Orwell, Russell, Koestler and the Failed Human Rights Manifesto of 1946

• In Event: Utopias/Dystopias: More to Orwell to Fukuyama

Abstract

This paper traces the collaboration of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and Bertrand Russell on a manifesto for a "League" of writers and NGOs that would band together to protect and promote the "right of man" and "democracy" in the wake of the end of the Nazi regime after World War II and the rise of the threat of a new Soviet-communist superpower. We explore why the manifesto failed in its intended form at the exact moment in April 1946 that the earliest committee for the UDHR, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, took off, explaining that these men's utopia of human rights did not treat women as equals in theory or in practice. A dystopian culture of toxic masculinity—including Koestler and Orwell's history of sexual assault—tainted the utopian manifesto's drafting and dissemination. Ironically, however, we highlight how a series of now forgotten women, heavily involved in the behind-the-scenes organization of left and liberal politics in the 1940s and early 1950s, played crucial roles in keeping the manifesto's influence alive in the post-war era, including Mamaine Paget Koestler, Peter Russell, Lady Atholl, and Ruth Fischer.

Authors

• Eileen M. Hunt, University of Notre Dame

• Ben Francis

• Clare Catherine Duffy, University of Notre Dame