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Views of Peel of One of Britain’S Most Eminent Nineteenth-Century Politicians, It Is Richard A

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Views of Peel of One of Britain’S Most Eminent Nineteenth-Century Politicians, It Is Richard A REviEWS Liberal Unionist Party were more that individuals made to their party Richard A. Gaunt’s interest- involved in running government no matter how irrational their aspi- ing new work Sir Robert Peel: The than developing their party after rations had become. Life and Legacy is not such a book. 1895. Chamberlain’s explosive radi- The legacy of Liberal Union- Gaunt discusses the various facets cal ideas could hurt his friends as ism was not limited to the subtle of Peel’s political career and tries much as his enemies, as he dem- changes in Conservatism manifest to address the question of Peel’s onstrated between 1903 and 1906. right up till the Second World War, principles and convictions. How- The party had failed to establish if not beyond, but was also evident ever, he finally shrinks from being itself outside its original enclaves in the pioneering campaigning explicit about them. He finds virtue and, once it had rejected the idea of methods the new party employed in in the different interpretations and reunion with the Gladstonians, it its struggle to survive. Dr Cawood does not let the reader know where became progressively more prob- hints at the scope for more work he stands personally. In fact, his lematic to envisage escaping the that can, and I hope, will be done to book is neither an extended biog- not always friendly Tory embrace. explore this. His book is much to be raphy nor at least an exploration of Cawood suggests that the pro- welcomed and from now on those Peel’s political thought, but, rather, longed engagement from the for- interested in the period will need to an informative account of the mul- mation of the 1895 government to engage with his findings. tifarious ideas that contemporar- the consummation of the merger in ies and historians had about Peel. 1912 is a tribute to the residual inde- Tony Little is Chair of the Liberal Dem- Gaunt rarely quotes Peel himself. pendence of the regional LU par- ocrat History Group. Where he recounts what Peel actu- ties and the emotional commitment ally did, he does not assess him, but prefers to point to all those who talked or wrote about him from the beginning of his political career on. Though this produces a fascinat- ing picture of the evolving images Views of Peel of one of Britain’s most eminent nineteenth-century politicians, it is Richard A. Gaunt: Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy (I. B. not the best way to understand this Tauris, 2010) politician’s genuine intentions and ideas. This approach is not suited to Reviewed by Dr Matthias Oppermann offer, as Gaunt announces to do, ‘a reinterpretation of Peel’s attitudes to what he was doing in key areas t is no longer possible to deny career so well established after his of activity which have subsequently it: Sir Robert Peel was one death. He claimed Peel for the Con- formed the nucleus of his political Iof the most successful British servative Party, a view that Nor- prime ministers of the nineteenth man Gash affirmed and widened century. He was the author of a decades later in his outstanding couple of liberal reforms, for exam- two-volume Peel biography. Gash, ple the currency reform of 1819 who himself favoured a prudent, and the Metropolitan Police Act of pragmatic, and non-ideological 1829. Moreover, he advocated, in conservatism promoted Peel to the 1829 – after having opposed it for rank of ‘founder of modern Con- a long time – Catholic emancipa- servatism’. This new or ‘revision- tion, and repealed the Corn Laws in ist’ judgement resonates in Douglas 1846. No prime minister produced Hurd’s Peel biography of 2007, but a legislative record as comprehen- it is far from being unanimously sive as Peel’s. However, for a long accepted. Cambridge historian time Disraeli and Gladstone have Boyd Hilton, for example, has chal- clouded Peel’s image in history. lenged it several times since the Conservatives wanted Disraeli to 1970s. He understands Peel as the be the greatest nineteenth-century contrary of a flexible and pragmatic prime minister; Liberals prefered politician. For him Peel was a dog- to reserve this honorific for Glad- matic liberal who shared George stone. Peel, the founder of the Canning’s assumed evangelical- Conservative Party who eventu- ism that drove him to embrace free ally wrecked it by the repeal of the trade and economic liberalism for Corn Laws, pleased neither side. ideological reasons. Unnecessary to At best, he was seen as Gladstone’s say that Gash condemned this view teacher, as the forerunner of Glad- lock, stock and barrel, and that the stonian Liberalism. debate as to whether Peel was a con- The first historian to change servative or a liberal continues to that picture was George Kitson this day. As a consequence, a book Clark who challenged, in the 1920s, that seeks an answer to this ques- the Gladstonian reading of Peel’s tion would be timely. 48 Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 REviEWS legacy.’ Attacking the question ‘He was the he gives the impression that all manner: ‘He was the father of mod- whether Peel’s reforms as Home attempts to classify Peel within a ern Conservatism and of modern Secretary, especially the establish- father of longer tradition are in vain: ‘To Liberalism. He was too great for ment of the Metropolitan Police, designate him a false “Tory”, a ren- one party.’ Peel was a kind of con- were signs of his liberalism and modern Con- egade “Conservative”, a “Liberal servative liberal or, to be more humanitarianism, Gaunt for exam- Tory”, a “Liberal Conservative” or exact, a liberal with a conserva- ple discusses the interpretations of servatism a proto-Gladstonian Liberal, is to tive disposition in the Oakeshot- several historians and concludes play, semantically, with the career tian sense. And though he founded that none of them is completely and of mod- of a shrewd, ambitious and complex a party as an instrument for his compelling. Yet he does not take political operator and try and give ambition, he never was a confirmed up a position of his own. If Hilton ern Liberal- it helpful characterisation within a party man. is wrong in assuming Peel to have ism. He was sometimes limited political vocab- been motivated by an evangelical ulary.’ Nevertheless, more than Dr Matthias Oppermann is a lecturer belief in the natural harmony of too great for one hundred years ago, the writer in modern history at the University of every political order, what then was and Liberal MP Herbert Woodfield Potsdam. He is the author of a book Peel’s motivation? Gaunt does not one party.’ Paul showed in Men and Letters that about the political thought of the French say. Indeed, there is no ‘reinterpre- it is indeed possible to characterise liberal philosopher and sociologist Ray- tation’ in this book, and the reader Peel was a Peel in a balanced but significant mond Aron. must wonder why the author did not make a stab at a close reading kind of con- of Peel’s speeches and letters as the only way to understand his ‘atti- servative lib- tudes to what he was doing’. Gaunt thus missed a good eral or, to be Son of the Grand Old Man chance to draw a little bit nearer to the thought of this important more exact, a Ros Aitken, The Prime Minister’s Son: Stephen Gladstone, but somehow enigmatic politician. Rector of Hawarden (University of Chester Press, 2012) A close reading of Peel’s writings liberal with a could have led him to underline Reviewed by Ian Cawood even further that all existing inter- conservative pretations are flawed in one way or another. On the one hand, Nor- disposition. he sons of prime ministers the family man, in her biography man Gash was right to criticise are almost fated to endure of Stephen Gladstone, the G.O.M.’s Hilton for ascribing ideas to Peel Tlives of disappointment second and eldest surviving son. that were essentially his own and and relative failure. David Lloyd Ros Aitken is a model of the not Peel’s: this non-ideological George’s son, Gwilym, went on highly experienced history teacher statesman, who used the word pru- to be the most forgettable Home who has never let the renowned dence in his letters nearly as often Secretary of the post-war years, snobbery of British academics dis- as Edmund Burke had, was not a while Winston Churchill’s shadow suade her from engaging with seri- dogmatic economic liberal driven managed to eclipse the careers of ous archival research. Not for her, by evangelicalism. On the other both his son and grandson. Of all arcane and jargon-ridden musings hand, where Hilton overstretches eminent Liberal families, only the on such sophistry as the ‘other- the role of ideas, Gash has too little step-brothers Austen and Nev- ness’ of Stephen’s familial identity; use for them. That Peel was marked ille Chamberlain exceeded their instead she painstaking describes by moderation and prudence does father, Joseph, in the seniority of all of Stephen’s long life in a well- not necessarily mean that he was their appointments, but even their researched and nuanced picture of merely a Conservative in the party careers ended in ignominy, with aristocratic life of the nineteenth sense. It is difficult to assess Peel Austen one of the few Conserva- century. Superb pen-portraits of in terms of this party label. Look- tive leaders never to become prime the academic failings of the public ing at Peel with continental eyes, minister and Neville one of the school system, the residual popu- I daresay that he was the quintes- few who ought never to have been lar anti-popery that blighted the sential model of the fusion of lib- allowed to do so.
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