“That’s history” is an American expression, in which “history” means not the past recalled or invented but dropped into the memory hole, or in any event not deemed worth bothering about. No nation, of course, is more imprisoned in its past than mine, not despite but because of its obdurate refusal—even with the great efforts of our historians—to face it. The failing isn’t exclusively American, and affects cultures and institutions great and small. Even the LSE in its bright and shining new form, might profit from a look back. An entirely personal one follows.

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Mr. T.S. Eliot has recently written that universities ‘should stand for the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom.’ As Mr. Eliot is well aware, he is saying nothing new; he is echoing the views expressed by those eminent men who wrote on the subject in the last century—Whewell, Newman, Mark Pattison, and others. When it is asked how universities should attempt to fulfil these purposes, we find that we are launched on a discussion of vast dimensions. All that can be done in a short article is to mention two or three topics falling within this field of discours

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There must have been a pause between their capricious decision at a breakfast party, and the time the London School of Economics and Political Science came into existence, that the Fabians asked themselves the question ‘What is the point of LSE?’. There was a need to reinvigorate postgraduate studies at the turn of the 19th century, just as much as there was an obligation to provide education to intellectually arm the working-classes. Above all, the Fabian vision was one of weaning the upper classes to socialism; through reformist impulses implanted in the study of social problems that promoted the “betterment of society”.

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