In 1930 Plowman joined John Middleton Murry and Richard Rees in developing The Adelphi as a socialist monthly; Murry had founded it in 1923 as a literary journal (The New Adelphi, 1927-30); Rees edited it from 1930 to 1936, when he withdrew on account of Murry's commitment to pacifism, which increasingly became the magazine's theme; Murry resumed editorship until 1938, when Plowman took on the role. The Adelphi was closely aligned with the Independent Labour Party; Jack Common worked for it as circulation promoter and assistant editor in the 1930s.
In 1929 George Orwell had sent The New Adelphi an article. Plowman sent Orwell books to review, founding an important friendship; and Rees was Orwell's literary executor. Plowman later got to know Orwell better through Mabel Fierz. Orwell described Plowman as "pugnacious", and although one writer has suggested that Orwell was still in agreement with Plowman's pacifism in early 1938, another has pointed out that Orwell supported the International Brigade in Spain and "was often rude about pacifists he had good friends who were pacifists". Later that year Plowman introduced Orwell to Leo Myers, and set up a secret gift of £300 from Myers so that Orwell and his wife could travel to Morocco, to restore Orwell's health.
Plowman co-founded in 1934 and ran the Adelphi Centre. It was an early commune, based on a farm in Langham, Essex bought by Middleton Murry. Short-lived in its original conception, it ran a Summer School in August 1936 that was stellar: Orwell spoke on "An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas" on 4 August, with Rayner Heppenstall in the chair. Other speakers were Steve Shaw, Herbert Read, Grace Rogers, J. Hampden Jackson, N. A. Holdaway (a Marxist theorist and schoolmaster, and a Director of the Centre), Geoffrey Sainsbury, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Polanyi, John Strachey, Plowman and Common.
Through it he also met the pacifist dramatist Richard Heron Ward, who from 1936 became a close friend. Ward formed the 'Adelphi Players' in 1941, who used the Adelphi Centre for rehearsals.
By 1937 the commune had collapsed, and the house, 'The Oaks', was turned over to some 60 Basque refugee children under the auspices of the Peace Pledge Union; they remained until 1939.
Plowman was attracted into organising for pacifism in the later 1930s by Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard. He was the first General Secretary of the Peace Pledge Union 1937-1938. Murry, to whom Plowman was now close, became a pacifist after a diversion into communism.
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