going to war: british debates from wilberforce to blair – by philip towle

REVIEWSparh_271 259..288

Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland 1660–1714. By GeorgeSouthcombe and Grant Tapsell. (British History in Perspective.) Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. xv, 235 pp. Hardback £55.00; paperback £19.99.ISBN 9780230574441; 9780230574458.

For a long time, the reigns of Charles II and James II constituted something of aneglected period. Historians’ attention focused instead, first on the civil wars andinterregnum, and then on the impact of the revolution of 1688–9. Compared with suchperiods of dramatic change, the Restoration period seemed both dull and sordid. Somehigh-quality research was published, but it tended to focus on the politics of court andparliament and on international relations. There was always some awareness of theimportance of politics ‘out of doors’, of petitions, demonstrations and bitterly-contestedelections, but these tended to be relegated to the background. Since the 1980s thepicture has begun to change, starting with the work of Tim Harris and Mark Knightsand carried on by numerous other younger scholars. At the same time, there was agrowing awareness of the importance of a ‘three-kingdoms’ approach, writing a truly‘British’ history, rather than English history with noises off from Scotland and Ireland(although, to be fair, David Ogg pursued such a ‘British’ approach as early as the 1930s).With so much new work, much of it detailed, adding new dimensions, new approachesand new complexities, there is a real need for a new synthesis or overview, to make thiswork more accessible to students. Tim Harris attempted such an overview, but in twosubstantial volumes (Restoration in 2005 and Revolution in 2006).This work is much moreconcise and is aimed explicitly at the student market.

It is arranged around a series of questions, each the subject of one chapter, and eachchapter is broken up into student-friendly sections. There is a number of telling visualillustrations, as well as lively anecdotes and quotations; the authors give due weight tothe sordid and the sexual. Some of the chapters cover ground which has long beenreasonably familiar: What was restored in 1660? Why were dissenters a problem? WasCharles II a successful royal politician? The chapter on the Exclusion Crisis reassertsthe centrality of exclusion, after Mark Knights’s preference for a broader ‘successioncrisis’ and Jonathan Scott’s assertion that exclusion was of minor importance and thatthe crisis was really part of an ongoing attempt to curb royal power in the face ofthreats of popery and arbitrary government. The chapter on James II is also reasonablyfamiliar, but after that the authors move into areas whose importance has becomeapparent only recently. Charles II did not make his father’s mistake of trying to makeScotland and Ireland more like England: in so far as he had a ‘British’ strategy heviewed his two other kingdoms as possible sources of military help in time of crisis.

Parliamentary History, Vol. 30, pt. 2 (2011), pp. 259–287

© The Parliamentary History Yearbook Trust 2011

Nevertheless, the severity of the government of Scotland in his reign (made necessarypartly by his ill-advised decision to restore episcopacy there) and the perceived lack ofrigour in his treatment of catholics in Ireland, both created alarm in England, espe-cially when there were fears of popery and military rule. The authors incorporaterecent work on Scotland and Ireland into their synthesis, as well as pointing studentsin the direction of the best of recent work.

The most interesting chapter, which offers both a synthesis of recent work andproducts of the authors’ own research, deals with ‘politics out of doors’. It stresses theimportance of news, giving due emphasis to handwritten news and word of mouth,ritual and ceremony, as well as print. Much writing on this topic discusses it in thecontext of Habermas’s theories on the ‘public sphere’. The authors examine the rel-evance of Habermas’s work for the study of popular politics in this period and findit sadly wanting – which sends a refreshing and salutary message to students andothers who have come to see Habermas as a totemic figure. They also follow Knightsin showing how the tories deplored the whigs’ appeal to the people, and then soughtto beat them at their own game. This broadening of the political arena also extendsto literature, and particularly to the often scurrilous political verse of the age. Untilthis point the book has focused on the period 1660–88. The final chapter carries thestory forward to 1714. Inevitably this is covered rather briefly. The authors give moreweight to the tory dilemmas of conscience in 1688–9 than to the extraordinarystrength – and militancy – of the tories under Queen Anne. There is a discussion ofthe Sacheverell furore, but in terms of continuing hostility to dissent rather than thedynamism and very wide popular appeal of high church anglicanism (born of a hatredof low churchmen even more than a hatred of dissenters). The discussion of thestrengthening of the ‘fiscal-military state’ after 1689 is also rather cursory. But as longas the final chapter is seen as a postscript to the more substantive material of theremainder of the book, this probably does not matter overmuch. The book sets out toappeal to students and to help them to understand recent work on the Restorationperiod. It succeeds very well.

JOHN MILLERQueen Mary University of London

The Entring Book of Roger Morrice 1677–1691. Volume vii: Index. Edited byAlasdair Hawkyard. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2007. xvi, 160 pp. £75.00.ISBN 9781843833857.

Indexes are not things of beauty. Indeed one of the strongest marks of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s genius was his capacity to amuse even in the indexes to his collections of essays.His sardonic entries for the Cambridge college of which he had been an unhappy masterare in themselves a minor work of art: ‘Peterhouse: a noisy mafia there . . . unventilatedFellows . . . high-table conversation not very agreeable . . . shocking goings-on there. . . four revolting Fellows of . . . main source of perverts’.1

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There are no such guilty pleasures to be enjoyed whilst browsing in Alasdair Hawk-yard’s 160-page index to the Entring Book of Roger Morrice. But this is one of only a smallnumber of criticisms that can be levelled at a significant scholarly resource. Havingreviewed the Entring Book in an earlier volume of this journal,2 I can testify to theastonishing density of information that Morrice habitually recorded on any given day.And in the printed edition this relentless detail extended over four volumes totalling2,012 pages (plus another volume of biographical material, the core part of which is alsocovered here). Indexing such a document is an immense challenge, even for someone asexperienced at the task as Mr Hawkyard. As he acknowledges, the challenge extendedbeyond the sheer scale of the Entring Book: ‘Morrice’s proliferation of spellings and titles,his not infrequent inaccuracies, and a cast literally of thousands, makes full accuracyimpossible’ (p. ix).Variant spellings are meticulously noted, e.g., ‘Glückstadt (Gludstald,Gludstadt, Ladstald)’ (p. 56), and some of the entries reveal useful detective work, e.g.‘ “Chiaux Bachi”; see çavusbasi under Ottoman empire’ (p. 30). Some entries are extremelyextensive, and appropriately nuanced via subheadings. Readers of this journal will bepleased to learn that four-and-a-half columns are devoted to parliamentary bills (pp.12–15), one-and-a-half to parliament, and two more to parliamentary constituencies (pp.35–6). Predictably enough for the work of a metropolitan intelligencer, the largest entryis devoted to London, which merits an extraordinary 19 columns (pp. 83–92), though afurther three are given over to Roger Morrice himself (pp. 104–6), and will prove veryhelpful to those hunting this exceptionally furtive chronicler.

There are, however, some puzzling omissions. I could not find ‘tory’/‘toryism’(either in its Irish or English political sense), ‘whig’, ‘comprehension’, ‘toleration’, or‘presbyterian’. Nor are some of the less familiar terms that, nevertheless, formedimportant parts of Morrice’s religio-political vocabulary noted, e.g., ‘Hierarchists’ and‘Regents’, or ‘coalitio/coalition’.3 (‘Popery’ is also not indexed, though that wouldhave yielded so many entries that the volume as a whole would have been con-siderably longer since fear of it is embedded in almost every page of the EntringBook. ‘Papists’ does have an entry.) These might have been more helpful than ‘paperentitled “The Comprehensive Sense of the Clergy” ’ (p. 114), or two columns devotedto ‘[blank]’ (pp. 15–16). Such comments need to be taken, though, in the context ofa vast and elaborate work that runs from ‘Aachen; see Aix-la-Chapelle’ to ‘Zwingli(Zuinglius), Huldrych’, and also includes five-and-a-half pages of addenda et corrigendafor the earlier volumes. At £75.00 it certainly does not come cheap, but serious usersof the Entring Book will want to complete their sets, not just for the handsomeuniform appearance, but also the supplementary help the index can offer on top ofthe CD-rom search facility on which they have been reliant since 2007.

GRANT TAPSELLUniversity of St Andrews

1 Hugh Trevor-Roper, From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution (1992), 320; Trevor-Roper, Catholics,Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays (1987), 302.2 Grant Tapsell, ‘ “Weepe Over the Ejected Practice of Religion”: Roger Morrice and the Restoration Twilightof Puritan Politics’ [review article], Parliamentary History, xxviii (2009), 266–94.3 For these, see Mark Goldie, volume i – Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs – via index; Mark Knights’sintroduction to volume v; Tapsell, ‘ “Weepe Over the Ejected Practice of Religion” ’, 292–3.

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‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse inLate-Seventeenth-Century London. By Peter Hinds. (A British Academy Postdoc-toral Fellowship Monograph.) Oxford: Oxford University Press for the BritishAcademy. 2010. xiv, 457 pp. £60.00. ISBN 9780197264430.

Roger L’Estrange is a name familiar to political historians and literary scholars workingon the later 17th century, for to say he was prolific is something of an understatement.As a pamphleteer, journalist, and translator he produced scores of works, while as alicenser of the press he literally left his mark on hundreds of publications which wereissued in the decades following the Restoration. During the Popish Plot and ExclusionCrisis of the late 1670s and early 1680s, L’Estrange gained a new notoriety, repeatedlyattacking Titus Oates’s claims of grand catholic assassination schemes at a time whenquestioning the existence of the plot was regarded as treasonous. He became, in PeterHinds’s words, ‘the Popish Plot’s first historian (though he could easily have been one ofits victims)’ (p. 91). As Hinds notes, L’Estrange had a good deal of mud slung at him inhis own time (‘Crackfart’, ‘Towser’, ‘Miscreant’ and ‘Mr Filth’ were just some of thesobriquets his enemies found for him), while his enthusiasm for press controls has meanthe has often not been treated well by more recent commentators. One of the purposesof Hinds’s study, therefore, is to present a more nuanced picture of L’Estrange’s effortsand what was at stake in his writings. It is not, however, primarily a biographical workon L’Estrange. Instead, L’Estrange becomes an ‘anchor’ (or recurring presence) in a widerdiscussion of authority and credibility during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis.

The intricacies of the allegations and counter-allegations during the Popish Plot causeparticular problems for scholars writing about the publications of this period: how muchdo modern readers need to know about the various, complex contexts that inform apiece? Hinds provides readers with a useful timeline (Appendix 1) and explanatorycontexts but, as he intimates in his introduction, this is not really a book for those whoare wholly new to the convolutions of the Popish Plot (p. 13). I suspect that readersunfamiliar with other investigations into this period (such as John Kenyon’s The PopishPlot and Mark Knights’s Politics and Opinion in Crisis) may well struggle to relate thethemes and events Hinds discusses to one another, particularly in the first half of thebook where chronology is not a main organising principle. The first five chapters aredesigned to address key concepts in political discourse and the ways information wasdisseminated.There are, for example, chapters on the portrayal of ‘Jesuits and Protestant-ism’ and on ‘Publishing the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis’. In the second half of thebook chapters are based around the representations of individual figures or events(Edward Coleman, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the duke of York) in a way that is bothbroadly chronological and allows for the development of themes across chapters. Inparticular, L’Estrange’s keen interest in the ways historical precedents and parallels weredeployed in political discourse leads to fruitful and interesting examinations of the use ofhistory in parliamentary debate, pamphlets, and poetry.

Throughout the book, insights from recent work on early modern book history areapplied to assess the ways publishers and authors created authority. Hinds attends closelyto the format, typography and illustration of works, offering discussions of (amongstothers) L’Estrange’s journalism, Filmer’s Patriarcha and Dryden’s poetry. Indeed, one of

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the strengths of this study is that Hinds not only knows his material very well, but canbring a wide range of evidence to bear on the topic at hand: sermons, plays, letters, trialreportage and controversial inscriptions on the monument to the Great Fire are justsome of the sources used. Perhaps because of the range of material in each chapter, thechapters’ conclusions do not always do justice to the insights they contain, since thefocus is often more on setting up the next stage of the discussion than on summarizingthe most salient points of what has gone before.

Questions of rhetoric, credibility, and authority have animated much recent researchinto late-17th-century politics. Hinds’s The Horrid Popish Plot is a welcome addition tothis body of work, offering thought-provoking material for those investigating theperiod’s literature and politics.

KATE LOVEMANUniversity of Leicester

The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950. Edited by Matthew Cragoe and PaulReadman. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. xiv, 281 pp. £55.00. ISBN9780230203402.

All 19th-century British politicians took a position on the land question, but theirattitudes varied widely. As the editors of this volume note: ‘The land question wasmultifaceted and multivalent’ (p. 15); and aspects of it remained contested well into the20th century. In spite of their origins as conference papers, this collection of 13 essaysplus the editors’ introduction offers a fairly comprehensive treatment of a many-stranded debate. However, the first and second essays, although not without interest, fitless well into the volume as a whole. Drawing on a small sample of artists and writers,Ian Waites traces the nostalgia felt in the early 19th century for the landscape ofcommon fields at a time of systematic enclosure. Kathryn Beresford, researching thesame period, presents evidence, particularly from Kent, to demonstrate how theyeoman farmer was generally represented as the sturdy embodiment of a golden ageof English rural life.

The nine essays that follow are concerned with the core period of the land ques-tion, the 60 or 70 years before the First World War. It was then that opinion was mostdivided and demands for land reform pervaded the whole of the United Kingdom.The earlier part of the period is ably discussed by Malcolm Chase, who surveysChartist and other radical agitation for access to land and the dismantling of aristo-cratic power. Anthony Howe draws upon his unrivalled knowledge of RichardCobden to examine how middle-class radicals of the ‘Manchester School’ sought toincorporate into their political programme a critique, though phrased in terms moretemperate than those of working-class radicals, of the various privileges enjoyed by theowners of large tracts of land. This essay is complemented by Antony Taylor’s per-ceptive study of J.E. Thorold Rogers, a relation by marriage of Cobden and a ferventcritic of landlordism, whose activities helped to prepare the ground for HenryGeorge’s single-tax campaign in the 1880s. It is Paul Readman’s contention that inthe Edwardian period both Liberals and Conservatives brought patriotic elements to

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the politics of land, the former claiming that their reforms would regenerate nationallife, the latter stressing a need to save the country from the threat of confiscatorypolicies. By this time, most Britons were urban dwellers and the land hunger of theChartist era was a weaker force. This shift is dealt with in essays by Roland Quinault,who deals with the nature of land ownership in London, and Ian Packer, who drawson his work on Lloyd George to consider the urban aspects of the land question.Three other essays, dealing with Ireland, Scotland and Wales, are also concerned withthe period between about 1850 and 1914. As Philip Bull’s essay documents, strugglesinvolving the land were more protracted and threatening towards the propertied classesin Ireland than in the rest of the kingdom. It was possible to draw parallels withScotland, although there, as Ewen A. Cameron maintains, circumstances were morevaried, while in Wales, which is covered by Matthew Cragoe, the vigour of nationalistswas insufficient to produce a sustained agitation.

In the years after 1918 it was widely maintained that landed estates were being soldon an unprecedented scale. John Beckett and Michael Turner assemble sufficient sta-tistical evidence to conclude that the post-war assertion ‘England is changing hands’was a myth. There had always been an active land market, and Beckett and Turnershow that substantial sales took place before 1914, in part as tenants began to buytheir farms from larger landlords, a trend that became more pronounced after the war.In another carefully-researched essay, Clare Griffiths deals with why the Labour Partyappeared to favour the state ownership of land while failing to devise the means ofbringing it about. For most left-wingers, she concludes, nationalisation ‘remained morean ethical than an economic question’ (p. 252). Finally, F.M.L. Thompson, who beganto publish on aspects of landownership in Britain in the 1950s, provides a fittingepilogue to the book in which he offers his thoughts on how ‘the great land questionsimply fizzled out’ (p. 257).

The editors, in their introduction, modestly note that this collection is offered ‘in thehope of beginning to fill [a] lacuna’ (p. 2).They, and their contributors, have gone beyondthat, although inevitably some aspects have not found a place.For example, in spite of a fewreferences in Antony Taylor’s essay, the successors of the populist anti-landlordism identi-fied by Malcolm Chase are mostly neglected.The socialists of the later 19th century whocalled for land nationalisation were numerically weak, but their demands did expose thedilemma of liberal radicalism – how to bring change without undermining political andsocial stability.Conservatives simply defended the rights of all property,while acknowledg-ing the special nature of land. In the context of the period, their arguments carried someweight, although none of the essays has much to say about the case made by supporters ofthe landed interest. Yet, ensconced on their estates, aware that often their families hadexerted authority and enjoyed status for generations, their constitutional and social rolespraised by politicians such as Palmerston and Disraeli, but prepared to make the minorconcessions to democratic opinion such as Bagehot and others had recommended, thelanded classes were not easily shifted. Indeed, some of their descendants still occupy todaythe same stately homes, harassed perhaps by repairs and death duties, but not by landreformers.

DAVID MARTINUniversity of Sheffield

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Going toWar: British Debates fromWilberforce to Blair. By Philip Towle. Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. ix, 227 pp. £45.00. ISBN 9780230573345.

The 200 years since the French revolution have seen Britain grow to imperial power anddecline to a secondary role in world affairs. But whilst the state’s military power hasfaded, its military activity has not waned in harmony; its reach has not contracted withits grasp. One feature of this military persistence has been a continuous and continuouslyvigorous debate about the purposes, justifications, techniques and technologies of war.Philip Towle discusses this history in 11 short chapters, each considering an aspect ofthe intellectual engagement with military rise and decline. His underlying theme is ademocratic progression towards greater openness, greater accountability and greaterrecognition of the deaths and sufferings of all conditions of people which war entails, andthe consequences, or lack of them, of this growing openness for the conduct ofgovernments.

Towle describes a sustained British belligerence, an involvement in wars throughoutthe last 200 years, and the ways in which this has been viewed, plus an account of thegrowing claims of the ordinary citizen and of interested groups to be involved indecisions about war. The wider public information and public discussion became, themore acute it became, increasingly challenging, and often surpassing, the quality ofthinking within governmental and military hierarchies. At the same time the visibility ofordinary combatants emerged from the shadows of an hierarchical society.

Each of the chapters discusses an aspect of this historical progression, circling round,and slowly adding to, the general theme.After an introductory setting of scenes, a chapteron the established church discusses a progression away from moral and spiritualmonopoly but towards greater critical distance from the state, a slow stepping backfrom acting as trumpets, or lyres, over the throne towards critical commentary on thejustification and consequences of particular conflicts. A chapter on civil society movesfrom anti-slavery campaigns to feminism and nuclear protest, and to a steady replacementof military imperialism by a web of non-governmental organisations working around theworld. A chapter on the media charts the progression from heroic and distant accountsof war to a growing familiarity, through television and the Internet, with the human andmaterial destruction and desolation to military and civilian populations alike.Towle thendescribes the arrival of journalists next to, though not at, the sites of battles, and the slowmove from heroic prose describing actions reported but not seen, to the presentationby television of the nature of warfare in conflicts from Vietnam onwards. This chapterdescribes a parallel shift from talking about the heroism of soldiers to discussing militarytechnology and the deadly impact of war on civilian populations. A consideration in thenext chapter of war in literature is, perhaps, unavoidably selective, briefly discussing someof the usual suspects: Tennyson, Ruskin, Wells, Orwell, Shute. Armchair strategists, thenext subject, are to begin with a self-appointed or retrospectively-categorised commu-nity until some of them congeal into university departments of war and internationalstudies, and institutes of defence or international affairs. A chapter on the militarydiscusses the changing participation of senior commanders in what, to begin with, werestrategic decisions taken largely without any reference to their advice or warnings. Achapter on parliament narrates a steady shift of public attention and political presentationout of the Commons and directly to the electorate or its component section through

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press, radio, and television. A useful chapter on public opinion dissects the shifting andvariegated character of what is not a single phenomenon but a mass of interactingstrands. Towle presents both the complexity and the frequent reasonableness of publicopinion in an account whose subject mirrors the character of the book which describesit since public opinion, like the book, is full of common sense but proceeds by aphorismas much as by argument. Towle concludes with two chapters, one a discussion of theinvasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the other a consideration of the relevance of opinion,argument and information to what governments actually do.

The author deals with a very wide range of information.Whilst he is able to presenta rich array of swift judgments, he does not either sustain them with further argumentor evidence, or consider at any length the explanations for the events or phenomenonabout which they are made. Opinions are both qualified and left to stand without furtherelaboration, either in terms of particular evidence about the instance described, or itslocation in a wider comparative or historical context. The chapters are, thus, a series ofsketches, any one of which could be the foundation for a book, and the whole work thushas something of the air of an elegant and widely-informed preliminary prospectus.Thisimpression is sustained by a scholarly support of 50 pages of notes, biographical sum-maries, chronology and bibliography for 165 pages of text.The discursive, conversationalstyle sometimes frees the author from the discipline of his stated theme.The chapter onarmchair strategists in particular becomes a consideration of thinkers across Europe andin North America, losing sight of the prospectus of ‘British debates’. This is an eleganttext with interpretations and explanations which, while they are only lightly substanti-ated or pursued, will provoke and encourage research and enquiry by others.

RODNEY BARKERLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Political Movements in Urban England, 1832–1914. By Matthew Roberts. London:Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. vii, 231 pp. Paperback £19.99. ISBN 9781403949127.

The last broad overviews and syntheses of British popular politics were produced in themid to late 1990s. The current market leaders in the field established themselves then,and remain the standard student texts. John Belchem’s Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1996) and Rohan McWilliam’s Popular Politics in Nineteenth-CenturyEngland (1998) were informed by the debates about postmodernism in the early part ofthe decade, and reflect a more sceptical reading of the notion of class than was standardat the time. Hanging over this period was the debate about ‘continuity’ betweenChartism and other manifestations of popular politics, amongst them, liberalism. Twelveyears on, and many of the arguments that characterised the period have lost theirpotency or hardened into orthodoxy. ‘Continuity’ arguments are still apparent, but arenow built into many of the debates around the mid-19th-century quiescence of popularradicalism, the rise of the Liberal Party and its supplanting by Labour in the years beforeand after the Great War, and the legacy of 19th-century reform movements for bothlabourism and liberalism. Arguments about the material basis of radicalism have faded

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altogether. Discussions of a ‘labour aristocracy’ that feature in John Belchem’s book havegenerally disappeared from view, and trade unionism, in particular, attracts far lessscrutiny than it once did. Matthew Roberts’s fascinating short volume is, thus, a timelyaddition to the field. More than a decade after the dust settled on many of the bigdebates generated by postmodernist historians like Patrick Joyce and James Vernon,Roberts takes stock of the remodelled landscape of popular politics that emerged fromthese confrontations. His book surveys this terrain with a cool, detached eye, and presentsthe fullest assessment to date of the current position of scholarship on this mostcontentious of subject areas. Here a truce is finally declared between a postmodernistemphasis on the platform language of political dissent, and more grounded studies ofradicalism in its local context. Drawing together the major themes of radical history,Roberts considers definitions of the radical platform, surveys the recent state of Chartistscholarship, and the movement’s implications for mid-century reformism, whilst con-cluding with an analysis of the evolution of the Gladstonian Liberal Party, and the crisisof liberalism on the eve of the Great War. This is an even-handed volume that incor-porates arguments about popular toryism into radical politics, and considers the inter-sections and overlaps between plebeian liberalism and grass-roots conservatism. Theauthor’s approach fills the gaps left by Belchem and McWilliam. It combines thestrengths of these previous two volumes, merging the thematic approach taken byMcWilliam with the more factual and narrative format of Belchem. Moreover, it bridgesthe gap between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, moving nimbly between the worlds ofparliament and the street-level pubs and debating societies of London’s radical commu-nity. Here Roberts is able to thread movements like Paineite republicanism back into thecultural context of radicalism as part of a continuing hostility to ‘old corruption’.This isa confident book by a younger scholar. It is well attuned to the rhetorical inflections ofthe popular platform, whilst displaying an excellent understanding of the ‘associational’culture of radicalism and a thorough grasp of the electioneering tactics employed by19th-century reformers. Above all, it demonstrates that radicalism was a spectrum. Byturns, contradictory, brash, timid, high, low, irreverent and conformist, popular radicalismhad many manifestations. Roberts reveals that radicals from Chartism onwards, tomisquote Harold Wilson on the Labour Party,‘always needed two wings to fly’.Alongsidethe serious and bookish artisanal culture of William Lovett and Francis Place, radicalismwas also dependant on the subterranean and subversive cultures of backstreet print shops,tavern debating societies, and open-air meetings and assemblies. At its fringes radicalismoverlapped with the popular culture of pornography and irreverent urban ballad culture.Many of the late-19th-century accommodations or rejections of liberalism by formerChartists were determined by the Liberal Party’s responses to the body language ofradicalism. Fracture lines between liberalism and radicalism were often apparent here,something that Roberts concedes, whilst acknowledging the vigour and longevity ofthe Liberal Party’s local political culture, even into the era of its supposed decline. Yettensions remained, colouring the relationship between radicals and Liberals. He com-ments of the 1870s: ‘There remained a powerful radical current of suspicion, and evenoutright opposition, to dictatorial Liberal elites’ (p. 92). A further strength of this bookis the emphasis Roberts places on gender issues. Roberts brings gender into the heart ofthe debate. For him the numerous female suffragist campaigns from the 1850s onwardswere attempts to ‘feminize public politics by curbing what they regarded as the violent

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and unthinking aspects of the male polity, such as existed in the visceral traditions ofstreet politics’ (p. 180). If there is one absence here, it is empire. Recent years have seenan explosion of interest in the topic, and most 19th-century historians are now attunedto its significance. Radicals also displayed a fascination with the subject. From theQuebec rebels in 1837 through to the pro-Boer movement of 1899–1902, a strongsympathy for the victims of empire in the British colonies of settlement manifested itselfwithin movements for radical reform. More exploration of this subject might have shedlight on the notion of a radicalism that is sometimes characterised as insular, but hereshowed a strong engagement with the context of empire. Matthew Roberts’s PoliticalMovements in Urban England, 1832–1914 is a welcome addition to the literature onpopular politics in Britain. Stylishly written, and clearly set out for student readers, thisis an important teaching aid that is likely to establish itself as a standard text for sometime to come.

ANTONY TAYLORSheffield Hallam University

The Personal Observations of a Man of Intelligence: Notes of a Tour in North Americain 1861. By Sir James Fergusson. Edited by Ben Wynne. Lambertville, NewJersey: The True Bill Press. 2009. 176 pp. $45.00. ISBN 9780979111631.

This is a reprint of Sir James Fergusson’s published observations made during a three-month trip he took in the United States and Canada in 1861, edited with annotationsand an introduction by Ben Wynne. Fergusson, a tory MP, and son of the earl of Mayo,visited North America during the first year of the American civil war to both evaluateCanada’s military readiness in the event of an American invasion and to forecast theeventual outcome of the conflict raging south of the Canadian border. This work, ofremarkable brevity by 19th-century standards, contains Fergusson’s views on both ofthese issues and others as well.

The American conflict – being the leading international event until eclipsed by thePolish rebellion in 1863–5 and the Prussian-Danish War in 1864 – certainly attractedvisiting observers from abroad, especially from both Britain and Europe. Although theoverwhelming majority of these visitors restricted their travels (if not their observations)to the northern states, according to E. Merton Coulter, there were some two dozenpublished accounts by foreign visitors on the Confederacy as well.

Fergusson’s account, which is that of an intelligent – if acerbic – traveller, is at thesame time both useful and of limited utility. It remains interesting in terms of what theauthor saw in Canada and both the northern and southern states and whom he met,such as the northern and southern generals, John Fremont and Pierre Beauregardrespectively, as well as the Union’s secretary of state, William Seward. This account’slimitation lies in the fact that because Fergusson visited North America very early in theconflict, his work, naturally enough, took no account of important later developments,such as the Trent affair and the emancipation proclamation, which did much to shapeBritish views of the war.

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As with Fergusson’s account, both usefulness and limited utility best describe Wynne’sintroduction and notes. In terms of usefulness, Wynne provides a good brief biographyof Fergusson, and reproduces the report the MP sent upon his return to the primeminister, Lord Palmerston (to which Palmerston did not reply). Wynne also usefullysummarizes the latest academic works on the subject of Anglo-American relations duringthe civil war (including this reviewer’s own) and provides a reasonably comprehensive listof the various factors and influences in play.This, unfortunately, is where the limitationsbecome apparent, because in his notes and introduction, Wynne repeats discreditedarguments, subordinates British history to American national mythology and makes anumber of errors.

In terms of discredited arguments,Wynne repeats the myth that British views on theAmerican war were largely determined by class and political persuasion with Conser-vatives and aristocrats supporting the Confederacy and radicals and the working classsupporting the Union. Thus, Fergusson’s pro-southern views are described as typical ofaristocrats and tories, while a quote from John Bright praising the United States is usedto represent the views of British radicalism. Unfortunately, as D.P. Crook pointed out 45years ago in his seminal American Democracy in English Politics, 1815–50 (1965), Bright’sextreme pro-American sentiment made him an anomaly among British radicals, most ofwhose views of the United States were far more ambiguous – a finding that has beenconsistently upheld by subsequent scholarship. Similarly any examination of the views ofthe British aristocracy and members of parliament demonstrates that Fergusson’s supportfor British intervention in the war on the side of the south placed him in a distinctand extreme minority. Nor was this minority opinion a particularly tory or aristocraticone – the decidedly plebeian and vocally-radical MP, John Arthur Roebuck, held thesame view.

While American national mythology asserts that the United States was ‘a nationconceived in liberty’ (to quote Abraham Lincoln) whose republican democracy was thesource of envy or apprehension abroad, there is very little evidence demonstrating thatany significant number of Britons, whatever their class or political persuasion, ever sawAmerica in this way at all. Instead, the British had their own national viewpoint, one thatmade them the home of liberty and progress, their liberal state enjoying a marked worldlead in industrialisation and urbanisation, underpinned by the most advanced economyon the globe (the American economy being less than half the size of Britain’s in 1860).As regards the United States, few in Britain believed that they had much to learn froma largely agrarian, at best regional, power which had both defaulted on its debts in 1837and maintained slavery as an institution.

British distrust of the United States was based not on what America allegedly stoodfor, but what it actually did. Seen from a 19th-century British perspective, for allAmerica’s claims to be a land of liberty, the United States had consistently been on thewrong side in the struggle for freedom whether in respect of their de facto alliance withNapoleon Bonaparte in the war of 1812, their repeated diplomatic efforts to thwartBritish attempts to abolish the international slave trade and most recently (by 1860), theirwidespread sympathy and support for the Russian tsar in the Crimean War. Contem-porary British readers would have been reminded of all of this by Fergusson’s allusion tohow Great Britain ‘kept alive the liberties of Europe, that otherwise had been crushedout by the iron heel of military despotism’ (p. 105).

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Indeed, unless one reads this work in an extremely imaginative manner, it is difficultto see any evidence in the text supporting Wynne’s claims that Fergusson viewedsouthern planters as fellow aristocrats or disliked the United States on the basis of itspolitical structure which, in any case, was a frankly herrenvolk democracy (the intensity ofAmerican racism surprised even the, far from egalitarian,Victorians).

With regard to mistakes, the Free Kirk is not an informal name for the Church ofScotland – like the Confederates, the Free Kirk members were secessionists – and thelatter, meanwhile, is not ‘a branch of the Anglican communion’ (p. 47). Similarly, asregards to his claim that Benjamin Disraeli favoured catholic emancipation, that issue wasdecided in 1829 – eight years before Disraeli first became an MP (p. 63). No one whohas actually read Palmerston’s correspondence, in the mean time, would seriously claimthat the prime minister was a Confederate sympathiser, as is repeatedly stated here.Finally, The Times reporter, William Howard Russell, did not misrepresent the Union’sdefeat at Bull Run (p. 18). On this subject Wynne should perhaps consult MartinCrawford’s The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century,TheTimes and America,1850–1862 (1987).

DUNCAN ANDREW CAMPBELLUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County

Benjamin Disraeli Letters. Volume viii: 1860–1864. Edited by M.G. Wiebe withMary S. Millar and Ann P. Robson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2009.lxiv, 477 pp. £125.00. ISBN 9780802099495.

This is the eighth volume of a massive Canadian project that has been under way fornearly 30 years and is still far from complete. Professor Wiebe and his colleagues deservegreat credit for their diligence in tracing letters from Disraeli in many scattered collec-tions. In the present volume there are full transcriptions of 556 letters from the five-yearperiod 1860–4 (more than 400 previously unpublished), together with a list of another323 letters for which there is some evidence but which have not yet been located, andan appendix containing 37 recently discovered letters from earlier periods.

The scholarly apparatus cannot be faulted, with comprehensive footnotes on the pagebeneath each letter, and an excellent index that enables the reader to trace references inthe letters to people who do not appear as addressees.There is also a concise introductionwhich provides a masterly summary of the political background. This was a frustratingtime for Disraeli who spent the whole period, up to his 60th birthday, leading asometimes disgruntled opposition against the seemingly indestructible Palmerston. Manyof the old man’s policies were popular with Conservative supporters and Disraeli wasreluctant to replace him with another short-lived Derby administration.

What of the letters themselves? Disraeli was not, by Victorian standards, a prolificcorrespondent: on average he wrote only two or three letters a week, many being shortnotes occupying only part of a printed page. With two exceptions, the 176 addresseeseach received only a handful of letters over the five years. Disappointingly, there are noletters to major writers (Disraeli wrote no novels during this period) and few references

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to literary topics.The only two examples of extended correspondence are the 40 lettersto Disraeli’s political leader, Lord Derby, and 123 to Mrs Sarah Brydges Willyams,an elderly Welsh widow whom Disraeli cultivated in the expectation (happily fulfilledwhen she died in November 1863) of inheriting her large estate. She was regaled withentertaining snippets about public affairs, but quoting these can give a misleadingimpression of the overall quality of this correspondence. It contains a good deal ofrubbish, with mutual gifts of game and fish, and accounts of Disraeli’s protracted effortsto secure for Mrs Brydges Willyams a coat of arms, incorporating spurious Jewishancestry, from the college of heralds. Disraeli’s correspondence with Derby shows a verydifferent personality, being devoted to shrewd assessments of the parliamentary situation,sometimes reinforced by inside information about cabinet meetings and other confiden-tial government exchanges.

In writing to Mrs Brydges Willyams, Disraeli felt free to romanticise his account ofcurrent affairs, particularly events in world history about which he often wrongly forecastthe outcome. Napoleon III was ‘in a scrape, but he is so clever that his scrapes arepreferable to other persons’ success’.As for the American civil war, no one could foreseethe results, but they must ‘tell immensely in favour of aristocracy’. It was wrong toconsider the age in which they were privileged to live as ‘utilitarian’: on the contrary itwas ‘one of infinite Romance. Thrones tumble down & crowns are offered, like a fairytale.’ The reference here was to the possibility that the Greek throne would be offeredto Derby’s heir, Lord Stanley. This was ‘a dazzling adventure . . . but they are not animaginative race & I fancy they will prefer Knowsley to the Parthenon. . . . Had I hisyouth, I would not hesitate.’

Even the more mundane parliamentary events were dramatised by a regular use ofmilitary metaphor. In June 1862: ‘I did what I could to cover the retreat & mitigate thehumiliation of my troops . . . I had no wish whatever to disturb Ld Palmerston, but youcannot keep a large army in order without letting them, sometimes, smell gunpowder.’Two months earlier there had been a ‘great financial duel’ between Disraeli and Glad-stone, the exposure of whose misdeeds had startled MPs ‘as if Baring or Rothschilds hadfailed . . . I trust the tottering government will still totter on’. An interesting aspect ofthe protracted struggle for supremacy with Gladstone was Disraeli’s adoption of a highanglican position in church affairs. Despite occasional flippancy (the publication of‘Essays and Reviews’ seemed to have ‘shaken down the spire of Chichester cathedral’) hewas genuinely concerned about the erosion of orthodox religious belief. If the churchwere to fall philosophy would not profit: we should only be handed over to a narrow-minded and ignorant fanaticism.There are several letters to Samuel Wilberforce, the highchurch bishop of Oxford, to whom Disraeli recalled the efforts he had made in 1858 topersuade the Peelite Gladstone to join the Derby government: ‘I almost went on myknees to him. Had he done so the Church . . . would have been in a very differentposition.’ Gladstone had adopted increasingly tolerant views about the rights of thechurch, seeing this as the best way to preserve them, but Disraeli opposed everyconcession. In June 1861 he described as a ‘strange and wonderful triumph’ the exerciseby the Speaker of his casting vote against a bill modifying church rates; while in April1863 he rejoiced over the rejection of a bill providing for the burial of nonconformistsin anglican graveyards. On this occasion, ‘Gladstone, to the astonishment of his friends,deserted the church & I replied to him.’

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One of the most important developments for Disraeli during these years was theestablishment of closer relations with the queen. In April 1863 his support for theproposed Albert Memorial gratified the grieving widow, who sent him a copy of herhusband’s collected speeches. Disraeli replied in terms that were fulsome even by hisstandards:

The Prince is the only person, whom Mr Disraeli has known, who realized theIdeal . . . There was in him a union of the manly grace & sublime simplicity ofchivalry with the intellectual splendor [sic.] of the Attic Academe.The only characterin English history that would . . . draw near to him, is Sir Philip Sidney.

The cultivation of this widow was to prove even more rewarding than that of MrsBrydges Willyams.

PATRICK JACKSON

Reformers, Patrons and Philanthropists: The Cowper-Temples and High Politics inVictorian Britain. By James Gregory. London: I.B. Tauris. 2010. xiv, 350 pp.£59.50. ISBN 9781848851115.

We are not without admirable accounts of philanthropic Victorians, but the bookreviewed here is the first to make a thorough examination of a truly remarkable venturein benevolence. It is also important because of its wide influence in America and Europe,as well as in the United Kingdom and because of the unusually varied nature of itsprojects. A list of charities from the 1880s will illustrate the point. Heading the list wasthe Band of Mercy, an organisation that was formed to teach children kindness andsympathy for others by way of their own feelings for their pets.This was followed by theVegetarian Society, a bible society, a psychical society, a women’s hospital, the DublinCats’ Home,Torquay Animals, the Ladies’ Sanitary Association, and charities for cabmenand governesses.

The list above is of one of the two philanthropists involved. Born GeorginaTollemache of an old and wealthy gentry family closely connected to the nobility, shewas not herself of it, which is not to say that she did not have a safe place in society.Her list is revealing. She clearly liked practical projects and especially those whichspoke to suffering of any sort, human or animal. She showed that clearly towards theend of her life. When Oscar Wilde was sent to prison, Georgina took his wife intoher own home to shield her from the virulent anti-Wilde reaction. She was a devoutchristian, but never quite sure of her own salvation. This was part of the reason forher interest in a psychical society, the aim of which was to probe beyond natural orknown psychical processes. Their primary and most popular endeavour was to gain theability to talk to the dead, perhaps even to Christ himself. Very many people in19th-century Europe, America, the British Isles and beyond, believed they were suc-cessful. Among these were Georgina and her husband, and it was fellow spiritualistswho spread their reputations abroad.

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Georgina married William Cowper in 1848. His was a noble family. The Cowperearldom went back to the beginning of the 18th century. His mother’s brother was aprime minister, Melbourne, and she married another, Palmerston, as her secondhusband. Melbourne enjoyed six consecutive years in office beginning in 1835. Palm-erston had, with a couple of brief periods out of office, ten years, from 1855 to 1865.In those days there was no compunction to sharing the fruits of office with one’sown family. William profited greatly. Already a member of parliament and privatesecretary to his uncle since the beginning of Melbourne’s second ministry in 1835, in1837 he became groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. There was little groominginvolved and it simply meant that he was one of the queen’s household, someone toaid and amuse her. He held the office until 1841 when the whigs lost an election.However, four years in close proximity to the throne did William no harm.

Yet, product of nepotism though he might be, William proved to be a conscientiousand hard-working public servant. This was largely because his work was in areas closeto his heart and to his wife’s, indeed already objects of their own charitable efforts.William became president of the board of health and privy councillor in 1855. Assuch he was in charge of dealing with the dangerous epidemics that still existed, andthe myriad sources of filth that fed them. In 1857 he became vice-president of thecommittee of the council on education, which was responsible for regulating anddispensing government grants to aid a variety of denominational schools. William’stwo-year tenure was an admirable one in terms of sound administration and encour-aging high standards and better support for older students. But William’s finest hourcame later. In 1870, the then prime minister, Gladstone, decided that the time hadcome to bring education under the control of government. He would have preferredto bring in only those in the existing denominational society system. There was,however, a growing number of cities and towns that were setting up their own schoolsand school boards. Gladstone, who was a high anglican, was suspicious of such effortsand those who made them. He feared the weakening of traditional dogma and prac-tice. William wished to include as many children as possible, moving an amendmentwhich abandoned denominational instruction and asked only for recognition of theLord’s prayer or a modernised creed and the Bible. A couple of years later heintroduced a bill to allow a bishop to license laymen, including non-anglicans,to preach in churches. Both actions indicate the way his mind was moving. For allhis adult life he worked hard to bring about one faith in which all christianscould live in harmony. And he had a remarkable tolerance for other faiths. Mostchristians at the time did not accept unitarians as christians. William worked closelywith them.

William and Georgina, or Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, as they became later in life,were a most extraordinary couple, powerful influences for good. William’s charitiestended to be big and ambitious and meant to affect large numbers of people. Georginawas more guided by her own tender heart, and suffering she could not bear. But thecharity of both was on every level, from worthy young men and women they metwho needed assistance to get a university education, to Georgina’s helping FlorenceNightingale to launch the ‘Ladies’ Association for the Relief of the Sick and Woundedof All Nations engaged in the Present War’ (the Austro-Prussian war).Theirs was a labourof love.

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They have been fortunate in their biographer. James Gregory has achieved a monu-ment of scholarship and exposition. Beyond extensive family papers he has examined17 or so large archives on both sides of the Atlantic to inform himself of friends andcolleagues of the couple. One thing that is immediately striking in dipping into thebook is the apparently numberless people who knew them. If it could be said ofanyone, they appear to have known everyone worth knowing, and more. To keep theirfriends straight is not easy, but Gregory achieves it for us. He is rightly sympatheticwith his subjects, but equally aware of their foibles. His book can be read with greatpleasure and profit.

RICHARD W. DAVISWashington University in St Louis

British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress? By Casper Sylvest.Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2009. xi, 276 pp. £60.00. ISBN9780719079092.

This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of British liberalthought regarding international affairs during the decades spanning the First WorldWar. As the author shows, the era saw some important intellectual shifts regardingthe question of how relations between states should be governed. He makes a veryuseful distinction between moral internationalism, which optimistically assumes ‘thatinternationalist goals will be reached with a minimum of institutional interferenceor constraint’, and institutional internationalism, which takes the more pessimistic(but not despairing) view that human progress needs to be assisted ‘for examplethrough the creation of sanctions or other forms of supra-national political or legalauthority’ (p. 10). The general tendency over the period (and beyond) was a movefrom the former towards the latter. The impact of war was, of course, crucial: after1914 it became very difficult to sustain the argument that human society wouldcontinue to develop in a positive direction simply of its own accord. Nevertheless,even before that point there was an increasing number of initiatives, deriving from anumber of countries, which pointed in the institutionalist direction. For instance,although the International Labour Organization (ILO) was not founded until 1919, itsorigins lay in the International Association for Labour Legislation established at theturn of the century.

The consequences of the shift to institutionalism were profound. For example, as FrankTrentmann showed in his book Free Trade Nation (2008), the Edwardian Liberal Party wasprofoundly sceptical of any arrangements (such as the Brussels Sugar Convention) forintergovernmental regulation of trade matters, even when aimed at stamping out anti-competitive practices. Rather, nations should practice free trade unilaterally out of enlight-ened self-interest; if they did not, more fool them, and that was the end of the matter. By1945, though, there was a broad western consensus in favour of establishing some kind ofinternational trade organisation, which reached fruition in the General Agreement on

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Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Today’sinternational institutions are recognized in many quarters as imperfect, but few – outsidefringe right-wing circles in the United States – would actually wish to abolish them.Sylvest’s book helps us rethink their deep history, with a view to recognizing some of thetensions inherent in institutionalist thought. He notes: ‘Even those who claimed to havelost faith in human rationality vested their hopes in rationally devised institutions as a wayof solving political problems’ (p. 199).

The book, which is based mainly on published sources, sits at the nexus of intellec-tual history and political science/international relations (IR). Sylvest shows his irritationat the weaknesses of much of the existing literature in the latter field, which in his viewshows a lack of understanding of the origins of the IR discipline itself, with its pre-1918 heritage being ignored. He, therefore, aims to ‘sketch the ideological resourcesavailable to liberal internationalists in the twentieth century’ (p. 198) and to show how‘intellectuals of the Edwardian and inter-war years owed debts to academic scribblers ofthe Victorian era’ (p. 210). He observes, with much insight, that ‘the Great War was aforce for change, but it was equally the prism through which pre-war conceptions ofinternational law were revised and updated, leaving many assumptions and objectivesintact’ (p. 206).

Chapter 1 forms the introduction, and Chapter 2 provides an overview of Victorianliberal thinking and a definition of ‘liberal internationalism’.That concept is described asbeing based on the expectation of a broad human movement towards moral and materialprogress that would, in due course, lead to international harmony. It was a gradualistideology that did not ignore nation states but anticipated that they would becomeincreasingly interdependent. Chapter 3 focuses on international law. It assumes a familiar-ity with concepts such as ‘legal positivism’ – the doctrine that law derives from the powerof authority rather than from an underlying moral basis – and may, therefore, be hard goingfor the uninitiated. It is, however, interesting on the interplay between ideas aboutevolution and international law, and develops the argument that international legal theorywas ill-equipped to explain the deterioration of international relations in the run-up to theGreatWar. Chapter 4 explores the input of two key figures in philosophy, Henry Sidgwickand Herbert Spencer. The treatment of Spencer – notorious as a prophet of socialDarwinism – is a particularly valuable re-evaluation. Spencer, Sylvest points out, consis-tently championed the humanitarian cause in international conflicts during his lifetime,and saw conflict between societies – rather than individuals – as the chief motor ofhistorical progress. Chapter 5 examines the thinking of three liberal historians, JamesBryce, John Morley and Lord Acton, and suggests that they used their work in differingways to keep liberal internationalism alive. Chapter 6 examines the aspects of Victorianthinking that lived on into the 20th century, and suggests that there was a ‘fundamentalcontinuity in internationalist ideology’ (p. 225). In the postscript, Sylvest demonstrates hisadmiration for the richness of the liberal thinking of the period, but also indicates itslimitations. Internationalists, he writes,‘often enlisted the authority of science, impartialityand a universalist ethics in their quest for progress, order and justice, while in reality theyended up promoting and defending the values of the British liberal intellectual elite’(p. 240).

The book is necessarily selective in its treatment. Although it is not a compre-hensive account of all aspects of liberal internationalist thought, the illustrative examples

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generally serve their purpose well. Much of the subject matter is rather dry, but the proseis clear and is leavened by occasional shafts of humour. It is an intelligent and thoughtfulwork which will repay careful reading.

RICHARD TOYEUniversity of Exeter

Neville Chamberlain. By Nick Smart. (Routledge Historical Biographies.)London/New York: Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group). 2010. xiv, 306 pp.Hardback £55.00; paperback £14.00. ISBN 9780415367974; 9780415458658.

Recent years have seen a spate of works on Neville Chamberlain, including theadmirable biography and four-volume collection of the Chamberlain diary-letters byRobert Self and David Dutton’s reputational study. Now, 60 years after Chamberlain’sdeath, Dr Smart has produced an efficient, fast-paced study as the latest contributionto the Routledge Historical Biographies series. Smart continues to peel away thelayers and reveal the peculiarity of Chamberlain’s character and the paradox of Cham-berlain’s political career.

Chamberlain remains an enigmatic figure, principally because his career was begunand ended by failure. His first venture, assigned by his father, Joseph Chamberlain, wasto run a sisal operation in the Bahamas in the 1890s, which resulted in financialfailure. His first national position as director of the national service department in1917, a position arranged by his half-brother, Austen Chamberlain, was equally unsuc-cessful. His inability to preserve peace in Europe in 1939 and his inability to prosecutethe war are well known.

Smart returns to the Chamberlain paradox: Chamberlain rose to the top of thegreasy pole of British politics by being a natural loner, considering only himself; hemade little effort to befriend political colleagues. A ‘cold fishy creature’, he displayedno generosity, empathy, or loyalty to others, including even his half-brother (p. 90). In1922, he cast aside any loyalty to Austen Chamberlain to become postmaster generalin Andrew Bonar Law’s government. He was as dismissive of his constituents andConservative Party workers as he was contemptuous of his political opponents. Hewas a ‘lifelong enemy of parliamentary Labour’ (p. 122). His self-certitude led him todismiss most luminaries: he considered John Maynard Keynes ‘a crank’ and ‘mentallyunbalanced’, and Randall Davidson, archbishop of Canterbury, an ‘interfering busybody’ (pp. 93, 133, 159). He despised Canada’s R.B. Bennett and resented Franklin D.Roosevelt. He had no real affection or respect for either Bonar Law or StanleyBaldwin, both of whom were responsible for his rapid rise from an unimpressivetenure at the national service department in 1917 to Downing Street in 1937. He wasas convinced of Baldwin’s inadequacy as he was certain of his own abilities. Hedismissed Winston Churchill as early as 1915 and by the late 1920s considered him‘reckless’ (p. 136). He detested David Lloyd George with every fibre of his being andwas frightened by the prospect of Lloyd George’s resurgence. Chamberlain was also

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incapable of establishing any relationship with the three monarchs of the inter-warperiod.

He focused on himself, collected grievances and grudges and exaggerated his ownpolitical importance. Actually, ‘nothing pleased Neville Chamberlain more than praise’(p. 228). He lacked an understanding of history, whether past or developing; he wasblind to his own responsibility for certain conditions; and, more significantly, he didnot appear to respect popular democracy.

He rose almost inexplicably from postmaster general to paymaster general, ministerof health, and chancellor of the exchequer. It has become biographical orthodoxy thatas minister of health he made important contributions to housing, poor law reform,pension and health insurance reform, support for children and other social initiatives.His programmes were often austere, overly bureaucratic, and lacked any considerationto stakeholders, particularly local governments. His administrative competence devel-oped without any intellectual curiosity or thoughtful foundation; nor did it considerthe opinions of experts. Convinced of his own brilliance, he insulated himself fromthe influence or interference of others. As a result, his administrative competence,reforms and legislative initiatives could have been more than just mere improvementsif formulated from a larger universe. The early national government of the 1930s wasmarked by Chamberlain’s surreptitious machinations behind the political curtains as hecheckmated free trade Liberals and manœuvred around Macdonald and Baldwin. Onthe public stage, he presented his orthodox financial and administrative competence toan appreciative parliament and the country. He had begun to believe his own pro-paganda and mythology.

Chamberlain displayed skill and competence as he navigated between main-taining an effective economic recovery and establishing a credible rearmament and defencepolicy. Yet, his close association with Samuel Hoare over Italy and Abyssinia should haveserved to presage his future clumsiness and naïveté in foreign affairs. He blamed the ‘frostystate of Anglo-German relations’ on the lack of imagination and courage in the foreignoffice, a condition he sought unsuccessfully to correct (p. 227). Although Chamberlain’sfinancial policies did strengthen the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, it has generally beenforgotten in the wake of Munich; and while some contemporaries, partisans and evenhistorians have suggested Munich bought time for a defence build-up, it was not some-thing Chamberlain believed or intended at the time. He considered the Munich agree-ment as representing something more profound.

The biography does have a few distractions. Halifax is one of the few figuresjuxtaposed against Chamberlain, and which makes an uncomfortable stretch to haveHalifax put backbone into Chamberlain. Although Dr Smart has previously written onthe period, there could have been more use of recent scholarship relating to intrapartydynamics, Chamberlain and the imperial campaigns and the fall of Chamberlain inMay 1940. Also, it is Reginald McKenna and not William McKenna. However, to theextent that one can provide a succinct and coherent summary of Chamberlain’s char-acter, experience, successes and failures, Dr Smart presents an economical, accessibleand critical portrait.

LARRY L. WITHERELLMinnesota State University

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Parliamentary Reform at Westminster. By Alexandra Kelso. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press. 2009. x, 219 pp. £60.00. ISBN 9780719076756.

The decline of legislatures is one of the conventional wisdoms of the academic studyof politics, with the British legislature exemplifying the decline better than most. Parlia-mentary, as distinct from presidential, systems of government, by lacking the separation ofpowers, are intrinsically systems in which control over the executive by the legislature isprecluded by the requirement for party discipline so as to insulate the executive fromparliamentary defeat. In place of the separation of powers is a fusion of powers, withthe executive bolted onto the legislature so as to ensure that the parliament’s power tosanction the government by dismissal is effectively negated. The executive is insulatedfrom legislative contradiction by party control.

In the circumstances, the scope for any parliamentary reform which challengesexecutive dominance is highly restricted, but this book examines parliamentary reformin Britain in the 20th century by distinguishing between two sorts of reform: ‘effi-ciency’ reforms and ‘effective’ reforms. By the former are meant reforms which helpthe executive get its measures through the legislature more swiftly. For example,‘reforming’ the hours when the house of commons sits, to remove evening sittings inthe cause of introducing ‘family friendly’ hours, both removed back-bench opportu-nities for ambushing legislation late at night and involved a curtailing of MPs’speeches. ‘Efficiency’ reforms of this sort thus strengthen the executive, not the leg-islature. The other type of reform – ‘effective’ reforms – refers to reforms supposedlyenhancing the capacity of parliament to scrutinise government, the holding of gov-ernment to account. Thus, the creation of departmental select committees supposedlyincreased legislative power, but the governing parties refused to relinquish their whips’power of appointment to such committees. Furthermore, arguments in favour of theselect committee system by relying heavily on enhancing the quality of governmentrather than of parliament by making for ‘better’ legislation, implied that a reformdesigned to permit more independent scrutiny by the legislature, foundered on therock of party discipline. In reality the executive dictates the pace and nature of ‘par-liamentary reform’. Most reform in the last century originated in order to help gov-ernments, whether the Lords’ reform of 1911 and 1949, or the paying of selectcommittee chairman under the post-1997 Labour government, where an ‘alternativecareer structure’ to the ministerial one was required to accommodate the unusuallyinflated numbers of Labour MPs. The two major governing parties – accustomed tooccupying office in turn – have no interest in enhancing the power of parliament, asconfirmed by the Labour government’s removal of peers who were not merelyhereditary but Conservative. Calls for ‘reform’ from either major party come only, asin the case of Lord Hailsham’s accusation of ‘elective dictatorship’, when frustrated byspells in opposition.

The author does, however, note in her conclusion that electoral ‘reform’ could weakenthe centrality of party control of parliament on which the fusion of executive andlegislature depends, and the challenge to the big party duopoly has already been madein the use of more proportional voting systems in the creation of devolved sub-stateadministrations. The route to more serious parliamentary reform, as distinct from thatexamined in this thorough monograph – involving stronger parliaments and weaker

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governments – requires the erosion of the two-party dominance on which the Britishsystem of executive leadership has historically relied.

BYRON CRIDDLEUniversity of Aberdeen

National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 1927–1928. By John Maiden.(Studies in Modern British Religious History, 21.) Woodbridge: The BoydellPress. 2009. xii, 210 pp. £50.00. ISBN 9781843835219.

John Maiden’s book is the first extended, rigorous treatment of the controversy concern-ing the proposed revision of the Church of England’s prayer book, which was rejected bythe house of commons in two separate votes on 15 December 1927 and 14 June 1928.Revision had really begun with the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act 1872, 35 & 36Vict. c. 35, but it had stalled. Following the flare-up of ritualist debate at the turn of thecentury, A.J. Balfour’s Conservative government established a royal commission, whichreported in 1906, and in that same year the convocations of Canterbury and York begandiscussing the commission’s recommendations, which included increased flexibility inworship.The convocations, and particularly their bishops, met during the following years,and by 1927 had spent over 20 years in negotiations concerning, among other things, theuse of eucharistic vestments and incense.Two flashpoints on which the house of commons’approval depended were modifications to the communion service and the degree to whichthe reserved sacrament would be allowed. A.J.P. Taylor called the prayer book controversy‘the echo of dead themes’. Maiden shows that these themes were far from dead; theyinspired a spirited debate that had the potential to divide any of the political parties.Politics in the United Kingdom were not inherently secular in 1927–8.

Consistently with his title, Maiden concentrates primarily on the degree to whichthis debate was a function of the Church of England’s continued status as a ‘nationalreligion’.He shows that parties within the Church of England and groups of nonconform-ists outside of the church all had differing ideas of what a ‘national religion’ could aspire tobe. Maiden divides anglicans into a multiplicity of groups with differing approaches bothto that question and to the christian religion. Evangelicals (themselves divided intoconservatives and liberals), who generally opposed prayer book revision, are motivated byan antipathy to Roman catholicism, by a literalist view of the Bible and by a simplifiedliturgy. Maiden divides anglo-catholics into English catholics (who wish to return topre-Reformation ceremonial while preserving national boundaries), western catholics(who are more inclined to sympathy with Rome) and anglo-papalists (who are reallycrypto-catholics). The book describes all of these groups’ work to influence the prayerbook revisers’ efforts to move the ceremonies of the church ever-so-slightly toward theRoman catholic end of the liturgical spectrum.

Maiden’s book is rich in ironies. He describes the unholy alliance between BishopBertram Pollock of Norwich, an opponent of the prayer book (probably in the broadchurch tradition ofThomas Arnold), and the most prominent anglo-catholic in his diocese,who objected on entirely different grounds. Maiden recounts the visit by Pollock to thepriest’s house in Walsingham to discuss strategy, where Pollock would not enter the house

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and the two had to talk in the garden. The anglo-catholics’ anti-Erastian convictions,which barred them from lobbying, weakened their political position. Finally, the votes onthe prayer book measures are instances of that widely sought-after phenomenon: the WestLothian (or English) question. In a pureWest Lothian question, as defined byTam Dalyell,legislation which affects only one nation in the United Kingdom is approved by the MPsfrom that nation but is defeated by MPs from other nations. Here, ritual modifications thataffected only the Church of England,which exists in England but not inWales, Scotland orNorthern Ireland,was approved by a majority of English MPs (199 to 175 in 1927 and 208to 197 in 1928) but was defeated because of the votes of MPs from constituencies outsideof England (the totals were 207 to 240 and 222 to 268).

This anomaly points up one of the few slight weaknesses of Maiden’s analysis.Althoughhe carefully considers the motivations for anglican positions on the prayer book, histreatment of non-English denominations is less discriminating. He characterises the FreeChurch of Scotland as ‘a comparatively small denomination’, which took no officialposition on prayer book revision but whose presbyteries and denominational newspaperopposed it. Opposition by this small but relatively wealthy denomination was predictable,based upon its position in favour of protestant establishment (it stayed out of union withthe united presbyterians because the ‘establishment principle’ became optional) and itsseemingly contradictory, Calvinist opposition to Erastianism (parliamentary oversight wasanathema). Similarly, the cross-denominational meeting at the United Free Church assem-bly hall opposing revision and the formation of the Prayer Book Standard DefenceAssociation in the Church of Scotland were almost certainly connected with politicswithin those two churches, which had to do not with what was going on in England, butwith the final stages of reunion between the United Free Church and the Church ofScotland, which occurred in 1929.

Maiden acknowledges the difficulty of tracing the effects of all of the cleavages, forexample on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill and of the bishops’ positions on the generalstrike, on this debate. Additional politics outside England could not have been fullyexplored within the confines of this book. However, what they reinforce is the complex,divisive character of religious politics during this period.As Maiden notes, the Conserva-tive front bench was divided on the free votes, with 32 members (including the primeminister) supporting revision and 13 members (led by the home secretary) opposed.TheScottish opposition’s official position was abstention, but Willie Adamson told TomJohnston:‘I couldna’ look ma forefolks in the face if I didna’ vote the nicht.’1 Labour voterswere divided (35 to 54 in 1927 and 28 to 75 in 1928); only Liberals were nearly unitedagainst revision (2 to 23 and 2 to 28). House of commons’ debate was lively andtheologically sophisticated.

Maiden draws his most important conclusion in an understated comment: ‘All thispresents a challenge to secularisation models that might attempt to minimise the role ofreligion in political and national life in the interwar period.’ It does more: it shows thatthose models are wrong.

SCOT PETERSONBalliol College, Oxford

1 Thomas Johnston, Memories (1952), 102.

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The House of Lords. By Donald Shell. Manchester: Manchester University Press.2007. vi, 185 pp. £55.00. ISBN 9780719054433.

The house of lords is ostensibly an anachronism, for its overwhelmingly unelectedmembership seems totally incompatible with a 21st-century liberal democratic polity,especially as the suffrage began to be extended as far back as 1832. Yet as DonaldShell convincingly and lucidly explains, it has survived for three main reasons. First, itsmain political critic, the Labour Party, has never been sure about precisely how toreform it, not least because of the realisation that a more democratic second chamberwould almost certainly acquire a degree of legitimacy which would result in morefrequent or serious clashes with the government in the house of commons. Not until1999 did a Labour government finally remove the vast majority of hereditary peers,but it was still uncertain who should replace them; even by 2010, the overwhelmingmajority of peers were appointed, not elected. Second, the Conservative Party actedaccording to the Burkean principle that a political institution’s best chance of survivalis to accept some change, in order to adapt to new circumstances. Thus the Conser-vatives legislated, in 1958, to facilitate the creation of life peers, thereby effectivelypouring new wine into the old bottle, and so deflecting some of the criticism directedat the hereditary peers. Third, the house of lords itself has skilfully adapted to newcircumstances and political pressures, thereby ensuring its continued relevance andutility.

Indeed, the combined and cumulative consequence of these developments has beennot merely to ensure the continued existence of the house of lords, but its functionas ‘an active junior chamber’ (p. 45). While it is the occasional clashes between thehouse of commons and the house of lords which garner media headlines, the realsignificance of the latter’s political role resides in the more routine work which peersundertake, but without which, MPs and ministers would rapidly become even moreoverwhelmed. For example, it has often been noted that the calibre and quality ofdebates in the house of lords are often rather higher than those heard in theCommons, not least because, in spite of party membership, partisanship is often lesspronounced in the second chamber, coupled with existence of a sizeable body ofpolitically independent ‘cross-benchers’. Most peers are at a stage in their politicalcareers where they do not need to worry about their career or promotion prospects,nor do they need to concern themselves with maintaining good relations with theirlocal constituency party or constituents in order to ensure re-(s)election, and so theycan often speak more freely in debates, while also frequently drawing upon decades ofrelevant first-hand knowledge or experience.

Shell examines how the post-1958 influx of life peers, which considerably broad-ened the membership of the second chamber in terms of occupational backgroundand experience of life beyond Westminster, coupled with internal developments andreforms subsequently undertaken by peers themselves, have yielded a house of lordswhich has ‘stumbled towards a greater professionalism’ (p. 78), as evinced by suchcriteria as the significantly-improved attendance and increased involvement of peers inthe day-to-day work of the second chamber. This is explicated most fully in Chapter4, when the business of the second chamber is examined in detail. Among its variousactivities, it is evident that debating and inter alia scrutinising legislation accounts for

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well over half of the house of lords’ time, while non-legislative debates and questionsconsume more than a third.

One particular facet of the house of lords’ activities which has acquired consider-able respect and recognition is its select committee work. Whereas most of the keyselect committees in the house of commons each shadow specific government depart-ments and their policies (with notable exceptions like the public accounts committee),Shell emphasises how select committees in the house of lords have generally beensubject-based or thematic, with the European Union committee (and its seven spe-cialised subcommittees, each focusing on specific policy areas) and the science andtechnology committee proving to be two of the most respected. Two relatively recentadditions to the house of lords’ select committee system have been the economicaffairs committee and the constitution committee, thereby reflecting the second cham-ber’s adaptability and responsiveness to external developments, and thus its ability toavoid atrophy.

In this regard, Shell observes that the house of lords has modified its internalworkings ‘not as a rival or competitor to the Commons, but essentially as a comple-mentary chamber’ (p. 125) whose select committee inquiries and legislative scrutinyregularly tackle policy deficiencies which MPs and/or ministers have either overlookedor disregarded. It may well still be very much a junior parliamentary partner, but it isno less important or useful to facilitating the work of the house of commons, and ofplaying a crucial role in sustaining a system of checks and balances, without which therisks of an elective dictatorship would be much greater. Certainly, the reforms bothto its membership and its methods of conducting day-to-day business have imbuedthe house of lords with greater legitimacy, in spite of remaining almost entirelyunelected.

Of course, the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts limited the house of lords’ veto totwo years and one year respectively, so a determined or dogmatic government canchoose to ignore the second chamber if it really wishes, but only rarely do govern-ments opt to do so. Instead, the relationship between the government/house ofcommons and house of lords is predominantly one of constant negotiation and com-promise, with the second chamber seeking to exert influence through both persuasionand pressure, either (or both) of which can be exercised by virtue of the expertise oresteem which many peers enjoy. It would be an arrogant and foolish minister indeedwho repeatedly ignored the views expressed, or advice proffered, by a prominent peerwho was a renowned expert on a particular aspect of, say, agricultural policy, foreignaffairs or medical research.

Concluding with a chapter on the unfinished business of house of lords’ reformsince 1999 and how it might be reformed further, this book is a timely exposition onthe constantly-adapting role of this second chamber in British parliamentary politics,clearly and crisply written by one of Britain’s foremost academic experts on thisunique institution. It will be essential and rewarding reading for anyone interested inthe past, present and future of the house of lords.

PETER DOREYCardiff University

282 Reviews


Ten Years of New Labour. Edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee. Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. xxvi, 221 pp. Hardback £70.00; paperback £19.99.ISBN 9780230574472; 9780230574434.

New Labour has already been superseded by post-New Labour or next Labour, and thenew party leader will have to discover or invent a title to seize the imagination withoutalienating the intelligence in order to take the party forward, into the second decade ofthe century.The obituaries were being written even before Tony Blair left office as thiscollection of essays, written in 2007 and published the following year, makes clear.

Tony Giddens, in his semi-autobiographical foreword, argues that New Labourmoved the centre to the left by adopting policies from the right. But like much elsein the book the confidence with which a judgment is made is in direct relation toits contestability. The editors, Matt Beech and Simon Lee, warn readers that they donot agree with each other, and there are many other occasions for disagreement as thecontributors make their case in the following ten chapters on particular topics andaspects of politics in the Blair years.

The use of the word ‘philosophy’ early on, and a warning that there is a difference ofopinion between the two editors as to whether New Labour is reformed social democracyor new neo-liberal suggests that party government is still being thought of in terms ofpackage ideologies.One consequence of this is that one of the editors tries to fit the lumpyfoot of New Labour into the glass slipper of social democracy, glossing over, in doing so,the ideological fascination with financial markets and the extraordinary decision to join inthe invasion of Iraq, while the other brings forward the iron footwear of neo-liberalism. Itis worth remembering Herbert Morrison’s comment that socialism can only be defined aswhat Labour governments did. Labels are only useful if they are shorthand attempts tosummarize the complete mix of policy and rhetoric, without trimming and shavinghistory into pre-existing taxonomic boxes.The novelty of coalition government in 2010should not obscure the fact that parties are themselves coalitions, and the fewer majorparties there are, the more each is an entanglement of ideologies rather than the applicationof some overall principle or theory.

So if the question is not which box does New Labour fit into, but how is it to bemost accurately described, then the current volume provides components of an answerin its specialised chapters. Simon Lee is clear and thorough on the ‘British model’ ofpolitical economy; Maurice Mullard and Raymond Swaray argue that expenditure oneducation, health and social security rose faster than it did under previous Labour orConservative governments; Stephen Driver chronicles the failure both of this expen-diture and of private financing initiatives and welfare to work programmes to preventa decline in social mobility and a rise in inequality; Mark Evans is charitable in hisdiscussion of the tension between the decentralisation involved in constitutionalreform and the urge to control from the centre; Philip Norton ticks off Tony Blair fornot understanding how government works, though some of what he criticizes is morea matter of doing things differently; Phillip Cowley and Mark Stuart point out thatthe Labour Party in parliament, frequently dismissed as supine, was unusually rebelliousin the Blair years; Eric Shaw provides an obituary for the idea, and practice, of alabour movement encompassing unions and party; Jim Buller recounts the banishingof the tangled problems of Britain’s place in the European Union to shadows and

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silence lest it upset the voters; Raymond Plant considers what intellectual consistencycan be found in Blair’s liberal interventionism; David Lonsdale, in a consideration ofBlair on military policy which is often more stated than argued, might wish thatpublication had been delayed a little so that judgments on the ‘notable success’ ofBritish action in Afghanistan could have been reconsidered.

The sum total of these chapters is that between 1997 and 2007 the Labour govern-ment spent more than its predecessors on public services and had some success inpromoting employment, but did not achieve any greater equality. It was transfixed byan idea of markets and private enterprise, and particularly financial markets, as uniquesources of skill, initiative, and investment. But when the most important decision takenby the Blair government, to join the USA’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, is examined, anyexplanation is not an account of New Labour, but an account of the politicsand ideology of Tony Blair. Without Blair there would have been no British involve-ment in the invasion, and the support given to the prime minister by his colleaguesis best explained not by their ideology but by their inability to resist the passionatedetermination of the prime minister. This raises the question of how far there isanything substantial, coherent, or lasting which can usefully be described as ‘NewLabour’.

The choice between continuity and breach in the character of the party is not onewhich needs to be made. No British government has broken entirely with itspredecessors, and very little can be done to bind one’s successors. Labour’s dominanceof the middle ground in these years has not prevented a major rhetorical assault bythe Conservatives under David Cameron on behalf of economic liberalism, or con-vinced the electorate to vote in the numbers that, until 2001, they had done. And justas a party is a coalition of its members, so, too, is it a coalition between thosemembers and their leaders. Blair’s presidential style did no more than accentuate thisdivision. That takes us back to Morrison, and the answer that, if the term ‘NewLabour’ has any use, it simply describes what a Labour government did, and every-thing that it did, in all its entirely normal lack of ideological neatness or rhetoricalconsistency.

RODNEY BARKERLondon School of Economics and Political Science

The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power. Edited by Gerry Hassan. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press. 2007. x, 230 pp. Hardback £60.00; paperback£19.99. ISBN 9780748639908; 9780748639915.

Gerry Hassan has gathered together contributors who are well able to explore theScottish National Party’s (SNP’s) rise from being a poorly-resourced fringe party to onethat has run the government of Scotland from 2007 onwards. This book is at its mosteffective in exploring the party’s electoral growth, inner tensions, and its economic

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strategy (with a vigorous chapter by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert that explores itspost-2007 record, summed up by these radical economists as ‘neo-Liberalism with aHeart’).

Chapters on social policy, culture and constitutional relations with the rest of theUK do not address issues which have preoccupied the SNP during its tenure in office.Nor is much attention paid to the impact on the party of being responsible forrunning a vast state bureaucracy that under-performs in important respects. Policyareas like law-and-order, education and health, which have tested the SNP adminis-tration, receive surprisingly little attention. The dysfunctional aspects of Scottish societywhich have seen it placed at the top of league tables for a range of pathologies, areleft unexplored, even though there is a case for saying that they have contributed toa lack of self-confidence and to a widespread disconnection from politics which havemade the case for independence harder to make.

The political scientist, James Mitchell, discerns a long-term suspicion of leadership,unusual in a nationalist party. But this has changed under Alex Salmond, leader formost of the last two decades. Salmond now enjoys considerable autonomy in formu-lating policy and taking sometimes highly-personal initiatives to strengthen the SNP’sposition. He is a formidable tactician in opposition and government and an ablepublic performer. But whether his goal really is independence, or else influence so thatthe SNP can extract resources from Westminster, is not spelled out. Since 2007, theSNP’s close involvement with the state bureaucracy and sometimes with a range ofinterest groups that orbit the public sector, reveal a party ready to play the politics ofpatronage for tactical advantage. Michael Keating chides the SNP for its neglectof nation building and failure to ‘develop a narrative around identity, collective action,economic development and social solidarity. Indeed . . . to exploit precisely the culturaladvantages that small nations possess’. Despite campaigning opportunities like‘the National Conversation’ and cultural events like ‘the Homecoming’, the SNP’sfailure to set out the architecture and values system for a post-Unionist Scotland isstriking.

This book appears to have arisen because the tectonic plates of Scottish politicswere shifting after 50 years of Labour domination. Gerry Hassan describes Labour as‘a hollowed-out party . . . corrupt, broken and seen as such by voters’. Yet in 2010Scotland displayed its separatist leanings by decisively re-endorsing Labour just as itwas being rejected in much of the rest of the UK. The main thrust for Scottishindependence now appears to come from England. The rise of a post-British mentalitybased, in part, on anti-Scottish attitudes is overlooked in this volume, as is the SNP’ssemi-reliance on persistent anti-English traits in Scottish popular culture. This book isa valuable appraisal of the SNP’s evolution in recent decades, but there are significantomissions which prevent it from being a definitive account of the party’s role inScottish politics. The party’s performance in government means more attention shouldbe paid to the relationship between the SNP and a range of Scottish elites and theextent to which Alex Salmond and the SNP have oscillated between radicalism andthe desire to command influence in the corridors of power.

TOM GALLAGHERUniversity of Bradford

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The Independence of Scotland: Self-Government and the Shifting Politics of Union. ByMichael Keating. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. vii, 214 pp. £45.00.ISBN 9780199545957.

The creation of the Scottish parliament in 1999 has stimulated a considerable scholarlyliterature which has sought to place it in historical context, to analyse its constitutionand proceedings and to attempt to speculate about future developments. This slimvolume discusses these matters in a manner which is never less than intelligent andthought-provoking. Keating has been a prolific and important contributor to the debatefor over 30 years and one of the most important aspects of his work has been to try to setthe Scottish events and processes in a comparative context, whether it be with Quebec,Catalonia or the Basque country. Throughout his latest volume he draws fruitfully on hisearlier writings to produce an extended essay on the past, present and future of Scottishpolitics. The starting point for the book is the aftermath of the 2007 election for theScottish parliament in which the Scottish National Party (SNP) achieved a plurality of its129 seats and subsequently formed a minority ‘government’ under the self-confidentleadership of Alex Salmond. Keating probes the meaning and implications of this event.This might easily have descended into the worst kind of presentist and shallow discussion,but what saves Keating from these pitfalls is the fact that the profound questions which heposes are relevant, but strangely confined to the shadows, regardless of the outcome of thiselection or the next one, which was held in May 2010. Put bluntly, he wonders why theprospect of Scottish secession has not provoked a wider discussion and he seeks to fill thatgap. He begins this process by surveying the literature on the place of Scotland in theBritish state and the interaction of different forms of identity within the United Kingdom.This material will be familiar to most people working in the field but he provides a veryuseful summary of the literature. He moves forward to discuss the operation of theAnglo-Scottish union over its 300-year history. The remaining five chapters form themeat of the study.An important chapter suggests that the unionist (as opposed to Unionist)consensus which has endured for most of that period seems to be under threat. He arguesthat what makes this situation especially interesting is the fact that although the ‘ideologyof the union is in crisis’ (p. 77) a new consensus has not emerged to replace it.The SNPsuggests that the future is independence for Scotland (something which a vast bulk ofevidence suggests is supported by only a minority of Scots) and the other parties imply thatsome form of redefinition is required.The Union has been in crisis before, it should benoted, not least in the years immediately following its passage when it was assailed bydifficult economic circumstances, protests over taxation and the dynastic challenge ofjacobitism. In the late 19th century the challenges came from Irish nationalism and theadoption by the Liberal Party of home rule as a response. The surge of support for theSNP in the 1970s (over 30% of the Scottish vote in October 1974) seemed to indicateanother crisis but it petered out in the gloomy winter of 1978–9 and the damp squib of thereferendum of March 1979.What makes this crisis different? The existence of a Scottishparliament and a SNP transformed from a vehicle of protest and a repository of eccen-tricity to a party with a solid record of government in Scotland? Perhaps. We will see.Unionist Scotland may be far from dead although it does seem to be shedding its skin.

The next stage of the book considers the questions of the mechanics of secession, adiscussion which considers the matters of referendums, the European dimensions and the

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security considerations likely to influence an independent Scotland.Without reducing thedebate to a crude formula, Keating also considers the political economy of independence.In this judicious and informative chapter he puts his finger on the difficulty of assessing theevidence which emerges from a political discussion in which all parties are interested andthe statistics are difficult to interpret:

Both nationalists and unionists are on a cleft stick here. Unionists want to argue thatScotland is thriving under the Union but point to its supposedly low growth rate toclaim that it could not afford independence. Nationalists want to show that it is doingbadly under the Union but that it already has a viable economy. (p. 103)

Keating considers the possibilities for enhanced and advanced devolution in which theScottish parliament acquires more powers, especially in the area of taxation – the muchdiscussed question of ‘fiscal autonomy’ – and suggests that this might be the likeliest wayforward in the near future, although like much else in this debate, it is far from clear howthis might be realized.This book can be read as part of a growing body of literature onthe nature of the Anglo-Scottish union, a corpus which includes the recent work ofColin Kidd, Iain McLean, James Mitchell and Lindsay Paterson.What this body of workshows, and which this book brings out in an exceptionally lucid fashion, is that theAnglo-Scottish union derives much of its strength from its inherent flexibility. Keatingencourages us to think about the extent to which its latest ‘crisis’ can be accommodatedby this suppleness or whether constant flexing will result in a stress fracture.

EWEN A. CAMERONUniversity of Edinburgh

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going to war: british debates from wilberforce to blair – by philip towle

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