SOURCE: "Laski, Labour & Moscow," in Encounter, Vol. 62, March, 1984, pp. 28-31.

In the following essay, Hunt offers a critical look at Laski's pro-Soviet writings, particularly an essay in The Danger of Being a Gentleman.

Browsing through an old bookshop in South London recently I came upon one of those forgotten political volumes with a tattered red dust-jacket so redolent of the 1930s and 1940s. Befitting his contemporary importance the author's name was printed in massive type completely overshadowing the title: LASKI—The danger of being a gentleman.¹

Nostalgia for an era of political innocence welled up as I flicked through the pages. From 1930 until his death in 1950 Harold J. Laski was the personification of the intellectual Left in Britain. Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics and an influential member of the Labour Party National Executive, he was guru to the radical youth of his generation...