burgh and Prestwick. Ross thus pre- vented Scotland having the major international airport it deserved. ReviewsReviews He writes poignantly of the long campaign for European entry in the , and his rough relations with Prime Minister . I Last of the Gang … must admit that when he recalls the episode of his leaking in advance to the Bill Rodgers: Fourth Among Equals press a ‘showdown’ meeting with (Politico’s Publishing, 2000; 320pp) Wilson, my sympathies were wholly on the side of the cross Prime Minister. Reviewed by David Steel Other than that I found his account of events leading in  to ’ resignation as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and the Labour MPs he most irritating aspect of Bill and being part of a community. The voting against their whip very moving. TRodgers’ autobiography is its title. community politics strategy of the Equally, when later the same people Fourth Among Equals is a wholly unnec- Liberal Party was a key part of its make trooped through the lobbies against the essary self put-down. It is not even an up, not to be derided except where legislation ratifying entry, and Bill accurate description of his role in the badly practised as mere ‘pavement confessed that he was reduced to tears, Gang of Four’s founding of the SDP. politics’. The disadvantages of such a I realised why I was right to have For while the other three all had their life for me was that I was never able to resisted early blandishments to join the distinctive merits, there is no doubt that be part of the London/weekend Labour Party. Bill was the most clearly capable network, as the SDP quartet obviously The  referendum campaign – organiser and strategist of the quartet. were. I do not claim universal superior- when we worked together for the first Having overcome my dislike of the ity for the Liberal position. On the time – is accurately described, espe- title, and before turning to assess this contrary, I recall being concerned that cially the material largesse (typewrit- history, let me say at the outset that it’s in a winnable by-election a few years ers, photocopiers, executive jets) a rattling good read. The early chap- ago a candidate who would have made which were available, and which ters are strikingly evocative of a a major contribution to the parliamen- opened both our sets of eyes to the Liverpool childhood, including some tary party did not even reach the short- fact that these were regularly available remarkably vivid descriptions of the list for selection because his tenuous to the Tory party. In all of these epi- blitz. His time at Oxford is passed local ties compared unfavourably with sodes he has some shrewd and critical over quickly in favour of his early the worthy local councillors who did. pen portraits of colleagues like Tony years in the Labour Party. But there were similarities for all Crosland, Roy Hattersely and David Two features of his life emerge that. ‘I saw too little of my children Owen. But he also has some cryptic which I believe were to colour the when they were growing up and now, one-liners which set me laughing differences between SDP culture and with families of their own they com- aloud in instant recognition: Merlyn Liberal culture (because his and my plain about my failure.’ Snap. I also now personal experiences illustrated them). recall – which I had forgotten, as, I The first was his almost cavalier ap- suspect, had Bill – that we served proach to constituency selection. From together briefly in the Assemblies of to Birmingham, Gloucester to the Council of Europe and Western Grimsby and eventually to Stockton, European Union around . Indeed the prevailing attitude was that these I wrote as rapporteur (aided by a were possible places to send you to knowledgeable clerk) a learned report Westminster. Second, Bill, like the other on Russian submarines in the Kola three, lived in London, with a second peninsula, about which I can recall house in what they would call ‘the nothing except a few words of ap- country’ – within a ½ hour drive of proval from the junior defence minis- London, not in their constituencies. ter, Bill Rodgers. Contrast this with my own – and As junior minister at the Board of most recent Liberal – experience, Trade he tried to promote a new living and working in our constituen- Central Scotland airport but was cies, often a full day’s travel from stymied by the Secretary of State for London, sending our children to local Scotland, Willie Ross, who wanted to schools, attending the parish church keep voters happy at Glasgow, Edin-

Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 29 Rees ‘radiating muddled concern and was politically naïve and they mistak- and a willingness to let that flourish goodwill’; Edward du Cann ‘adopted enly allowed him full exposure. I recall organically locally rather than by some his suavest manner (and that could be coming off the sleeper and breakfasting blueprint from the top down. very suave indeed)’. with Bill, trying to explain to him how With most of Bill’s judgements I His role in establishing and main- it was possible to run a by-election concur (including his reservations taining the Lib-Lab Pact of – is while only allowing the candidate a about the current joint cabinet com- soundly recorded in detail. In retro- few carefully scripted words very mittee which my ex-leader loyalty spect I was too easily wooed by the occasionally. Richard Holme had done prevented me from expressing!). He promise of a free vote on PR for this at Croydon with Bill Pitt, but such doesn’t quote Jo Grimond’s typically Europe, failing to foresee that the pro- techniques were unknown to the SDP mischievous remark about the Alliance PR Tory vote would not turn out for who truly blew it by coming third. – ‘the thing is bound to succeed something that was part of a Lib-Lab His version of the  general because Jenkins is such a good Liberal agreement. The most interesting part election and its aftermath is both fair and Steel such a good Social Demo- of the chapter dealing with his time in and fascinating, as is the election of crat’ – but that it succeeded at all was cabinet is his account of the terrible as leader and the row on in no small measure due to Bill. Roy mistake Jim Callaghan made in not the joint commission on defence. The and I used to muse that his problem calling an election. as expected after disappointment of the  election, was a name and image one. Was he Bill the end of the Lib-Lab Pact in autumn the fall-out with Owen and the subse- or William, Roger or Rodgers? It , and of the subsequent winter of quent unnecessarily long-drawn-out didn’t matter to us internally, because discontent and the strains and disagree- struggle for merger are also robustly he was very much the essential equal, ments within the cabinet. portrayed. He is right to trace the and deserves to enjoy his years as leader His own account of leaving the satisfying achievement of forty-seven of the party in the Upper House of Labour Party and helping to found the Liberal Democrat MPs and ten MEPs parliament. SDP is familiar to those who have read to the foundation laid by the Liberal- Roy Jenkins and David Owen. What is SDP Alliance. If we were able to rewrite David Steel (Lord Steel of Aikwood) led the more revealing is the level of tension at history, there should have much more Liberal Party from  to . He is different times among the four of declared openness from the beginning currently MSP for South of Scotland, and them. It is to their credit that they about the partnership of the two parties Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament. concealed it well at the time. The famous by-elections come back to life through these pages and Bill’s mega- phone. He gives his side of the seat allocation problems, in which he is Nearly an Eminent Victorian quite critical of my part, leading to his public outburst at New Year , at which he records ‘David Steel put on Roland Hill: Lord Acton (Yale University Press, 2000; his disapproving son-of-the-manse 548pp) face and pretended the row had come Reviewed by Ian Machin as a surprise’. He is right. I did not want to inflame what I considered bad judgement on his part and simply he first Lord Acton (Sir John ancestral roots were in a Shropshire suggested he had eaten too many Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, estate and baronetcy. But as his father, mince pies for Christmas. But damage T –) was nearly an eminent grandfather, and great-grandfather in was done, and I still believe in retro- Victorian, who might have reached the the Acton line had all been born spect that the SDP wholly underesti- undoubtedly eminent rank if he had abroad, Englishness was deemed mated the scale of sacrifice being concentrated on one line of activity officially to have run out in his case, expected of entrenched Liberal instead of several. He was a diverse and a special Act of Naturalisation as a candidates and organisations such as being by birth, a cosmopolitan aristo- British citizen was passed for him, as a Dumfries (next door to me) where the crat with English, German, Italian and three-year-old, when his father died in young Jim Wallace loyally resigned as a French forebears, who was born in . Thereafter he was a Shropshire hard-working PPC to make way for a Naples. He acquired homes in three squire, though often dwelling in passing Social Democrat. countries and amassed libraries in all of Germany or France. His account of the disastrous by- them, becoming known as one of the Acton was an unremarkable Liberal election at Darlington is understated. most ardent book-collectors as well as MP for an Irish county from  to Simon Hughes had won Bermondsey one of the most learned men of his , and a remarkable and prominent only a month before. The SDP had a time. He was aptly described as an Liberal Catholic journalist and contro- well-known local TV commentator as ‘international highbrow’. His paternal versialist during the same years. Later, candidate and started favourites. But he

30 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 The first of these is as a social and not only to be impartial but also to be family man, solicitous towards his morally fearless in condemning past wife and children and entertaining evils. He also successfully stimulated scholars and statesmen such as the work of others. Today the domina- Döllinger and Gladstone in both tion of the periodic research assess- Bavaria and England. ment exercise in British universities The second is as a noted Liberal would prevent his coming anywhere Catholic thinker, striving without near a chair in this country, but one success to stem the rising ultramon- cannot help feeling that this renders tane tide in his Church. He did this universities the poorer. first in the Catholic journals that he While the book gives sound and edited (The Rambler and its successor ample coverage to the main aspects of The Home and Foreign Review) from Acton’s life, there are one or two  to , and then in the fierce contradictions in the work and some controversy which took place over places where the British ecclesiastical the definition of papal infallibility at and social background might have the Vatican Council in , and been more fully sketched in. With which lasted for several years. The regard to the few factual errors it Vatican controversy showed Acton at should be noted that the Davis Strait a peak of intellectual and emotional off Greenland, and not ‘Davis Street’, involvement, clashing not only with was the place where a whale was when his close friend Gladstone’s final Pope Pius IX but with Manning and, caught in one of Acton’s historical ministry was formed in , he was to a lesser extent, Newman. This was anecdotes; that King Louis-Philippe’s disappointed not to receive a cabinet the central defining moment in son was the Duke of Aumale, not post, but was made a Lord-in-Waiting Acton’s life and it is given very full Daumale; that Gladstone, as a Puseyite, to the Queen, whom he was as con- examination by Hill, extending to did not have a ‘Low Church image’; spicuously able to charm as Gladstone nearly a quarter of the book. that it was actually a Tory government was not. Finally, in , Lord Rosebery The third level on which the book that carried Catholic emancipation in appointed this learned historian – who presents Acton is as an unexpected but ; and that only forty-one votes, had written little apart from numerous nonetheless effective professor of not forty-nine, were given in favour of periodical articles (of a contemporary history. His own historical research and the Irish Home Rule Bill in the House nature) and some general scholarly writing projects had been successively of Lords in . essays – to the Regius Chair of Modern dropped but in his chair he delivered History at Cambridge. Occupying this some notable, if debatable, aphorisms, Ian Machin is Professor of British History position until his death at the age of insisting on the duty of the historian at the University of Dundee sixty-eight in , Acton delivered notable lectures (later published) and launched the multi-volume Cambridge Modern History. This work had many writers but, characteristically, Acton : Policy Wonk was not prepared to contribute a chapter himself. Roland Hill’s book is the fullest Graham Stewart: Burying Caesar: Churchill, biography of Acton to date. It well Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party reflects its subject in being physically (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999) large, learned and capacious. Its scholarly basis is provided by corre- Reviewed by Richard Grayson spondence from eighteen archives in different countries, especially the Acton papers in the Cambridge o we really need another book continent crept ever closer to the University Library, and by numerous Dabout ’s English Channel. And as for biogra- contemporary and subsequent pub- wilderness years? Almost certainly phies, it is difficult to see that there is lished sources. There is a frequent and not. My own shelves, though far any way to improve upon the nu- apt use of quotation, which gives from holding the complete Churchill merous readable and insightful works constant freshness to the work. The collection, are stacked full of mem- by historians such as Robert Rhodes treatment is generally solid throughout oirs telling the tale of the ‘guilty James and John Charmley, or the and gives us abundant opportunity to men’ who allowed Britain to sleep weighty tomes that are Martin observe Acton on three levels. while the gathering storm on the Gilbert’s life’s work.

Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 31 Neville Chamberlain has not the early s, as a result of his attracted the same following. For increasing involvement in the great obvious reasons, there were never international economic issues of the crowds of people waiting to tell of day, such as the Ottawa agreements and their part in his life. And we even lack the  World Economic Conference. a full modern biography, with David When carrying out research on Austen Dilks’ work stopping in . Chamberlain, I was told by a close Nevertheless, Chamberlain’s role in friend of the Chamberlain family that appeasement has been told and told in the s, whenever Neville had again through countless monographs voiced opinions on foreign policy, he and journal articles analysing the would be told by his sisters: ‘Do shut minutiae of the decision-making that up, Neville – you know you know led to Munich and beyond. Mean- nothing about foreign affairs’. His time while, general readers are well served at the Treasury may not have remedied by Alastair Parker’s Chamberlain and that entirely, but it did at least make Appeasement. So does Graham him think that he was an expert. He Stewart’s Burying Caesar perform any successfully persuaded others of this useful function? too, prompting ’s Stewart has not unearthed any new comment in , ‘if Chamberlain says sources. But in other ways he has more that black is white, the Tories applaud than justified this new volume on his brilliance. If a week later he says with people such as Churchill. That Churchill and Chamberlain. In particu- that black is after all black, they ap- overlooks the very vigorous debates on lar, he places much emphasis on Cham- plaud his realism.’ alternative options that took place berlain’s relationship with his party; no As for Churchill, Stewart demon- inside the opposition parties. While other writer has treated this as such a strates clearly the differing effects that there is no doubt that the size of the serious issue in the past. Meanwhile, he Churchill’s calls for rearming the government’s majority made internal has uniquely presented a fascinating RAF had on his relationship with the Conservative opposition crucial, its full twin biography, examining the links Conservative Party, as distinct to his significance can only be understood in between Churchill and Chamberlain at fight against the Government of India the context of activity beyond Con- every twist and turn, rather as Alan Bill. In the latter case, he was regularly servative ranks. Bullock did in his Hitler and Stalin: A seen to be disloyal to the Conserva- Had Stewart actually tackled this Study in Tyranny. Underpinning this is tive-dominated government, sup- issue, he might have slightly rebalanced the provocative suggestion that the ported only by diehards on the fringe his picture of the anti-appeasement battle for supremacy between the two of the party. But on rearmament, he cause. In particular, that applies to the men was a continuation of the late- was simply pushing the government belief in ‘collective security’ that is so Victorian struggle for the Tory soul in to pursue its own policy more enthu- often associated with Winston which their fathers, Randolph and Joe, siastically, thus consolidating his Churchill. In actual fact, ‘collective were leading figures. support on the party’s right wing, security’ was at the heart of the One of the key points to emerge while also securing allies from other Liberal concept of international from Stewart’s book is that Chamber- areas. As Stewart shows, one should relations from the early s. In the lain had a strong grip on the Con- not underestimate the extent to first part of the decade, they associated servative Party’s central machine in the which that campaign was inspired by it with the League of Nations. But by early s. In particular, as chair of the Churchill’s desire to return to Con- mid , some months before the Conservative Research Department, servative ministerial ranks in the mid Munich crisis, Liberals such as and head of the Cabinet Conservative to late s. It is all too easy now to Archibald Sinclair were arguing that Committee, he was the supreme policy forget that even on becoming Prime an alliance between, for example, wonk of his era. Combining these Minister in , Churchill did not Britain, France and the USSR, might posts with that of Chancellor of the enjoy the unquestioning loyalty of the be the only way to resist Hitler. Exchequer, Chamberlain was the Conservatives, and this book brings Analysis of the Liberal position also of his day, with a grip his troubled relationship with the reveals the importance of the idea of on policy across the board – so much party to the fore. ‘economic disarmament’ to the anti- so that he wrote to one of his sisters in Missing from the book is any real appeasement campaign. That involved October  that it amused him ‘to sense that the Conservative anti- restoring free trade and making find a new policy for each of my appeasers were only one of several concessions to Germany on colonies. colleagues in turn’. groups working against the govern- It was a distinctive aspect of Liberal It is also clear that Chamberlain’s ment’s foreign policy. Liberal and anti-appeasement and adds an impor- interest in international affairs devel- Labour politicians are present in the tant dimension to any analysis of oped from his time at the Treasury in book, but only in so far as they worked alternative policies.

32 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 Yet despite this reservation, Stewart’s taste for biography and for grand all with different aims and from book is both accessible and illuminat- historical narrative seems to grow, we different political standpoints. Hilaire ing. It is so well written that devotees can expect to see much more of this Belloc wrote history to justify his own of inter-war politics will find it a rip- sort of book in the future. Radical and Catholic political philoso- roaring yarn. But its main achievement phy, which saw the pre-Reformation is to do all this while at the same time Dr Richard Grayson is Director of Policy of era as a golden age of cooperation maintaining a sense of balance. Argu- the Liberal Democrats. His book, Austen between aristocracy and people that he ably, for the first time, Burying Caesar Chamberlain and the Commitment to wished to recreate in the present presents the stories of the Conservative Europe, was published in . His second through the concept of ‘distributism’, appeasers and the Conservative anti- book, The Liberal Party and Appease- in which property would be shared out appeasers side by side. As the public’s ment, is to be published in . more equally, but without the domi- nance of the state. Sidney and , too, had a distinctly anti-Liberal agenda. They sought to emulate the research-based Whigs, Liberals and History scientific methods of academia, while at the same time writing history to influence social policy in the direc- Victor Feske: From Belloc to Churchill: Private tion of their own Fabian beliefs. Like scholars, public culture and the crisis of British the Whigs they saw history as a Liberalism, 1900–1939 narrative of progress, but they empha- sised the development of public (University of North Carolina Press, 1996; 304pp) administration and the state, rather Reviewed by Iain Sharpe than advances in individual liberty. Although not in sympathy with Belloc’s Catholic sentiments, they hroughout the period of the Politically engaged history, written shared with him a hostility to what TLiberal Party’s ascendancy in by non-academics, continued, but in they saw as the selfish, individualist British politics during the nineteenth the political conditions of the Edward- ideology that prevailed in Britain century, the party was nourished and ian era, with empire at its height and between  and . Having failed sustained by a particular view of with increasing pressure for state in their efforts to permeate the British history – dubbed the ‘Whig intervention in social reform, the Liberal party, they increasingly Interpretation’ – as a story of narrow Whig emphasis on constitu- attacked it, aiming through their progress and reform, focusing in tional progress seemed anachronistic. history to promote rule by experts, particular on the development of Those seeking to write history in something that was anathema to the Britain’s constitution and the growth order to influence the present began to Liberal tradition. of individual freedom. Historical focus more on the role of the state practitioners within this tradition rather than just the nature of the were often amateur scholars who constitution. In doing so they ceased to were deeply involved in contempo- provide sustenance to the Liberal rary politics and saw the advance of tradition. The purpose of Victor Feske’s political liberty from Magna Carta to book is to explore the severing of this the Glorious Revolution and the connection between political Liberal- nineteenth-century reform acts as a ism and amateur scholarship, by continuous and continuing justifica- examining the careers of seven histori- tion for contemporary Liberalism. ans working outside an academic Towards the end of the nineteenth environment. All of his subjects were in century, this close link between history some way linked to the Liberal Party, and Liberalism began to uncouple. but their work either subverted the History in Britain was becoming a Whig tradition or adapted it to chang- more academic and scientific discipline. ing circumstances, removing it as a It was increasingly written by profes- source of strength for the Liberal cause. sionals, working inside universities and The seven subjects of the book (five relying on primary research rather than if one ‘merges’ the husband-and-wife mere interpretation. This academic teams of Beatrice and Sidney Webb history was, by definition, separate from and Barbara and J.L. Hammond) all the political process, not intended to wrote history with at least one eye on justify any particular party or policy. its contemporary relevance, although

Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 33 The remainder of the subjects were history of Britain which sought to less hostile to Liberalism, but were not include the Conservative and Labour producing history designed to sustain traditions within the national history. Liberal politics. J. L. and Barbara Churchill, too, in his various historical Hammond, in their trilogy, The Village writings, set out a version of the Labourer, the Town Labourer and The national history that borrowed from Skilled Labourer, stressed the damaging the Whig tradition, but which stressed human consequences of industrialisa- not just the growth of liberty, but also tion for the working classes. Politically, the extent to which military strength they were Liberals, and Feske describes and power was necessary to defend it. their history as a ‘subtly shaded at- In analysing the relationship be- tempted to forge a contemporary tween these ‘private scholars’, the vindication of Liberalism’s ancestry public history they wrote and the without hiding the warts’. Unfortu- decline of Liberal politics, Victor Feske nately they found themselves con- has written a lively and original book demned by academia and the political which, despite its complex right alike for their emotive style, while historiographical subject matter, will at the same time they were lionised by be accessible to the lay reader. Inevita- the political left, with whom they were bly in a book devoted to the study of not necessarily in sympathy. just a few individuals, one is left feeling The final two subjects, G. M. that some elements of the picture are of British decline. By deciding to Trevelyan and Winston Churchill, each missing. It would be interesting, for abandon the realities of old Con- tried in slightly different ways to example, to know whether any servative tradition for the garish fashion a variant of the Whig interpre- attempts were made to continue an purple of Disraeli’s imperial destiny tation stripped of its partisan political overtly Liberal historical tradition and its Liberal variant, Britain’s nature. Trevelyan began his career by during the years of the party’s decline policy-makers forced her to punch rejecting academia and stressing in his between the wars. In addition, a more above her weight in global conflict approach to history his own Liberal detailed analysis of the impact on from which she could only emerge convictions and his belief in writing in Liberalism of the growth of academic severely weakened.’ a literary and accessible style. His history might have helped to give a That tells us all we need to know. trilogy on Garibaldi, published before more complete picture. But, of course, Charmley is the great pro-appeaser the First World War, was written in a complaints such as these amount to historian, the sole Tory chronicler of self-consciously poetic style and dealt asking the author for a different book any repute who is willing to say that a with a heroic Liberal cause. But in the from the one he set out to write. deal could (and should?) have been wake of the First World War and the struck with Hitler in  to save the decline of the Liberal Party’s fortunes, Iain Sharpe is an editor with the University Empire. He could have had Europe, we he fashioned a new version of the of London External Programme. the colonies. Even Andrew Roberts, cheerleader of the fogey right and worshipper at the shrine of Lord Halifax, has felt it necessary to distance himself from that extremist point of I blame Sir Edward Grey view. Nonetheless, Charmley is a distinguished historian and while his John Charmley: Splendid Isolation? Britain and the views on current politics, and his wishes of what might have been, shine Balance of Power 1874–1914 through the book, we cannot just (Hodder and Stoughton, 1999) dismiss it. To undertake a history, let alone a Reviewed by Peter Truesdale reinterpretation, of forty years of diplomatic history is no mean under- taking. The history Charmley chroni- he first question about any work the two world wars were, at most, cles is essentially one of Britain’s Tof history is ‘Why did the author catalysts which speeded up trends relation to the ebbing and flowing write it?’ Charmley, obliging fellow, already well under way; at worst, they fortunes of the European great powers. lays it out for us straight. ‘Some did no more than validate those This brings us to the great defect of historians have argued that Britain has trends. One of the implications of the the book. Charmley does not set out been a power in decline for a good version of events offered here is that the European context of events very long time. In this version of events, participation in the wars was a cause effectively. What effect had the unifica-

34 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 tion of Germany had on Britain and World War is how and why Asquith ery within the Tory shrine. Gladstone, the other powers? We are not told. and Grey were able to outmanoeuvre however, is dismissed as a sort of John What was the Habsburgs’ strategy to the peace party within the cabinet and the Baptist to Robin Cook’s Messiah. keep their multi-ethnic Empire on the parliamentary party. Charmley is The idea of a moral foreign policy is road? We are left guessing. How clearly unengaged by this question. seen as risible. This poses problems for dominant in France’s foreign policy This is a significant flaw in the book. the historian. Can Gladstone be so was a desire to regain Alsace-Lorraine? While it might be convenient in lightly dismissed without also dismiss- We are not told. This is a very Anglo- current ideological terms to concen- ing Canning, Palmerston and Russell? centric book. The intelligent and well- trate on the sanctimonious, interven- At any rate a polite veil is drawn over informed reader will be able to infer tionist strand within Liberal policy, it is Dizzy’s strayings, while Gladstone is many of the answers from what clearly an incomplete picture. drawn as a stumbler and humbug. Charmley writes but it would have No prizes will be awarded for the While Charmley is partisan been helpful for him to be explicit. second hero of Charmley’s narrative. throughout, and has an agenda to Charmley is clear about who his He is the third Marquess of Salisbury. which no Liberal Democrat could own heroes are. The fifteenth Earl of Salisbury is the Tories’ Mrs Thatcher of subscribe, it would be wrong to write Derby tops the list in the first part of the nineteenth century, the leader who him off. His book provides a splendid the narrative. Derby was firmly com- can do no wrong. Salisbury seemingly sweep of the forty years of diplomacy mitted to a policy of the avoidance of can lay claim to every strand of Tory covered and he makes out a good case war and European entanglements. This virtue. He is the exemplar of noblesse against Sir Edward Grey. It is hard to was for two reasons. The first was the oblige, the world-weary Christian see why Grey connived at the harden- classic old Tory squirearchical argu- pessimist and the visionary of villa ing of the arteries of European dip- ment. It was all very well for the grand To r yism. Doubtless Salisbury was a lomacy in the eight years preceding noble families to commit Britain to Victorian Titan but the claims made World War One. The fear of Germany war but its consequences were in- on his behalf by his latter-day apostles seems particularly ludicrous. Asquith creased taxation, which fell unduly are overblown. On the other hand, too can surely not escape criticism. To upon the squires and minor landown- Charmley does make out a good case have abandoned Belgium in the ers. We hear much of this from for Salisbury’s foreign policy. Salisbury’s summer of  would certainly have Charmley but rather less from him of fundamental perception about the been an act of caddishness, but the the Lancashire free trade argument balance of power was that Britain had real question is why had Britain against foreign adventures. A.J.P. no overriding interests on the conti- become so thoroughly engaged with Taylor’s grandfather, rooted in Lanca- nent beyond shunning entangling France (and thereby Russia) as to be shire commerce, alliances and in such a scrape at all. Here Charmley is supposed to ensuring no one makes out an effective case for the have said on the Not least of the lamps power became prosecution against Grey. Whether or outbreak of that were put out for a dominant. In not Charmley is right in his implicit World War One foreign policy, assumption that Britain was not on a ‘Don’t they generation during that therefore, Tories downward trajectory by , he is understand that hot and ill-fated summer should shun unquestionably right in asserting that every German as was the lamp of dynamic forces it could not be in Britain’s interest to they shoots is a and entangling become embroiled in the first Eu- customer?’ One enlightened and alliances. Clearly rope-wide war since the days of would have peaceful liberalism. this ought to Napoleon. It is hard to imagine thought that this make Britain Gladstone embroiling Britain in a argument was fundamentally full-scale European war. Doubtless he rather more important by the end of sympathetic to the Austria-Hungarian would have slithered out of commit- the nineteenth century than the cry empire, the power with the most to ments while maintaining a high- from the shires that fiscal prudence was lose from dynamic action. Britain falutin’ position of impeccable being sacrificed to the whims of should be wary too of moves to morality. Sadly Grey had painted irresponsible grandees. undermine the Sublime Porte, whose Britain into a corner. In the end only However, Charmley’s focusing on decline could only signal an advance Burns and Morley resigned – a the squirearchical arguments against of the European and (worse still) victory for Grey but a pyrrhic one. foreign entanglements allows him to Mediterranean influence of the Not least of the lamps that were put ignore the point of view of the Liberal Russian bear. out for a generation during that hot peace party. He is unwilling to address Charmley is not willing to follow and ill-fated summer was the lamp of in any detail the views of the Liberal through the logic of his own argument enlightened and peaceful liberalism. free trade nonconformist peaceniks. by a full and unbuttoned condemna- This is a pity. Clearly the central tion of Disraeli’s flash adventurism. Peter Truesdale is leader of the Liberal question of British entry into the First There must be no smashing of crock- Democrats on Lambeth Council.

Journal of Liberal Democrat History 28 Autumn 2000 35