Reviews balance of central–local powers? It’s former chair of the West Midlands Regional what Radical Joe and Chocolate George Assembly. He is City Heritage Champion. would have wanted. 1 Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities: Manchester, Leeds, Philip Davis is a Birmingham Labour Coun- Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Melbourne, London cillor, ex-Leader of Telford Council, and (Penguin, 1990).

Liberalism: An outstanding introduction Michael Freeden, . A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015) Review by Alastair J. Reid

hat an appropriate name Hobson); to pluralism and the dilem- for a writer on liberalism! mas of contemporary identity politics. WMy keyboard kept antici- This sequence deliberately leaves out pating it as ‘freedom’… And Michael so-called ‘’, which he sees Freeden has indeed written a generous as such a thinned-out version as to cross and open book, which manages to com- over the boundary into conservatism. clarification of norms of justice, democ- bine a helpful account of its immediate However, in the course of this survey racy and individual rights. subject with an overview of a distinctive Freeden emphasises varieties of legiti- Throughout, the book has a produc- approach to more generally. mate members of the family. First, varie- tive dual eye on history, without which Moreover, there is enough repetition of ties within political liberalism: especially the nature of liberalism could not begin its main ideas in different forms and con- the well-known distinction between to be understood, and the present day, texts to make them easier to digest and classical liberalism restraining the state which is what we can assume most of remember. and using the state to its readers will be interested in. Freeden Primarily about British liberalism, promote human well-being. But then, develops a very useful image of ‘layers’ though with many interesting side- second, less well-known varieties outside rather than successive stages: ‘… lib- ways comparisons with other counties, the sphere of strictly political thought eral ideas originated at different times, the book steers us quickly and skilfully and action: especially the university from diverse sources, and with varying from John Locke’s proto-liberalism; liberalism of early nineteenth-century aims in mind … they are a composite of through the Manchester School’s eco- Germans, emphasising the spontane- accumulated, discarded and retrieved nomic utilitarianism; John Stuart Mill’s ous cultivation of intellectual and moral strata in continuously fluctuating com- exploration of individual development; powers; and the philosophical liberal- binations’. But he accompanies this with the ‘new liberalism’ and state welfare (in ism of late twentieth-century North the concept of ‘morphology’, that is, a T. H. Green, L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Americans, emphasising the rational basic shape or set of core ideas which all Liberalism The ideas that built the Liberal Democrats An accessible guide to the key ideas underlying Liberal Democrat beliefs, including entries on environmentalism, internationalism, the rule of law and community politics, together with contemporary and historic currents of thought, including social and economic liberalism, social democracy, Keynesianism, radicalism and more.

Essential reading for every thinking Liberal.

Available at a special discounted rate for Journal of Liberal History subscribers: £5 instead of the normal £6. Order via our online shop (www.liberalhistory.org.uk/shop/) or by sending a cheque (to ‘Liberal Democrat History Group’) to LDHG, 54 Midmoor Road, London SW12 0EN (add £1.25 P&P).

44 Journal of Liberal History 97 Winter 2017–18 Reviews members of an ideological family will While it would therefore be not only government, popular consent, and the share. In this case it is hard to imagine premature but inappropriate to talk of political and civil liberties of the indi- a liberalism without some combination the ‘triumph of liberalism’, we can say vidual citizen. At best it could be said of: checks on power, liberty, ration- that the liberal tradition has been and that later, throughout his study, Fawcett ality, progress, individuality, mutual still is a central pillar of the modern treats liberalism as a meta-, that interdependence and the public interest world: placing human beings at the cen- is, broadly speaking, the higher, sec- – though these will not always have the tre of the social universe, unleashing a ond-order ideology of the industrialised same weight and meaning in every case. critical approach to knowledge, legiti- West, which has provided a framework This shift away from the ambitions mising constant change in public policy, embracing the rival values and beliefs of of political theory to create an opti- and advocating an appreciation of the particular political doctrines. Since at mal ideology and towards the descrip- diversity of people’s ways of life. Think- least 1945 there have, after all, been other tive approach of history suggests that it ers and politicians who do not take these distinctive ideological approaches to lib- would be a waste of time and energy to themes for granted are now generally eral democracy besides those of classical search for a clear definition of ‘real’ or regarded as somewhat cranky, though of liberalism and social liberalism, specifi- ‘essential’ liberalism. And, similarly, that course in liberal polities they are usually cally, those of conservatism, in its vari- it would be a mistake to expect it to offer still allowed a voice. ous forms, particularly evident in the ready-packaged and conclusive solu- It is hard to imagine a better introduc- United States, as well as those of demo- tions to the dilemmas of policy-making: tion to liberalism than Freeden’s short cratic and social democracy. which can only be dealt with appro- book and, like all outstanding introduc- From that blurred conceptual distinc- priately and humanely through public tions, it has a lot to offer to those who tion, however, between liberalism and discussion of a menu of possibilities, pro- don’t think they really need one. liberal democracy, seem to me to stem ducing compromises subject to constant the two main shortcomings of Liberalism: adaptation. But that is the attraction of Alastair J. Reid is a Life Fellow of Girton The Life of an Idea: its very broad narra- liberalism properly understood: that it College, Cambridge and author of a number tive approach and the extremely wide is closer to the uncertainty and ambigu- of books on the history of British trade unions scope of Fawcett’s historical account of ity of life as most people experience it written from a broadly liberal perspective, Western liberalism as he conceives and than are many other political ideologies, including, most recently, Alternatives to defines it. With regard to Fawcett’s his- particularly those of a totalitarian or State-Socialism in Britain. Other Worlds torical narrative, it is developed chrono- utopian type which aim for some sort of of Labour in the Twentieth Century, logically in three parts: first, the period final closure. jointly edited with Peter Ackers. of liberalism’s ‘youthful definition’ from 1830 to 1880; second, that of its matura- tion and its ‘historic compromise with democracy’ from 1880 to 1945, from which liberalism emerged in more inclu- Slippery Liberalism sive form as democratic liberalism, better known as liberal democracy; and, third, Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton University the period from 1945 to 1989, when, Press, 2015) ‘after near-fatal failures’ in the twenti- eth.century, involving ‘two world wars, Review by Tudor Jones political failures, and economic slump’, liberal democracy ‘won itself another t the heart of this book there foundations in conceptual and historical seems to lie a persistent ambigu- depth’, thereby providing ‘vital intel- Aity, arguably even a definitional lectual background for hard thinking error, in respect of its subject matter. It about liberal democracy’s future.’ The purports at the outset to be, in the words author points out, too, that Part Two of of its author, who was a journalist for his book, entitled ‘Liberalism in Matu- The Economist for more than three dec- rity and the Struggle with Democracy’ ades, ‘a biographically led, non-special- (1880–1945), ‘described liberalism’s long ist chronicle of liberalism as a practice and ever negotiable compromise with of politics’, one that has stretched over democracy from which liberal democ- two centuries in the West since the early racy emerged.’ nineteenth century. Yet in the author’s In such a manner Fawcett appears preface to this 2015 paperback edition to blur the distinction, which is both of his book, originally published the an empirical and a conceptual one, previous year, Edmund Fawcett main- between, on the one hand, liberalism as tains that its underlying message was a broad tradition of political thinking in ‘that liberal democracy was under chal- the West, a particular political ideology, lenge and urgently needed repair’, a mes- that has developed a distinctive vision sage that struck him ‘as more pressing of society based on certain core values than ever.’ At the same time, he states and beliefs, and, on the other hand, lib- that Liberalism: The Life of an Idea ‘offered eral democracy as a type of political a comprehensive guide to liberalism’s regime involving limited, constitutional

Journal of Liberal History 97 Winter 2017–18 45