by David Marquand (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25)
In this major new account of 20th-century British history, David Marquand depicts Harold Wilson as a politician who preferred to see the trees to the wood. It's a witty and useful metaphor to bear in mind when approaching the literary genre that has grown up around the political history of 20th-century Britain. Many of Marquand's predecessors placed us right in the middle of a beguiling cacophony of personalities, rows, plots and crises. We know a lot about some of the trees of our past political life as a result—but less about the pattern and nature of the wood. Against this backdrop, Marquand's offering is striking in its ambition. Within it, both trees and wood get a thorough and thoughtful airing.
No doubt some of Marquand's insights stem from the proximity afforded by his political career—first at Westminster as Labour MP for Ashfield, then with Roy Jenkins at the European commission, and subsequently as a founding member of the SDP—as well as his status as one of the leading political intellectuals and commentators of his day. And yet he chooses to remove all traces of himself from his narrative. This combination of close-up judgement and self-absence is revealing. It suggests the ethos of the era when the author came of age: the more austere and formal world of 1950s high politics, when the ideals of public service, civic duty and high-minded liberalism were in the ascendant. Not for Marquand the self-indulgence of political history as gossip, or of political commentary that takes the form of loudly-stated opinion.
Instead, the many different stories, episodes and judgements offered here are marshalled within a wider interpretative frame, formed by the interplay of four grand narratives. At the centre of Marquand's story is the first of these: "Whig imperialism." This shaped the perspectives of leading elements in both main parties for two decades up to 1945, and came to the fore again in the Tory-dominated 1950s. Linking its many exponents, Marquand argues, is a broadly optimistic view of human nature, a commitment to the unique value of Britain's political institutions, a gradualist approach to policy, and an emphasis on political moderation. The Whiggish lineage stretched across several centuries, from its 18th-century intellectual architect, Edmund Burke, right up to the pragmatic paternalism of the current Conservative leader, David Cameron.
Whig imperialism's major challenger during the bulk of the last century was the tradition of "democratic collectivism." This began with the Fabians—Sidney and Beatrice Webb above all—and cohered around a doctrinal commitment to rationalistic planning and the impartiality and expertise of the central state. The good society was to be brought to the people from on high.
Both of these traditions, Marquand argues, ran into the sand in the tumultuous decade of the 1970s. And the main beneficiary of their demise was a hitherto marginal political strand, "Tory nationalism." This began from the thinking of Thomas Hobbes and was passed across the generations, from Lord Salisbury to Enoch Powell through to Margaret Thatcher. A strong state was required both to ensure order in a society composed of individuals who were intrinsically instrumental and selfish beings, and to promote the national interest against foreign rivals.
Marquand reserves the most sympathetic treatment of all, however, for one further political lineage: "democratic republicanism." This began at the time of the English civil war with the poetry and prose of Milton, and has inspired a succession of social movements and campaigns. It has on occasions found its way into the hearts and minds of Westminster's finest—Bevan and Benn were all loyal to its precepts at points in their careers. But its core creed has cohered around the ideals of popular self-government, the importance of participation in the public culture, the value of local democracy and a commitment to grassroots politics. This strand, Marquand notes ruefully, has also made the least headway in mainstream politics.
There is much to learn from an analysis like Marquand's, that evokes the power and continuity of traditions that do not align neatly with the tired dichotomies of left vs right or Labour vs Tory. And yet there are also occasions when the quality of Marquand's historical analysis seems to arrive despite, rather than because of, this typology. Many of the key protagonists in his story simply do not fit easily into a single category, as the author concedes. Some belong to at least two, and maybe to all of them: Tony Blair is rather disapprovingly placed in this most eclectic of categories, but couldn't the same be said of George Orwell, among others? Some important strands of political practice—Tory statecraft as opposed to Whig reformism—are also too deeply buried beneath the patterns that Marquand emphasises. And the over-emphasis on the Fabians' statism teeters on the verge of caricature.
Marquand is thankfully too shrewd a commentator, and too good a historian, to wield his typology too clumsily. But it does intrude unhelpfully in the book's final moments. New Labour's politics and its central figure, Tony Blair, are given a pretty heavy pummelling here. And there follows a brief epilogue with a resoundingly romantic call for the democratic republican lineage to be given its time in the sun. Even the current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is framed—surely through the most rosy of spectacles?—as a partial adherent to this cause. Missing from these sections is the kind of rounded and balanced analysis that Marquand offers of earlier governments. Absent too is an analysis of the depth of popular indifference to the agenda associated with today's democratic republicans.
That it finishes on these slightly jarring notes should not obscure the recognition that this is a truly impressive volume. Many have argued that politics is best understood through the vantage point supplied by historical awareness. This work places David Marquand in a select group of historians whose writing demonstrates the validity of this observation.
