 'explanations' advanced by Schiller and Cattetl, and other sym-
pathisers with the movement less knowledgeable about economics must have been
puzzled as to why unemployment should have become concentrated in industries like
coalmining and ship-building, while its incidence in other occupational groups
remained relatively low.
However, the fears and class tensions generated by the Great Depression were not
always conducive to clear and dispassionate thinking. Eugenics owed something of
its popularity to the reassurance which it provided to m a n y middle class people t h a t
unemployment, like other social problems, was the result of inexorable scientific
laws, not of defective social or economic arrangements. For example, the zoologist
Professor E. W. MacBride was on hand to 'demonstrate' the innate inferiority of
working-class children. The grading of mental ability by means of the Simon and
Binet Tests, MacBride continued, had also shown that 'a large proportion of the slum
populations consists of what the American authors 4erm " m o r o n s " . . . ' 9 The
youthful Julian H u x l e y made the same point when he claimed t h a t the evils of slum
life were 'to a definite extent caused by people who inevitably gravitate[d] down, and
[would] make a slum for themselves if not prevented'. 1~ B y a similar chain of
reasoning it could be 'proved' that m a n y of the unemployed were literally

6R. Cattell, The fight for our national intellitjence (1937, London), 16-17, 4.
~F. C. S. Schiller, Social decay and eugenical reform (1932, London), vi.
s Cattell {footnote6), 69.
9Nature, 113 (1924), 774.
10j. Huxley, Memories (1970, London), 169: letter to H. G. Wells, 10 February 1930.
162 G . R . Seade

unemployable. Cattell deduced from his psychometric investigations t h a t m o s t

children of unemployed parents had low I.Q.s. 11 I n J u l y 1932 one of the more
i n t e m p e r a t e eugenists, C, W. Armstrong, was asserting t h a t the unemployed 'consist
v e r y largely' of hereditarily defective individuals, 'social inefficients'; 12 and in April
1933 the editor of the Eugenics review was referring to 'the standing a r m y of
biological misfits' among the unemployed. 13
H o w e v e r implausible as an 'explanation', this diagnosis of the u n e m p l o y m e n t
situation pointed logically to a 'solution' likely to a t t r a c t people of a conservative
disposition who yearned for a more radical and imaginative response t h a n was
forthcoming from the National Government. F o r if the eugenic case were true, it
followed t h a t u n e m p l o y m e n t could be substantially reduced by reducing the fertility
of the unemployed and of those 'stocks' in the c o m m u n i t y from which the
unemployed were drawn. Cattell suggested in a p u n g e n t slogan how this m i g h t be
achieved: 'No public assistance without control of birth rates', 14

3. Birth control
The readiness of eugenists to come out openly for a birth control p r o g r a m m e was
a development of comparatively recent origin; before 1914 the p r e d o m i n a n t opinion
within the Eugenics Society was one of hostility to the growing use and availability
of contraceptives. 15 B u t during the w a r years a d r a m a t i c shift took place in public
a t t i t u d e s towards birth control, and in 1922 the Society felt able to petition the
Ministry of H e a l t h to add birth control facilities to the public health services. 16 I n
this connection, it is i m p o r t a n t to note t h a t Marie Stopes, a m e m b e r of the Society
since 1912, rested her case not only on h u m a n i t a r i a n and social grounds, b u t also on
eugenical arguments, and this is reflected in the title adopted b y the organisation she
founded in 1921, which was called 'The Society for Constructive Birth Control and
Racial Progress'.1 ? The personal friendship between Marie Stopes and D r C. P.
Blacker, who became General Secretary of the Eugenics Society in 1932, symbolised
the new alliance between eugenics and the birth control movement. 1s
True, the Society was still haunted b y the fear t h a t the biologically well-endowed
would use their contraceptive knowledge, not simply to space births in the interest of
the m o t h e r ' s health, but also to evade their racial responsibilities as parents. 19 On
the other hand, it seemed to eugenists as if the birth control m o v e m e n t , properly
directed, could be used to reduce the level of u n e m p l o y m e n t . This, they said, would
come a b o u t in two ways. Firstly, the spread of contraceptive knowledge would slow
down population growth, and m a n y eugenists seem to have believed t h a t mass
u n e m p l o y m e n t was the result of over-population:2~ belief t h a t often went hand in

11Cattell (footnote 6), 73-75:

12ER, 24 (1932-33), 107.
13ER, 25 (1933-34}, 5.
14Cattell (footnote 6}, 75, 69.
15Searle (footnote 4), 100--104.
16ER, 24 (1932-33), 25.
w See Nature, 112 (1923), 688, for a letter from Marie Stopes, in which she expands her views on the
relation between birth control and eugenics.
fs F. Schenk and A. S. Parkes, 'The activities of the Eugenics Society', ER, 60 (1968), 153.
19The views of the Society are explicitly stated in its official 'Aims and objects' (ER, 26 {1934-35),
134-135).
20For example, E. W. MacBride, 'Birth control and human biology', Nature, 127 (1931), 511.
 Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s 163

hand with the theory that wars were another of the evils to which population growth
contributed. 21 But secondly, and commanding more general assent, was the view
expressed by Julian Huxley. The existing differential birth-rate was dysgenic,
Huxley thought: 'the proportion of desirables is decreasing, of undesirables
increasing. The situation must be got in hand. But it is impossible to persuade the
classes which have adop.ted contraceptive methods to drop them by idealistic
appeals to self-control. The way to begin to stop the rot is to diffuse these practices
equally through all strata of society'. 22 Any reduction in the differential birth-rate
would do something, eugenists believed, to cut unemployment off at its source.
Certain individuals went further. Not only Cattell but also MacBride wanted the
State to put more severe pressure on the unemployed to adopt birth-control by
threatening them with a terrible fate, if they did not comply: 'It seems to us that in
the last resort compulsory sterilisation will have to be inflicted as a penalty for the
economic sin of producing more children than the parents can support... Before,
however, such an alternative is presented to any citizen, he may justly claim that he
should receive instruction from the State in the means of birth-control... ,.23
It is only fair to add, however, that the official policy of the Eugenics Society
never countenanced compulsion in the spheres of either birth control or sterilization,
and that MacBride, who was a Vice-President and very active in its affairs in the
1920s, offered his resignation in the spring of 1931, 'on a matter of office routine'.24
With the election of C. P. Blacker as General Secretary in 1932, the emphasis in
eugenical propaganda slowly began to shift: the identification between the biologi-
cally unfit and the larger body of the unemployed was partly toned down. Instead,
priority was given to the campaign for legalising voluntary sterilization which
absorbed much of the Society's funds and energies for the rest of the decade.

4. R e f o r m u l a t i o n of the eugenic creed

In fact, this concentration on the sterilization issue had become a tactical
necessity by the middle of the 1930s. Admittedly, to Raymond CatteU and those who
thought like him, eugenics remained the only way of averting the 'Twilight of
Western Civilisation'; 'we run a race with internal dissolution, like that of a sinking
man in a gas-filled room fumbling with the window catches', he wrote in 1937.2s But
the mood of crisis, which made hysterical pronouncements of this kind appropriate
in 1931 and 1932, had evaporated in the latter half of the decade, as the economy
haltingly recovered and the social and political fabric was seen to be strong enough to
withstand the strains to which it had been subjected.
Equally important, demographic investigations were currently destroying the
foundations of many traditional eugenic theories, among them the view that
unemployment was a symptom of racial decay. This view, as we have seen, had
always been linked to the phenomenon of the differential birth-rate. However, as
early as 1927 Julian Huxley was pointing out, at a meeting of the World Population
Conference, that differences in fertility between various classes were a])parently
diminishing.26 A year later the demographer Carr-Saunders was arguing that,

21 For example, C. W. Armstrong, The survival of the unfittest (2nd ed. 1931, London), ll2.
22Nature, 116 (1925), 456.
23 E. W. MacBride, 'Sterilisation as practical eugenic policy', Nature, 125 (1930), 42.
24ER, 23 (1931-32), 4.
25 Cattell (footnote 6), 99.
26 M. Sanger (ed.), Precedings of the World Population Conference (1927, London), 191.
164 G . R . Searle

although the British statistics were hard to interpret, 'there is e v i d e n c e . . , from

Sweden, and also from Holland and Germany, t h a t in late years [the] gap [in family
size between the social classes] has been closing'. 27 The catalyst for this new
interpretation was K a r l Edin's analysis of Stockholm's birth-rate statistics, first
published in the Eugenics review in 1929~ Sceptics continued for some time to cast
d o u b t on the accuracy of these statistics or to deny t h a t they had a n y relevance to
the British situation. 2s B u t m o s t eugenists were forced to shift their ground. One
possible response to the dilemma was t h a t t a k e n b y Carr-Saunders himself, who in
his Galton Lecture of 1935 entirely abandoned the t h e o r y of differential class
fertility, while insisting t h a t fertility remained disturbingly high among the
defective-producing stocks in all social classes. 29
I t m i g h t be argued t h a t Carr-Saunders' reformulation was more radical than the
situation required. Broadly speaking there was still a negative relation between
fertility and soeio-economic status, even in the 1930s. 3~ P r o b a b l y all t h a t was
happening was t h a t the differentials between classes became less pronounced in this
decade; the earlier divergent trend was being replaced b y a convergent one. 31 This in
itself would not invalidate the eugenists' older theory a b o u t the biological inferiority
of the unemployed, since the existing body of unemployed had nearly all been born
before the First World W a r when the difference in class fertility had been at its
greatest. I t would take another decade or so at least before the recent decline in the
birthrate of unskilled labourers could affect the British labour m a r k e t in a n y
pronounced way. On the other hand, eugenists had always shown more concern over
demographic trends than over demographic patterns. And the existing trend
suggested that, if the eugenists' premises were indeed sound, then the problem of
mass u n e m p l o y m e n t would solve itself in the course of time. Consequently,
hysterical pronouncements linking economic dislocation to race suicide had quite
suddenly lost their plausibility. Thus Dr Enid Charles, in her famous book The
twilight of parenthood (1934), could dismiss eugenics as an irrelevance: i~t had been a
response to differential class fertility which, she said, was 'a t e m p o r a r y and
exceptional phenomenon'. 32
Moreover, there was another reason why eugenists needed to reformulate their
creed and to change the way in which they presented it to the public. I n the
E d w a r d i a n period eugenics had derived much of its prestige from the widespread
support it received from geneticists and biometricians. 33 B u t b y the late 1930s well-
informed scientific opinion was less favourable. F o r a start, a n u m b e r of dis-
tinguished biologists showed open hostility. Thus Lancelot Hogben, Professor of
Social Biology a t London University, was a socialist much given to making
humorous gibes at the expense of eugenics, which he dimissed as 'an apology for
snobbery, selfishness, and class arrogance'. 34 More a m b i v a l e n t was the attitude of

2~Nature, 122 (1928), 987.

2s For example, ER, 27 (1935-36), 55.
29ER, 27 (1935--36), 13-15.
3oKarl Edin's work on the Stockholm statistics led him to postulate a positive correlation between
income and fertility, but no other investigation revealed this unusual state of affairs.
31D. H. Wrong, Population and society (3rd ed. 1967, New York), 71-76.
32E. Charles, The twilight of parenthood (1934, London), 115, 120, 126.
33Searle (footnote 4), 12.
34L. Hogben, Nature and Nurture (revised ed. 1939, London), 33; and his Dangerous thoughts (1939,
London), 44-58.
 Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s 165

another distinguished biologist and socialist, J. B. S. Haldane, who accepted parts of

the eugenical programme but emphatically not the version favoured by most
members of the Eugenics Society. In a succession of books, articles and radio talks,
Haldane publicised his political differences with m a n y of his colleagues and
commended socialism in order, as he put it, 'to make it clear t h a t a consideration of
human biology does n o t . . , justify the perpetuation of class distinctions'.35 Someone
who once declared t h a t he preferred the eugenics of Lenin to the eugenics of Dean
Inge 36 might perhaps be dismissed as an eccentric, and his views, as he admitted,
were not acceptable to m a n y other geneticists.
Nevertheless, as P. G. Werskey has shown, a marked shift of opinion took place
within the biological profession in the course of the 1930s.3~ At the start of the decade
eugenics enjoyed considerable scientific support, and this was reflected in the
patronage it received from Nature. No one factor can be singled out as responsible for
causing the subsequent change of mind. Partly, it was the shocked realisation of the
evil purposes to which eugenics could be put. As early as Ausust 1933 C. A. Crew, in
an unsigned Nature editorial, said of the German sterilization programme that 'it is
impossible to avoid the thought t h a t here is provided a most frightful opportunity
for those politically strong at present to outrage the politically oppressed'. 38
A second blow to the pretensions of eugenics was delivered b y Sir J o h n Boyd
Orr's famous investigation into British dietary patterns, Food, health and income
(1936), which showed t h a t one tenth of the population was receiving a totally
inadequate diet and t h a t only the better-off 30% could afford a diet t h a t contained
enough proteins, fats, calories and vitamins. The astute Blacker was quick to warn
readers of the Eugenics review t h a t they should acquaint themselves with the
contents of Orr's book 'if they wish to be forearmed against critics who say t h a t
eugenic measures are premature when environmental conditions for large elements
of the population are still so adverse'.39 That, indeed, was the line increasingly taken
in the editorial columns of Nature; an unsigned article of March 1935 stated simply:
'Of the two factors which together mould the individual, heredity and environment,
modern knowledge is attributing more and more importance to the latter'. 4~
P a r t cause and part consequence of these shifting attitudes was Julian Huxley's
Galton Lecture of 1936.41 In 1931 Huxley had been a eugenist of the extreme school,
linking social dependence with genetic defect and threatening the unemployed with
deportation to labour camps if they insisted upon having children while drawing
unemployment benefit. 42 In the 1930s, however, Huxley admits to having been
shaken by his friend, Hogben's categorization of these views as neo-Nazi. 43 He was
also impressed by Orr and other writers who discussed the contribution made by
nutrition to physical and mental development. This led him to the new and refined
version of eugenics which he announced in his Galton Lecture. The contents of this

35j. B. S. Haldane, Heredity and politics (1938, London), 127.

36Cited in Charles {footnote32), 222.
3~p. G. Werskey,'Nature and polities betweenthe wars', Nature, 224 (1969),462-472; and his 'British
scientists and"outsider" politics 1931-1945',in B. Barnes (ed.), Sociologyof science (1972, London),231-
250.
3SNature, 132 (1933), 222.
agER, 28 (1936-37), 229.
4~ 135 (1935), 321.
41ER, 28 (1936-37), 11-31.
42For example, J. S. Huxley, What dare I think? (1931, London), 87-88.
43Werskey 'Scientists' (footnote 37), 238.
166 G . R . Seade

brilliantly argued lecture cannot adequately be summarised here. B u t with great

force and literary skill, backed by a wealth of telling biological detail, it put the case
t h a t until the environment was equalised, eugenists had no right to view certain
groups or classes as genetically dissimilar, still less to conclude t h a t some were
superior and others inferior. The eugenist, Huxley argued, must consider, as a
eugenist, the particular political and social structures of the community with which
he dealt; he 'must familiarize [himself] with the outlook and the concepts of
sociology, with the techniques and practice of social reform; for they are an
indispensable part of the machinery [he] needs to realize [his] aims'. 44
The editor of the E u g e n i c s review was fulsome in his praise for the Lecture. He
admitted, however, that, were the Society to adopt Huxley's views, it might in the
process 'lose m a n y of its oldest and most valued supporters'.45 The growing left-wing
bias detectable in the utterances of many professional scientists, Huxley included,
was bound to upset the average member of the Eugenics Society, who was a
professional man with distinctly conservative views.
Of course, the Society itself was a non-party organization t h a t maintained a
position of complete impartiality at election time. 46 I t is also true t h a t there had
always existed a small group of'reform eugenists': socialists who argued that even a
socialist society would be faced with m a n y problems calling for eugenic remedies. In
the 1930s some socialists and communists went further and, like the youthful F r a n k
Allaun, proclaimed t h a t capitalism itself was dysgenic and t h a t without an
equalisation of environment eugenic principles, sound though they were, could not
fairly be tested. 47 As we have seen, Huxley himself now agreed with the latter
proposition.
However, the leaders of the Society recognized t h a t 'in the main the socialist
attitude of [the day was] negligent or mistrustful of eugenics'. The E u g e n i c s review
also ruefully admitted t h a t m a n y eugenists, often not members of the Society, had,
through their public utterances, 'sometimes earned for eugenics t h e unjustified
reputation of being a mere disguise for snobbery and class prejudice'.4s The manner
in which unemployment was 'explained' as a consequence of genetic defect was
hardly likely to recommend eugenics to the Labour P a r t y , and, as the scientific
correspondent of the N e w s t a t e s m a n pointed out, spokesmen for the movement like
Major Darwin and Dean Inge had 'done everything t h a t could well have been done to
alienate the working class leaders in this country'. 49

5. A t t i t u d e s to F a s c i s m
There was also a group within the Society t h a t had always been totally
contemptuous of p a r t y politics of the conventional kind, Such men demanded an
authoritarian system of government which would permit 'experts' to pursue policies
designed to save the country from racial decay, untroubled by the clamour of the
'ignorant'. Wicksteed Armstrong, writing in 1931, expressed his approval of the

44ER, 28 (1936-37), 31.

45 Ibid., 4-6.
46In its 1938 'Aims and objects' it is claimed: 'The Eugenics Society is non-political. It does not
therefore advocate some type of social organization as being, from its standpoint, superior to another'
(Eug. enic8 Society annual report, 1938-39).
47For example, his letter, 'Eugenics and capitalism', ER, 24 (1932-33), 345-346.
48 ER, 24 (1932-33), 5.
40 New statesman, 25 July 1931 ('Sterilization of defectives').
 Eugenics and Politics i n B r i t a i n i n the 1930s 167

dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, bestowing on it the accolade of being even

more admirable than Mussolini's regime. 5~ I t was to eugenists of this stamp that
Oswald Mosley was presumably appealing when a few years later, in 1936, he
publicly declared t h a t the British Fascists intended to offer the unfit the
alternatives of segregation sufficient to prevent the procreation of unfit children, or
voluntary sterilization, though nobody would be sterilized against his will. 51 This
went somewhat beyond the position then occupied by the Society, but it represented
a clear commitment to the eugenics cause such as no other p a r t y leader ever dared to
make. Equally ominous was the attitude of those eugenists who were sufficiently
impressed by the Nazis' sterilization measures to speculate publicily about the
superiority of the methods of dictatorship over the 'vote catching, timidity' of
democratic politicians. 52 Indeed, there were those within the Eugenics Society who
consistently sought to defend the German Government from what they considered to
be the misrepresentations of its opponents at home and abroad. 53
But it would be a mistake to attach too much importance to this sort of evidence.
More significant is the fact t h a t Mosley's overtures were totally ignored by the
Society. Moreover, from the start Blacker saw how much damage might be done to
the British Eugenics Movement by the German Compulsory Sterilization Scheme:
' T h a t Nazi Eugenics is the logical fulfilment of the Society's eugenics is doubtless
sincerely believed by m a n y people who, on religious or other grounds, hate eugenics',
he wrote. Accordingly, members were urged to miss no o p p o r t u n i t y of explaining the
differences between the Society's proposals and the German measure. (The Germans
had adopted a compulsory scheme, the Society wanted a v o l u n t a r y one; and the
German Act was so loosely drafted that there seemed a very real risk of compulsory
sterilization being used to punish political opponents, whereas the Society insisted
on the need for elaborate safeguards to protect the citizen against possible
victimisation or exploitation.) Indeed, so anxious was the Council of the Society to
dissociate itself from the German Scheme that, even before it had had the
opportunity of studying the German Bill, it passed a formal resolution deprecating
'the use of the term Eugenics to justify racial animosities'. 54
I t is true t h a t in the early 1930s the British eugenists themselves subscribed to
views which t o d a y would certainly be designated 'racialist'. 55 B u t in the middle of
the decade Julian Huxley swung m a n y members of the Society round to a more

5~ (footnote 21), 186, 189.

51O. Mosley, Fascism: 100 Questions asked and answered (1936, London), question 76.
52For example, Schiller's observations at a meeting held in the rooms of the Linnean Society in
October 1934 to discuss the German scheme (ER, 26 (1934-35), 269-270).
53For example, Mrs C. Hodson, a former Secretary of the Society, used her position as Honorary
Secretary of the 'International Federation of Eugenics Organizations'to publicise her own admiration of
the German regime and to pass on the apologias being put about by German scientists, like Professor
Ruedin, who were implementing Hitler's sterilization programme (ER, 28 (1936-37), 217-219). In
contrast to Blacker, Mrs Hodson had also given the German compulsory sterilization law a friendly
reception when it first appeared (C. B. S. Hodson, Human sterilization to-day (1934, London), 34-38}.
54ER, 25 (1933-34), 157-159. The legislation favoured by the Societywas that recommendedby the
Departmental Inquiry on Sterilization, the Brock Committee, which reported in January 1934 (Cmd
4485, 1933-34).
55For example, the relevant section in the Society's 'Aims and objects' reads: 'In certain
circumstances, race mixture is known to be bad. Further knowledge of its biologicaleffects is needed in
order to make it possible to frame a practical eugenicpolicy.Meanwhile, since the processof race mixture
cannot be reversed, great caution is advocated' (ER, 26 (1934-35), 134).
168 G . R . Searle

liberal position, 56 so bringing them into line with biologists like Haldane who had
always derided racialism of all sorts as unscientific nonsense.S 7
Moreover, one aspect of Hitler's politics had always stuck in the gullets of even
right-wing British eugenists--his anti-semitism. The British Society had always
boasted m a n y Jewish members, and Jews were, of course, prominent in the fields of
medicine and biological research which gave eugenics its scientific foundations. 5s
Predictably, therefore, an early Eugenics review editorial on the Nazi Sterilization
Law took the Germans to task for making themselves 'ridict0ous' by indulging in
anti-semitism, and discussed the major contributions to European intellectual life
made b y the Jews. 59
These disclaimers notwithstanding, it is possible t h a t the British eugenics
movement lost support because it became linked in people's minds with the worst
excesses of the Nazi Regime. We have already seen the impact of events in G e r m a n y
on C. A. Crew and Huxley. B u t this response seems only to have become a widespread
one at the end of the decade, and the failure of Britain's voluntary sterilization
campaign owed less to this consideration than it did to other factors, such as the
hostility of m a n y doctors, the strength of the Catholic lobby and the unwillingness of
the National Government to run the risk of adopting a contentious piece of
legislation. 6~ For, although the Spectator was warning readers as early as 1934 not to
embark on the slippe .ry path t h a t was leading G e r m a n y to State t y r a n n y , 61 the
Manchester guardian, which supported v o l u n t a r y sterilization, actually drew atten-
tion to recent events in Germany in order to demonstrate how carefully drafted the
British proposals were: 'the outrageous sterilization law promulgated in Germany
last July, which tacitly recognized its use for penal purposes', it argued, did not
'stand a chance of being imitated here or anywhere else'.62 By the end of the decade,
however, the climate of opinion might well have changed; Dr Blacker has written of
the frequency with which Nazi practices were brought up against him at public
meetings in 1938 and subsequently, and of the damage thereby inflicted on the whole
eugenics movement. 63

6. C o n c l u s i o n
I n conclusion, the upsurge of support for eugenics early in the decade can be
related to the worsening of the economic situation. Many worried middle-class
intellectuals of a conservative cast of mind turned with interest to a creed which
purported to explain the catastrophically high level of unemployment and offered a
remedial programme couched in impressively scientific language. The a t t e m p t to
reduce the fertility of the unemployed by popularising birth control techniques, and

s6Particularly in the bookwhichhe wrote with A. C. Haddon, We Europeans (1935, London)and in his
1936 Galton Lecture, although in both cases the main target was the Nazi theory of the Aryan race, not
beliefin the superiorityof European peoplesover Africansand Asians. However,Huxleydid, in the face of
denials from Professor Ruggles Gates, insist that Homo sapiens formed one species (ER, 28 (1936-37),
161).
5~Haldane (footnote 35), 128-182. L. Hogben (footnote 34), 44-58.
5s Searle (footnote 4), 40-42.
SgER, 25 (1933-34), 77.
6~ am dealing with this subject in a forthcomingarticle.
61 Spectator, 26 January 1934 ('Sterilization and society: from a medical standpoint').
62 Manchester guardian, 19 January 1934. A contributor to the Lancet, who favoured a voluntary
sterilization bill, argued that 'the object lesson provided by recent German eugenic legislation will help
our own people to keep a proper sense of proportion' (23 June 1934, 1344).
63ER, 54 (1962-63), 22.
 Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s 169

also the v o l u n t a r y sterilization campaign aimed at preventing the propagation of

defective men and women from the Social Problem Group, satisfied the urge to do
something drastic and unusual, while leaving social and economic institutions intact.
The p r e d o m i n a n t tone of the Society continued to be a conservative one. And its
membership included a group of eccentric reactionaries who hankered after an
authoritarian solution of political difficulties and looked with admiration o n the
G e r m a n experiment (alt hough only the isolated crank had a good word to say for
anti-semitism).
But, fortunately for its long-term future, the Eugenics Society as a whole never
identified itself with such right-wing extremism. This was in p a r t due to the strong
influence exercised b y Blacker, who discouraged m e m b e r s from making promises of
national redemption and instead put the spotlight on specialised psycho-medical
issues (for example, the mentally deficient) t h a t were indeed i m p o r t a n t but were
recognised to lie on the margins of national l~olitics. 64
Equally i m p o r t a n t was the position of m a n y distinguished intellectuals who were
prepared to work under the auspices of the Eugenics Society, not because they
agreed with all its policies or even shared the dominant political outlook, but because
they were professionally a t t r a c t e d b y the constructive work it was doing in a n u m b e r
of fields. These constructive activities were impressive, including as they did:
demographic research, genetic counselling, family allowances, the search for safer
and more effective contraceptives, and artificial insemination, as well as steriliz-
ation. Such activities r e c o m m e n d e d themselves to a certain t y p e of progressive
mind, and the inflexible opposition they elicited from the R o m a n Catholic Church
can only have strengthened the impression t h a t eugenics was a cause which modern-
minded reformers should support. 65 Many of the 'reform eugenists' were un-
doubtedly a t t r a c t e d into the Society for some such reason as this. And the 'reform
eugenists', however small in number, acted as a counter-balance to right-wing
extremists like Armstrong and Cattell.
Finally, the shift to the left discernible among scientists in the middle of the
decade m o v e d the centre of g r a v i t y within the Society in a leftward direction, since
m a n y of the radicalized scientists, Huxley included, continued to be active and vocal
in the eugenics cause. Thus, countervailing influences were set in motion which
checked the conservative impulses of the more orthodox Society members. I n the
short run, this m a y have hindered eugenists in their a t t e m p t to develop a clear and
coherent political response to c o n t e m p o r a r y problems. B u t this v e r y failure proved
beneficial in the long run, since otherwise it is difficult to envisage the Eugenics
Society's survival into the years after 1945. Now m a n y of the fringe organizations
which flourished in the 1930s were able to m a k e the transition.

64For example, on the eve of the 1935 General Election Blacker urged readers to keep 'a sense of
proportion', to lobby candidates on the sterilization question, but to treat the latter as a secondary issue,
not as something on which the result of the election should depend'. And he defined 'the primary duty of
eugenists, as of all other citizens' as being 'to vote and work for the parties which share their views on the
political problems that press so urgently upon the country to-day' (ER, 27 (1935-36), 181).
6s Eugenics was denounced, along with contraception, sex education and sterilization, in the Papal
Encyclical on Marriage, Casti Connubii, issued on 31 December 1930. The Eugenics reviewretaliated by
castigating the Encyclical as a 'defiant return to mediaevalism' (ER, 23 (1931-32), 41).
For 'left' support for eugenics in Russia and Germany in the 1920s, see L. R. Graham, 'Science and
values: the eugenics movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920's', American historical review, 52
(1977), 1133-1164.