Background
Laski was born in Manchester to Nathan Laski, a wealthy cottonshipping merchant and Jewish community leader.
Laski was born in Manchester to Nathan Laski, a wealthy cottonshipping merchant and Jewish community leader.
He was brought up in an Orthodox household and was taught Hebrew at an early age. After studying eugenics at University College, London, he published an article on the subject in the Westminster Review.
He went to Oxford, where he gained first-class honors in modern history. He then worked as a headline-writer on the Labor newspaper Daily Herald. At the outbreak of World War I, he was rejected as medically unfit for military service and taught history, first at McGill University, Montreal (1914-1916), and then at Harvard (1916-1920). Laski’s stay in the United States came to an end in 1920 soon after he was attacked in the press and by members of the ('acuity for having spoken publicly on behalf of the police during the Boston police strike.
Laski became a lecturer in politics at the London School of Economics, where he developed a style of delivery that left a lasting impression on all who heard him.
In 1926 he was appointed to the chair of political science and over the years earned the profound respect of his numerous students, many of whom went on to hold leading academic, political, legal, and commercial posts throughout the world.
During the depression of the 1930s, Laski traveled around the country addressing mass meetings, condemning the government for its indifference to the plight of the three million unemployed. He served on the board of Stafford Cripps’s left-wing periodical, The Tribune. In 1941 Laski was appointed secretary of the Labor party’s Central Committee on Reconstruction Problems and was involved in the preparation of policy papers that ultimately formed the basis for the party’s 1945 election program, when he was serving as chair-man of the Labor party. In the campaign he was singled out for special attack by the Conservative leader, Winston Churchill.
Laski’s fascination with the United States drew him back year after year for lecture tours. He was on personal terms with distinguished American political figures including Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Kennedy (his student at LSE in 1935-1936). In 1947 he was invited to become the first president of the newly established Brandeis University, but refused, explaining that it was politically important for him to remain in England. In 1949 Laski gave a series of lectures later published as Trade Unions in the New Society. Two of his books on America are The American Presidency, dedicated to President Roosevelt, and The American Democracy (1948).
Laski’s interest in India began in 1931 when he was closely associated with the work of the Round Table Conference in London attended by Gandhi and Nehru. He often addressed the India League and openly expressed his support for Indian independence, which was acknowledged by the opening in 1954 of the Harold Laski Institute of Political Science in Ahmadabad, Gujarat state, India.
All Laski’s numerous books, pamphlets, and articles were produced in minuscule handwriting and only on rare occasions did he make corrections. He wrote sitting in a easy chair on a large wooden board across his knees.
Laski was active in politics, in the belief that in order to teach the subject it was essential to have practice as well as theory. In 1932, at the time of the split within the Labor party, he joined the newly-formed Social League. In 1934 he was elected as Labor party representative on the Fulham council and served as alderman until 1945. He declined many offers to stand for election to Parliament and refused to accept an appointment to the House of Lords, advocating the abolition of the second house. In 1937 Laski signed the “Unity Manifesto” published by the Independent Labor party, the Communist party, and the Social League. In that year he was elected to the Labor party national executive, a post he retained until he retired in 1949.
Laski was never involved in the Zionist movement and it was only after the news of the Holocaust reached England that he accepted an invitation to attend a Poale Zion executive meeting, at which he expressed his support of free immigration into Palestine. He openly clashed with Ernest Bevin over the foreign secretary’s pro-Arab policy and attempts to curtail immigration of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.