developed (as Left News) into a key periodical about international, political and social affairs, with lengthy editorials from Gollancz. The LBC held its first annual LBC rally in February 1937, and the tradition continued until the late 1940s. Authors and titles, 1936–1948 1936–1939 H. Gannes and T Repard (1936) Spain in Revolt (a defence of the first two Moscow Trials) (praising the 1936 Soviet Constitution) (defending the Popular Front and criticizing Trotsky) 1940–1948 Monte Hilda (1942). The Unity of Europe. Influence Alongside the Fabian Society and Transport House, the LBC's popularising of socialist ideas was a major influence behind the Labour victory in the general election of 1945. Many members of the club acted as missionaries for the ideas espoused by the club, such as full employment, socialised medicine, town planning and social equality. No less than eight Gollancz authors were part of the new Labour government (Lord Addison, Attlee, Bevan, Cripps, Philip Noel-Baker, Shinwell, Strachey and Wilkinson), and a further six were MPs (Maurice Edelman, Michael Foot, Elwyn Jones, J. P. W. Mallalieu, Stephen Swingler and Konni Zilliacus). This led Victor Gollancz's biographer to write, "for an individual without official position, Victor's [Gollancz's] colossal influence on a vital election remains unmatched in twentieth-century political history." However, Gollancz was not rewarded with a position in the House of Lords by Clement Attlee who was worried he would become a thorn in his side there. The Left Book Club was accused of being under Soviet influence both financially and ideologically. One expression of this was its failure to publish Trotskyist writings critical of the USSR. Another example was Gollancz's refusal to publish George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia: he would not even read the manuscript. The success of the Left Book Club led to imitation by other parts of the UK's political spectrum. Historian A. J. P. Taylor points out the membership consisted largely of schoolteachers. Labour Party leaders were annoyed that the club was diverting high-minded middle-class Britons into reading communist tracts instead of joining the Labour Party. Taylor notes the crankiness in the choices of books made by Strachey, Laski, and Gollancz. For example, one of the first two choices was by a biologist envisioning a future in which artificial insemination would enable Lenin (or Stalin) to father every child in the Soviet Union. Taylor denies it was a subversive organisation, saying that "members of the Left Book Club worked