A Fabian paradise or a one-man show? How the interwar Queensland economy seduced two prominent English economists

Abstract

This article tells how the two British economists Hugh Dalton and Colin Clark, came to regard Queensland in the 1930s as an enviable model of economic development. Both men were Fabian socialists and impressed by Queensland's authoritarian premier and by its array of economic controls. Clark even surrendered a promising career at Cambridge to become an economic advisor there. In turn, Queensland, and a personal spiritual crisis, would propel Clark to discard Fabianism for Distributivism. In the final analysis Queensland's agrarian socialism was not drawn upon Fabian lines but rather impelled by a mix of rural development and electoral pragmatism.