Gladstone: Pragmatism and Changeability

Having given a bird’s eyes view of his massive political impact and striking personality of Gladstone we now turn to examine his ideological world view. IT is worth noting in this context that there is a great degree of scholarship on William Gladstone of which my knowledge is rather sketchy. Perhaps my most important guiding light has been Matthew perhaps the greatest Gladstone scholar ever (sadly he died before writing a full biography) though several other writers among them Shannon and Boyd Hilton have shaped my views. I do not fill ;that confident my views so those who know about Gladstone do explain where I’m wrong or where addition gives a better picture!
It is worth noting that many of his political enemies and some of his closest political allies for example his deputy i the Commons William Harcourt saw him as constantly or often disingenuous and/or unprincipled. This contributed to the strong liberal's commen "I don't object to Gladstone always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that the Almighty put it there."This goes against the beliefs of the great majority of historians and this author but there are several reasons why this was held against and believed of Gladstone.

Partly of course it was the usual pragmatism that is endemic to practical politicians combined with a deep refusal to acknowledge them. So for example Matthew suggests that his scepticism of votes for women owed a great deal to the very possibly they would vote for women (since women who owned or rented a home tended to be from much more affluent families than men) but one cannot find a quotation to back up this very plausible theory.

In this Gladstone was the opposite of Salisbury a man probably equally (which is to say highly) principled but a politician who frequently used “party opinion” to block progressive measures –in many cases this was almost certainly based on his own objections as much or more so than any supposed electoral backlash. Salisbury and Gladstone were diametric opposites in this on pretended to be less principled/ doctrinaire, the other more than they really were.

There was however a way in which Gladstone acknowledged Pragmatic considerations at least after the 1840’s where he first achieved high level government experience That was his emphasis on Statecraft and particularly the need for a statesman to deal only with the the issue of immediate legislation and/or governmental action -that is he did not believe in setting up vague general future aspirations- only ones that could be dealt by legislation soon”.This was very unlike his great ally and enemy Joe Chamberlain who was almost the opposite-the master of the extreme comment and the comparatively moderate policy.

This both integrates a certain pragamsticism in the teeth of politicians and the electorate and meant this this most ideological of Victorian Prime ministers put clear limit on his ideological statements. This pragmatisicm could be said to have parallels among great reforming Prime Ministers (Reform does not have to be a good idea!) whether Thatcher , Attlee or Asquith . It is probably no coincidence virtually all of them also left intact policies left they hated. They were both pragmatic enough to avoid issues which they regarded as excessively dangerous (disestablishment of the Church of Scotland being an example for Gladstone) and on the other ideologically motivated enough to actually achieve major reforms in the teeth of intense opposition.

Finally perhaps the biggest cause of Gladstone’s occasional reputation for being shifty was that he simply changed his mind a great deal not constantly but in great (nearly always permanent) shifts on a position.

IN his youth when he entered Parliament in the 1830's he was not just a member of the conservative party (This was an era of fairly weak party ties after all) but the “rising hope of the stern unbending Tories” in the name of the Whig Maccalay (a man whose politics were mch more conservative than the latter Gladstone. . At that point he certainly was not a “political economist” that is a supporter of laissre-faire or of “liberal” nationalist forces internationally. His biggest interests was in religion and the state –he horrified the conservative leadership particularly Robert Peel the then leader by the degree to which he sought to link the Church of England and the state- backing with his usual ferocious logic the exclusion of non Anglicans from the political world. This was set out in his first major work "The State in it's Relations with the Church".

Indeed the backlash by many against the book including his hero Peel seems to have been a major reason behind his latter refusal to write generally on political philosophy . This was at least in terms of policy- as said in the previous post Gladstone was to be the man who rolled back so many of such. So were large aspects- the man who was to become the exponent of lassire-faire in markets was the same man who gave his maiden speech in the Commons against the abolition of the slave trade (his father and native city Liverpool were both massively involved in the slave trade). AS we shall see many of his earlier views in particular the religous helped shape his latter views. However the evolution of his thought occurred in a series of stages culminating in major shifts often accompanied by personal crisis from the 1840’s onwards . The last truly major shift was on Home Rule in 1886 previously a fringe opinion among the non Irish. Gladstone’s often very sudden change in position often bewildered and infuriated those who had previously been supportive and gave him something of his reputation with his foes for both fanaticism and unreliability. Thus enormous loyalty could turn to huge resentment. The Duke of Norfolk rather paradoxically as both England’s most senior aristocrat and something of an outsider as a Roman Catholic. His love of Gladstone’s policies was so passionate he kept a Portrait on the wall of his mansion. When Gladstone endorsed Home Rule Norfolk sold the Portrait!

In conclusion Gladstone’s contemporary reputation for trickery was not composed of pure whole cloth. It was based in large measure on his failure to come to grips with his own political calculations emphasised specific legislation and changed his mind over the course of his sixty year political career. This did not mean that the mature Gladstone of the 1860’s and 1870’s did not have a finely worked political ideologynow.It is now to the political thought of him as a liberal that we will now turn

Here on the other hand is a picture of Gladstone when he was still a "stern and unbending" Tory. .

Age and Democracy

Peter Burke in his book on the Renaissance argues that one of the differences between Florence and Venice lay in their attitude to age. Florentines became citizens at the age of 14 and young Florentines could easily take part in politics: Venetians became citizens at the age of 21 and did not become politically active until they had accumulated much more experience. Burke suggests that this may be one of the reasons why Venice, famously according to Machiavelli a republic for stability, was a much more cautious and conservative place than Florence. Burke's induction might be wrong but he is not the only person to try and tie age to political attitudes. George Monbiot suggested today in the Guardian that age may influence the way that people think about global warming: he argues that as global warming is really a threat to life and livelihood, that older people who are more concerned with death than the young (because they are closer to it) may attempt to resist the idea more.

I do not know quite frankly whether either idea is true: but leaving aside obvious questions like pensions and healthcare, the aging of a population must change the way that a population responds to risk and to decision making. One interesting thing for example is the predeliction for younger populations to choose older leaders, whereas as the proportion of the old increases in the west, the desire for youthful leaders (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Blair, Cameron) has never been stronger. If you regard, as I do, government as a mechanism to take decisions the changing age profile of the population and of politicians must change the ways that those decisions are made. I don't know enough about the scholarship in this area: but I do think one of the fascinating dynamics of the next century will be that as in China, the US, Europe and eventually the rest of the world, the population becomes older, we may need new models for the ways that states behave.

British Party Politics beforeWorld War 1 division and polarization, religion and empire

This week I am going to be examining some UK party history before World War I.
The franchise was ofcourse not as wide as it is now in the UK-Women and many men were excluded ( the latter were mainly those who lived with other families for example servants). However the evidence this had much effect on election outcomes is rather weak ( I may return to this in another post) . In any case there was a large electorate of many millions which had swings etc in a way rather similar to today- Britian ins one of the few countries one can make such clear comparison with an earlier political system-indeed even including some of the same parties. It is no coincidence that the few other countries where this was also true (mostly English speaking or Scandinavian) have also shown great comparative political stability in this period.

That did not of course mean that the electorates views, the major issues or even the parties own basis of support or polices were the same. There were a number of major political cleavages that divided parliament and people in this era. Some still matter-others much less so. There were two major parties in this era the Conservatives/ Unionists and the liberals- and two more minor but very important ones the Home Rulers and the Labour party (which came into existence at the beginning of the twentieth century). There were huge issues in UK politics that had little connection to class or income (at least directly) and are much more minor today church establishment , "home rule" (probably the least dead issue though in a very different form) and the empire.

Perhaps the most important was one that might surprise many modern readers- church establishment (that is whether one church should be given a special status by the state such as state revenues). The issues of Church establishment dominated politics in this era. in 1868 the (Anglican) Church of Ireland was disestablished and in this era the liberal party increasingly came round to disestablishing the (Anglican) Church of Wales. IN both cases only a small minority of the churchgoers of the land in question belonged to that church. More formidable politically were the church of England and the church of Scotland (t he only established church to be Presbyterian rather than Anglican in nature). These churches survived-indeed survive to this day. So did the commitment to the monarch to being a Protestant- though the form of oath in the coronation was toned down in this period (though not in 1901 when the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury insisted on Edward VIII at his coronation giving the traditional extremely anti Catholic oath of monarchs). This in many ways lay behind differences that went beyond Church Establishment for example religious schools were overwhelmingly Anglican and Catholic and were strongly opposed by dissenters in large measure for that reason . More or less everywhere in Britain Anglicans and church of Scotland men voted conservative- dissenters voted massively for the liberals. Conservatives were much more pro church establishment and liberals much more hostile-though as with every other issue there were exceptions to such rule (particularly in this case among the liberals).

In Ireland whereafter the mid 1880's another issue dominated- Home Rule that is the creation of a more or less self governing parliament for Ireland (which would be dominated by Ireland’s Catholic majority) . This also was n issue for Wales and Scotland in this period-but much less so. In Ireland it dominated politics from the mid 1880's onwards consistently about 3/4 of Irelands seats went to the Home Rule party-a party closely linked to the Catholic Church (when it split over the divorce of Charles Parnell their Protestant leader the anti Parnell faction was the much stronger thaks to the clergy’s support) and committed to Home Rule. The liberals after the mid 18880's were vastly more sympathetic- and could gain enormous support when they lacked a majority as in 1886,92 and the two 1910 elections). For this the Home Rulers were willing to sacrifice issues such as a labour relations and land taxation were they were far from natural allies of the liberals. It is perhaps no coincidence that 1906 the only clear majority for the liberals by themselves in this period was also the only election after which the liberals made no move to push Home Rule. At the same time the same issue (and linked sectarianism) ensured the Protestant vote went for the "unionists" as that party was appropriately called in Ireland- the quarter of Irish seats dominated by Protestants were as a “unionist” as the Catholic seats were Home Ruler. Nationally in mainland Britian it was a powerful issue- and save in Catholic Irish areas one that worked powerfully for the Conservative "Unionists". Thus if one powerful cleavage was Anglicans (and church of Scotland) vs dissenter another was protestant vs Catholic- and on this cleavage Catholics might be more committed but Protestants were vastly more numerous in the British isles.

If Home Rule was linked to religion it was also linked to conceptions of the empire. The Tories were the imperialist party -very clearly by the 20th century. The Boer war against Afrikaner settlers in southern Africa split the liberals-but there was barely any doubt among Tories and home rulers- theorem for the latter against in monoliths. Thus imperialism was a difficult issue in itself for the liberal party. The party of pluralism, peace and free trade simply had difficulties with the conception of empire the Conservatives lacked. They were badly split in the 1900 "khaki" election fought on the Boer war and went down to overwhelmingly defeat. Nonconformists and Irish Catholics were the bastions of anti imperialist sentiment and wielded huge power among the liberals. -but at least when it came to the Boer war they were clearly outnumbered. Thus the size and tightness of the empire ( liberals being sympathetic to Home Rule were also sympathetic to a more "decentralized" empire) were another major cleavage in liberal politics.

Thus whole elections were run on constitutional and imperial issues in a way that has certainly not happened in recent decades in the UK. Undoubtedly millions of voters voted almost exclusively on these issues. The Conservatives gained millions of votes from those who identified with Church Establishment the Protestant nature of the UK state and had a unitary notion of the Kingdom and the empire ( all these differencs of course mutually reinforced each other). Those who feared or disliked the institution generally away from the periphery geographically and/or were dissenters religiously in turn voted in the million for the liberals and their allies.

It is important to realize that all these issues grew more salient in this period-not less, they were not same strange legacy of the past- the decades after 1886 saw sectarian ethnic and regional voting reach new levels in the history of the UK-in some ways it came to a height indeed in the elections just before the First World War! Geography made a big differences as to which cleavage mattered the worst areas for the Conservatives tended to be areas where there was a huge catholic majority such as Ireland or areas where there was a big dissenting majority and very few Catholics to polarize against such as a rural Wales.

This does not mean issues did not exist which are closer to our own defence and certain economic issues also mattered-and it is to this we turn.

The picture above is of the man who created more than any other the cleavages o these issues-by disestablishing the church of Ireland ,embracing disestablishment as a principle (though a devout Anglican himself) , embracing Home Rule and taking a cool line to the empire-that titian of mid Victorian Politics William Gladstone who as late as 1894 dominated British politics like the colossus he was.

Reflections on Tony Benn's early life

I thought after the last post I'd briefly give a few thoughts on aspects of Benn's life particularly ones i picked up from the biography. This is no way meant to be a summary or a proper appreciation of this fascinating man or his historic impact! For this post at least I will address some thoughts trigged by aspects of his early life.

One is the degree to which British Socialism particularly in its middle class more ideological form was a continuation of radical liberalism. Benn's father Wedgwood Benn latter Viscount Stansgate (given to represent the Labour party in the lords) was a radical liberal a supporter of such trendy post Gladstonian causes as home rule, colonial rights etc. He was also a massive supporter of planning like many radical liberals. His transition into a Socialist in the 1920's happened without any obvious change in views at all. Indeed even in the late 1950's he was agitated strongly for faster decolonisation-and was on the left of the Labour party as he had been on the liberal party. Indeed he seems more radical than the young Benn ( at one point Jennie Lee the leading left winger said to him of his son his becoming a "right little tory" ) and the Labour leadership. Benn himself shared his enthusiasm for colonial independence-and this gave him much of his left wing credentials in this era. Whether or not Labour owed more to Methodism to Marx, it seems fairly clear to me that it owed more to the "new liberalism" which sought to use government action (Rather than the withdrawal of it) as a battering ram against privilege than either.


Another is the system of controls and restricions that were mostly imposed during the war out of necessity and kept by Labour for numerous reasons-but perhaps foremost the desire to build a better Socialst world. There is a fascinating individal anecdote which I think sums up why Labour ended up losing the 1950 election. Benn and his new wife found they couldn't' bring all her stuff back from American-because of these controls, he is clearly very annoyed in his accounts at the time by this. And let this was Benn- the son of a Labour peer, seeking to become a Labour mp himself. This helps explain why Labour lost the 1950's election. They lost middle class support and the liberals melted down among the middle classes-their voters went massively g for the conservatives who were runniong on "set the people free" ending this system of control and offering the middle classes the hope of something resembling pre war (middle) class standards. This was not due to fall in Labour support among the working class-it rose sharply so much sao that the 1951 election (which they lost due to the electoral system) saw the highest % of the vote Labour has ever got at any election-a tribute to how popular so much of the Labour record (particulary perhaps on health) was. But the middle class backgrounds against less ideological committed middle class progressive "Benn's" nearly obliterated theri majority in 1950 and threw them out altogether a year latter.

The Christian Socialist (arguably Christan radically liberal) nature of Benn's family is very compelling. His elder brother (who was supposed to inherit the peerage that nearly killed Benn's career) who died in a plane accident was very devout-so much so he concluded war was wrong even as he served loyally in the British military.Nor was this confined to him. Strafford Cripps praising his sucessor emphasised his commitment to christianity (to Benn's apparent embarrassment- this was more or less as he was losing his previous faith) as well as socialism. One is tempted to say that the Benn family may not be unrepresentative in keeping their religious attitudes whilst dropping their beliefi n formalised religon one of the biggest changes among the radical left (and arguably the political class in general) over the last few decades. One thing that struck me about the piety of Benn's family is what a high view of humanity it had by traditional Christian standards - indeed Benn's brother in the same moving letters talks of his belief humans can easily work together and become good people. This tempts one to suggest semi seriously that what has held together the British left secular and religious is a high view of human capacity and a belief in the fundamental vulnerability of human evil-or to put it antoher way a renunciation of the traditoinal view of the inherent limits of human character.

Another interesting aspect of the Young Benn is Technology. As his opponent Lord Rodgers pointed out and Jacks' biography shows in greater detail he was a massive pioneer of television and television methods in a very sophisticated form (his main pre political job was for the BBC's world service). This is very interesting given what an old fashioned politician Benn seems today love him or loathe him. It's an indicator that being human politicians tend to become set in their ways - so technologies that come along in the middle of their career they are much less adept with than ones they are More acculturated to. Benn's diaries show he has the discipline which is perhaps the most essential element of a blogger. NO doubt pioneering media politicians of today Will one day seem just as old fashioned as Benn.

They will be lucky if they've had anything like the same impact in the meantime though.

The legacy of Throne and altar religous minorities and confessional states

These blog posts raise an interesting historical question the nature of religious minorities in Confessional states- whether Catholics in the Netherlands or the (by the 19th century much smaller) protestant population of say.

A confessional state is simply speaking a state whose laws privilege a particular religious denomination (or conceivably several denominations). In that Sense the United Kingdom is such a state the "Anglican” Church of England is established in England, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Scotland and the British monarch on coronation affirms Christianity and Protestantism as the faith of the land. Similar situations exist in some Scandinavian countries (including Finland which has the very large established church of Lutheranism and the very small one of Orthodoxy. Even today dissident Christian denominations in Sweden and groups (such as Jehovah witnesses) outside a small circle of semi-established ones in Germany, face genuine legal problems

However for this article I mean something very different by the term "confessional state". I mean the state's that were routine in Europe till well into the 19th century. States where not only is one confession established by law but confessions that do not meet the law are discriminated against formally in access to political office. This was true in every state in Western Europe in 1780-even states such as Great Britain and the Netherlands long notorious for their tolerance. In less tolerant states very exacting legal penalties could exist quite late-Sweden eliminated exile as the penalty for Catholicism in the 1850's. Political office was mostly or entirely restricted to members of the "established faith" , taxes went to the state churches (and were a much higher % of taxation than the few religious taxes left in the likes of Germany) and were legally privilege in a host of ways.

In such states the religious minorities understandably felt outsiders to the political system. In the French Revolution and afterwards the system of the confessional states (along with linked power systems such as the power of the monarchs) came under huge attack. The early 19th century saw a backlash-or rather a cacophony of backlashes against this "the union of throne and altar" was endorsed in one form or another (including countries like the UK with very few used altars in those churches) in just about every European country. In a sense this created the whole concepts of right and left- and arguably still shapes them they can be seen as those who wish to push relative to the status quo away or towards (right and left respectively) a radical version or extension of French Revolutionary principals Obviously though the debate has rather moved on -but in the 19th century "established church" meant something much fiercer than the current Church of England or even the Lutheran church of Sweden in terms of political rights

Not surprisingly the Confession ally excluded tended to be rather more hostile to the confessional states and sympathetic to a pluralistic or secular system. This took the form of disproportionate support for parties of the left. I have posted about this in the context of the Dutch liberals (till Kuyper reshaped Dutch politics) but it's equally true elsewhere. For example late 19th century British politics can in very crude and broad brush terms be seen as a three way between the party of Anglicans Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Protestants ( Tories) , the party of British Catholics and Nonconformist liberals nod the party of Irish Catholics (home rulers). Similarly in France the most protestant areas of France tended to be among the most radical-and latter socialist and this still tends to be true today.


The legacy of this can still be seen today. In just about every European country the adherents of denominations which were excluded by the confessional state are more likely to support the left than those who were not (this is particularly true if one allows for religiosity). Exceptions tend to be the rare exceptions that prove the rule. So for example in Germany Catholics are more likely to support the CDU than Protestants but a) Self declared Catholics are more pious in Germany than self declared Protestants and b) the heavily Catholic areas of Germany-Bavaria etc the Confessional states were classically Catholic. Indeed I recall reading an interview this a devout evangelical Christian in Baravia in the 1950's saying she could no vote Social Democratic since it was atheistical or Christian Social Union because it was Catholic.

The superb religious sociologist Steve Bruce has seen these differences as fundamentally being a matter of the conservatism and traditionalism of the Catholic Church naturally making it the party of the right. He interprets the Catholic tendency to vote for the left (at least till very recently) in Anglo-Saxon countries as a matter of class. Respectufly I think this will not work- in Scotland in the 1950's (bear in mind this is the height of class politics in Britain) working class Protestants were more conservative than middle class Catholics! I think the interpretation should be found in the history of confessional states-and even their death. of which religions were the” traditional” one. So where "tradition" was protestants Catholic naturally lean(Ed) to the left, where Catholic to the right. This can link up and overlap with a religiosity cleavage which are often newer. So in France Protestants vote more Socialist than Catholic but churchgoing Protestants and Catholics alike vote massively more for the right than the non churchgoing.

However this tendency to support the parties of the "left" for religious minorities was not invariable even at the height of tensions. So in the late 1820's Catholic Emancipation (whether Catholics who could vote-very liberal for the time, could also sit in Parliament) dominated "left" and "right" in UK Politics. And yet in the mid 19th century there were Catholic Tory mps!

Part of the explanation was that members of the minority could accept a lesser status either as the best possible deal, as an attentive to a secularism which might be more hostile (in the late 19th century for example British Catholics were more likely to vote Tory in school board elections-because Tories were much more pro church schools and host8le to secular education than liberals) or because they believed in the system-even if they were excluded in it . A combination of this helps explain for example why the Popes tended to be very sceptical of leftwing movements in most non Catholic Countries. . I have already explained how this helps explain why the catholic south of the Netherlands did not join the revolt that created Belgium. In England (not the UK) it was so strong that the "restoration of the hierarchy" provoked outrage among English Catholics. The Duke of Norfolk the foremost Catholic aristocrat (indeed the foremost aristocrat the dukes of Norfolk are to the aristocracy of England what the Archbishops of Canterbury are to the bishops Primus inter pares) was so outraged he took communion in an Anglican church (then even more than now against canon law) to express his fury!

So the story of confessional minorities in the nineteenth century has fascinating nuances but the basic story- of minorities being driven to the liberal of radical left is one that still shapes the politics of the western world today.

The picture is of Henry Fitzwilliam Howard- 15 duke of Norfolk a title so old they are the first aristocrats of England (roughly equivalent to the Archbishop of Canterbury among bishops) but an outsider due to his Catholicism.

God and Soil Nationalism- Religion

This post by Vilno inspires me to briefly exmaine the protean nature of national identity. I don't wish to comment on his post but rather to use it to make some points about national identify.


One is the importance of religion as Vilno rightly points out the rebellion that crated modern Belgium was on religious lines-religious not ethnic. The fact that Flemish is much closer to Dutch than French as a language was simply not nearly so important. It’s important to realize this is not some unique exception. Ireland can perhaps best be understood as the part of the British Isles that failed to become fundamentally Protestant- it was Catholic inhabitants of Ireland not Gaelic ones who became Irishmen- there would never have been enough support for independence if it the divided had been linguistic. . More secular is German nationalism -not usually thought of as a confessional based nationalism-and rightly so. On the other hand the modern southern boundaries of Germany were essentially deliberately created by Bismarck to make a clear Protestant majority in the new "Reich". Even more remarkably in one referendum on the Germany borders after World War one Protestant Polish speakers voted by over 90% to be in the new Germany rather than the new Poland -so even in Germany nationalism had a religious component.

Or rather it might be truer to say that that was the case for Polish nationalism- Polish nationalism had been an elite obsession throughout the nineteenth century (for example this books shows the famous 1848 rebellion led to massacres of nationalist rebels without encouragement from the has burg authority-indeed to their slight horror). This owed a great deal to the indifference even hostility of the church- the leading Polish prelate in "German Poland" (Poland at that time being divided) in the 1870's didn’t' even speak Polish properly! Bismarck’s vicious Kulturkampf ironically partly out of paranoia of Polish nationalism predicated the end of this state of affairs as the cleary and laity identified Polish nationalis with the struggle for their faith- by the early 20th century Polish nationalism was a mighty popular force. To this day Polish Catholicism and Polish natoinalism are almost inextricably linked.

Religion can often be mixed up with issues of national identity today elsehwere as well. This is not just rue in pious countreis. The former Yugoslvaia was exceptioaly secular among it's population-but the division between Serb, Croat and Bosnick are essentially religous in nature-even if this difference is one of what church or mosque you don't go to. This can be true even in Finland often identified (probably wrongly but it can't far from it) as the most secular country on earth. Nonetheless One candidate for the Presidency of Finland was however repeatedly interrogated in 2006 on how a Catholic could be president of Finland!

Indeed more generally my understanding is that religion is exceeded only by language as a cleavage that determines national identify.

But cleavages are not the only thing that determines national identity. As Vilno rightly points out that so does history-and that raises another important aspect -history-to which I will return at a subsequent point

The picture shows the flag of Finland- adopted after World War 1-which as you can see is a religious symbol.

Abraham Kuyper Neglected Titan

In these posts and particularly this one I have sought to show just how crucial Abraham Kuyper one time Prime Minister of the Netherlands, founder of the Anti-Revolutionary Party was to the development of Dutch Politics in the early 20th century. Among other things he founded it's first mass political party, pioneered popular politics founded the religious coalition that dominated Dutch politics for decades, split traditionalist Protestants, converted many of them to a more plural model of politics and massively weakened aristocrats within their ranks, introduced the modern Dutch school system and coalesced the entire system of "pillarisation” that dominated the Netherlands for many decades and still matters today. Indeed even the current Prime Minister of the Netherlands has talked about him very favourably as his political inspiration and stated he is a "Kuyperian heart and soul" - a rare feat for a political eighty years dead- I imagine for example Barack Obamaa and George Bush would be delilighted to get such an epitah from any head of government in a century.

It should be noted this only covers part of Kyper’s importance- he was hugely important outside domestic politics (to which he gave many other contributions I lack space to list- and many others I’m sure I’m ignorant of). For example in Foreign Policy he played a significant role strengthening the natural Dutch tendency to side with the Boers in the Boer War and lean (as a neutral) to Germany in World War 1. Theologically he was hugely important- his failed attempt to purge liberals who would not subscribe wholeheartedly to the Reformed confessions led him to lead a significant breakaway form the Dutch Reformed church and he latter organised a merger with latter sececessions to form the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands- a third force in the Dutch theological world. In a (very narrow and in the light of subsequent history slightly ironic) sense this may have been the first significant "fundamentalist" secession denomination. He led the first major secession break in protest at the modernism of the late 19th century on the grounds it was incompatible with the Reformed Faith and was supreme among clergymen in the creation of a new denomination formed of groups that papered over their huge differnces out of a common hostility to protestant liberalism

Kuyper was also a huge influence on Princeton Theological Seminary which ended up being crucial to the first significant American Fundamentalist (so defined) denomination the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. To this day he is a big influence on some of the more intellectual sections of American Evangelicalism including (but not confined to)the "religious right". At the same some of his views such as Presumptive regeneration and his rejection of a sharp notion of "infelicity" of scripture laid the foundations for some more liberal types of Christianity!

Nor did this exhaust Kuyper's titanic contributions. He was also one of the foremost writers of his age- even being on a committee concerning the Dutch language! He founded (as part of his religious work essentially ) the Free University of Amsterdam as an alternative to secularising universities - to this day it is one of the Netherlands a leading university. In its early days it was the subject of strong persecution and attempts to exclude it’s graduates from government jobs-but he grew so mighty that he was able to overturn and overule this.

So in politics, in theology in the Dutch language even in the history of academia he was a true Titan who played a transformative and giant activity In British terms he was like a combination of William Gladstone, Robert Cecil (3rd Marquis of Salisbury) Thomas Chalmers, John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, Ashley Cooper 7th Marquis of Shaftesbury, and Bishop John C Ryle all rolled into one!

And yet my suspicion is that even the extremely well educated average reader of this blog would never have heard of him- and as I said it's incredibly difficult to find good works in English on him or his activists. Why is this -and what does this illustrate about the nature of current Historiography?

I thick by far the most important reason is that he was after all Dutch. This is partly a strong (and in a sense) justified bias against small countries- though the Netherlands dwarfs Ireland Demographically. More problematically I think this is due to the linguistic barrier. Dutch is a language very few Dutch people know partly because of its small demographic base and partly due to the proflicany y of the Dutch in foreign languages in part due to the excellent education system Kuyper did so much to shape. . If Kyper had been Prime Minister of Canada- a less historically significant country at least in that era I suspect he'd been much better known to Anglo-Saxon historians.

But I don't think that bad reason is the only one. Partly this is due to neglect of or contempt of religion's importance for history in general -and particularly late 19th and 20th century politic. This is the dead hand of the "secularisation thesis"- that society naturally follows a development where organised religions and traditional orthodox ideas gradually dimities in their hold. Kuyper is an enormous embarrassment for such theories and so like many such is politely ignored.

One should add that the changes of the Netherlands over the last few decades in the direction of secularisation and sexual liberalism (both generally exaggerated by outsiders but still very real) add to amnesia about it's interesting past.

Another is increasingly specialisation in the type of history people do. Kyper's contributions cross an incredible number of fields including electoral politics, political ideology, theological history, diplomatic history and educational. To sum up his contributions would require incredible breadth in terms of our modern historical discipline - a Gibbon is rare indeed among modern historians.

Still in however small a way I hope I have shown the enormous importance and achievements of this now obscure figure. Like or loathes his achievements he did “great things” in the true sense of the term.

Tacitus and Idi Amin

Having just seen a film about Idi Amin- not the last king of Scotland but another that I shall review soon- and reading John Pocock's analysis of the way that Tacitus contributed to the history of Rome written by Gibbon, a thought struck me about the nature of tyranny. What Pocock highlights and what the film obliquely suggests is that at the door of the tyrant public rhetoric stops. That is true because politics is discussion- there is no point in having an ideology unless you have an argument. In Republics and Democracies, argument is key: it is the way that you convince others to support your cause. In a tyranny that is not how the political system works- rather than working out what your argument is, rather than adopting a rhetorical structure to embody the virtues of your position- you have the task of adapting to the tyrant's moods. Your political activity turns from a study of political argument into a study of a personality. Consequently the study of courts- from Tacitus to Castiglione- emphasized the way that a courtier had to behave in accordance with his master's wishes. Optimists like Castiglione beleived that the King could be twisted towards a rational argument, pessimists like Sir Thomas Wyatt thought that that was impossible and the court was just a struggle for preferment (Sir Thomas More's position in Utopia is curiously poised between the two). But the point is evident- in the quietness of the court, as opposed to the loud hubbub of the public fora, something happens to the way that political arguments are couched. They become less rhetorical, more personal and in the minds of the great republican theorists, less political. The words of the tyrant are the expression of the law- not the contribution of one individual to the forming of a collective mind- and in that system it is the personality of the tyrant that governs the nature of the argument, not the truth or the fallacy of the propositions advanced.

Wonderful definition of the Abortion Debate

by Jon Stewart here about half way through,

Do you condone what some would consider rape to prevent what some would consider murder?

The Argument about Abortion

Reading Unity's excellent fisk of Nadine Dorries and Sunny's most recent post on abortion and the comments under it, something suddenly struck me. If you look carefully at both posts and the comments under Sunny's various people consider the issue of abortion. However there is something rather interesting that had never struck me before about the way that they discuss the issue. The pro-life camp discuss the issue from the point of view of the rights of the unborn child, but rather than trying to defend or sustain those rights as a philosophical project, they jump straight to images or ideas about the dead foetus, using words like murder. The pro-choice side don't really attempt to deny the images of the pro-life side- they immediatly jump to discussions about abortion clinics in back streets and the fight of women for equality down the century as well as the pain of childbirth.

I don't want to get involved on either side of the debate, however there is something rather intriguing in thinking about the way these arguments are being made. Unity is a great blogger and one of the most impressive thinkers on the net- but I think when he says that the abortion debate is about a contest of rights, he is actually wrong. He misplaces the moral language that the argument is being had in. Actually this is about a contest of empathies- the question is who do you empathise with- the unborn embryo or the mother. Consider a website like the US Pro-Life Alliance- the website entrance contains pictures of smiling babies and the statement that 'abortion stops a beating heart'- this isn't an argument being made to your concept of an abstract right to life but an argument being made to your capacity to sympathise with another human being. Rights are used as a way of trumping the other empathetic understanding- but this is morality based upon empathy not upon an understanding of right. The word 'right' is called into service here as a trump card- because the recognition of human rights is (rightly or wrongly) deemed an absolute within our culture.

Looking at the abortion debate, the most interesting thing about it is that it denotes I think the basis for most modern moral judgements. The basis for most people's morality it seems to me from this and other debates is concepts of empathy. In this sense Adam Smith was right- in that he predicted that the marketisation of society would lead to more empathetic understandings of morality. Whether you are a Christian pro-lifer or a feminist pro-choicer the basic vocabulary with which you talk about religion is exactly the same- its about the sympathy that a particular object should receive. Phrasing it in terms of rights is a mere rhetorical choice. This also explains to me the presiding causes of our time- the way that pictures of African orphans or victims of the Tsunami can become cause celebre and evoke millions of charitable donations. One of the interesting things about abortion is that it is an issue where empathy can justifiably be evoked on both sides- both the mother and the embryo can be said to deserve our understanding- that makes it a difficult and controversial issue within an age where the dominant moral climate is partly an empathetic one.

Of course there are more principles involved within our moral climate- but I think the abortion debate reveals something very interesting about the way that we think about right and wrong. It reveals how important empathy is in our decision as to which way to go on an issue- that is the way that both sides make their arguments. And it also reveals the way that the language of rights, is in this case at least, more of a trump card than an actual argument.

Great Political Misjudgements

Paul Linford has put a list of great political misjudgements up here- they are all from British politics during the last thirty to forty years. Its a pretty good list and I'd reccomend having a look. His list reinforces to me though some of the conclusions of earlier posts on this blog- politics is ultimately about how you confront issues. Whether its Harold Wilson not devaluing the pound in 1964 or John Major forcing Thatcher into the ERM in 1990, the arguments mattered but it was the caution or inventiveness or decisiveness of politicians that really counted. Timing is crucial. For example bad timing cost the Tories in 1974 and Labour in 1979. Counter factual is always difficult to do in history- but it reinforces something that Matt Sinclair said recently about the way that causation in politics doesn't have a simple pattern, but relies upon the chaotic movement of individual choice and disposition. Its always worth remembering that- and the effect of political misjudgements- because it demonstrates to me that very few of the trends in human society are inevitable.

(The picture is for non-UK readers of Jim Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, telling the Trade Union Congress that there wouldn't be an election in 1978- a year later Margerat Thatcher was Prime Minister and Callaghan's party preparing for 18 years of opposition- 18 years which changed the Labour party completely.)

Isolation and the Executive

President Bush has now spent six years in the White House, by the time he leaves the place in January 2009 he will have completed his eighth year in the seat of US government and have left a momentous legacy. Bush has attracted hatred and praise in ways that few US Presidents have in the last fifty years- he has been compared both to Sir Winston Churchill and Harry Truman and to Adolf Hitler. What hasn't been addressed though are some of the real lessons from Bush's time in the White House and those of his predecessors. When the Americans elect a President, they elect a man or perhaps a woman who then serves at the apex of their government for the next four or possibly eight years. One of the most interesting facets of that service is the ways that it effects the person in control- it is their whim that ultimately decides and has to decide great questions of policy and the pulpit that the White House is afforded is still the most powerful in the World, so the question of how the office shapes its holders is a vital and important one.

Bush's Presidency is the first War on Terror Presidency. But his Presidency reflects trends that have been present for a long time- at least since the second world war and which are present as well in other democracies- the UK for example. As this fascinating article from Todd Purdum (husband of Dee Dee Myers an official in the Clinton White House) makes clear the US President is an increasingly isolated figure. Its part of the nature of the office that the President is surrounded by security and occupied by the business of a vast bureacracy. In the early Republic men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were connected to their fellow countrymen through the exchange of vast volumes of correspondence. The fears of anthrax mean that the present President is unlikely to receive directly a single letter from an ordinary voter. Bush dined outside the White House three times in the last six months- his contact with the outside world, even with longterm friends is mediated always by the vast military machine surrounding him. There can be and are almost no spontaneous social contacts with non-employees available to him, there are very few moments when his every interraction isn't planned for and leglislated long in advance.

President Clinton and other former Presidents have spoken about how this strange position effected them. Clinton used apparantly to walk past the lines of tourists and chat to them whilst going in to work in the morning, he found this gave him human interraction. President Reagen rang up charity phone lines to give money and had to convince the rather terrified interlocutor on the other end that he was indeed the President of the United States. We don't know about life inside the Bush White House yet- and probably won't until the term of the current President ends though Mr Purdum has gathered lots of information. What instantly strikes me though about the kinds of lives led by Presidents and Prime Ministers is that increasingly they are veiled from outside sources of information- they are by the nature of their office out of touch with people's lives. Whether that matters or not is another matter. I think it does partly because it makes the President into an icon not a personality- the trappings office must change a personality especially over such a long time and give that personality an exaggerated sense both of its own importance and also of its own omniscience.

The most worrying part of the Bush administration's rhetoric to me is often the way it sites their man within history. Mr Blair, the former Prime Minister, has the same rhetorical preoccupation and Mr Brown his successor shares it. David Owen, the ex British foreign secretary and neurologist recently argued that there is a condition of hubris into which politicians whilst in office descend. One wonders whether their unique position means that they think they are uniquely placed to anticipate the verdicts of historians long into the future. President Bush for example recently reminded visitors to his White House of the experience of President Lincoln in 1864 when he was deeply unpopular- of course he is right to remember that unpopularity isn't neccessarily a mark that one is wrong, but nor is it a mark that one is right. Mr Bush lives in the White House, burned during the war of 1812, a war which few now consider a success either for Mr Maddison or for his British counterpart the Earl of Liverpool. Isolation though breeds that sense of superiority- of communion not with your peers but with a long line of historical predecessors and successors.

Of course, isolation is a fact about modern political lives- the recent events in Pakistan demonstrate why. And Presidents and Prime Ministers from Spencer Perceval to John F. Kennedy have paid with their lives for the access their public gets to them (fortunately that list neither in the UK nor the US extends no further, though President Reagen was almost another victim in the early 1980s). But it isn't a good thing- it perpetuates the distance that supreme power creates by surrounding it with a barricade of security. Still more, the President and Prime Minister surround themselves with attempts to avoid scrutiny, a careless comment can kick up a controversy and the way that President Bush for example can't make a self deprecating joke without Michael Moore putting it in a film demonstrates the unreality of the office and the difficulty of living with it. Isolation may be a fact of life for these people, but it isn't a good thing. Casual interraction, the battering of meeting with equals and friends, all these things are crucial to living a real and a full life. Its one reason why wives and husbands are so crucial to political life- as Peter Hennessy commented recently in an interview with Iain Dale, its crucial to have a wife or husband that takes you down at the end of the day to normality. One can see in Oliver Stone's film about Nixon that Nixon loses contact with reality when he can't even talk to Pat Nixon about his life in the office: he can only talk to Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

Isolation encourages madness, hubris and mistakes. It is one of the worst and most neccessary elements of modern political life- and its one that modern politicians have to strive to find their way to break through. In the end politics remains as it always has been an intoxicating brew- but once you lose your soul, the point is that you are on the way to losing the world.

The lives of Politicians

David Brooks wrote an interesting article this morning in the New York Times. Basically Brooks argues that most politicians are involved in a game which dehumanises them. They have to campaign constantly, that involves both being uncharitable to their opponents and egotistic. They have to reduce policy decisions to tribal political decisions and all these things are demanded of them by the electorate operating within a democratic system. Brooks is right in many ways. What is interesting about this though is the way that our system creates a lonely and often very sad elite of people, so consumed by battling to reach the top, that they barely have time to consider what they should do when they arrive there. He speaks of the fact that politicians don't have time to privately consider or reason about what they do. They don't have that time because they have to spend that time answering questions and dealing with a media that grows by the hour. The problem is that often good politics and good policy contradict each other: the one might be symbolised by a character like Alistair Campbell, an obsessive who finds in every passing headline the panic of a moment, the other by a James Maddison thinking in the very long term and looking into history to write the American constitution. Unfortunately modern politics develops more Campbells than Maddisons and that is simply the way it is.