13 August

Science fiction writer, historian, vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and socialist, H G Wells died today in 1946. Wells stood as a socialist candidate for London University and was once a member of the Fabian Society but left after a failed attempt to take it over, using his experience as the basis of his novel The New Machiavelli (1911).

‘That Anarchist world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe - well, I, at any rate, believe this present world, this planet, will some day bear a race beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race begotten of our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I have said it, ’who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool, and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars,’ but the way to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism ... Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men. ’_ H G Wells, New Worlds for Old (1908)