The New Liberalism by Peter Weiler

Author:Peter Weiler [Weiler, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Modern, 19th Century, Political Science, History & Theory, Social Science, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9781315524245
Google: gYiuDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-07-15T16:17:59+00:00

Chapter Five

The Nation and the New Liberalism

It may be that without the pressure of social forces, political ideas are still born: what is certain is that these forces, unless they clothe themselves in ideas, remain blind and undirected.

--Isaiah Berlin

The Economic Problem, as one may call it for short, the problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and an unnecessary muddle.

--John Maynard Keynes

By 1912 it seemed to progressive Liberals that the Liberal government had succeeded in creating a programme of social legislation that accurately and imaginatively expressed the "progressive" ideas that had concerned them for more than two decades. At the same time, the term "new Liberal" had become the common term for both this legislation and the position of the most advanced Liberal journalists and thinkers. The new Liberalism, then, can be seen as the culmination of the progressive or 'new radical' ideas that originated in the late eighteen eighties and early nineties. The leading advocates of the new Liberalism - H. W. Massingham, C. P. Scott, J. A. Hobson, and L. T. Hob house - are the same men who edited and wrote for the Chronicle, the Guardian, and the Progressive Review. But the new Liberalism is more than just another name for their "Progressivism." The reforms of the 1906-14 government extended and clarified the previous ideas of the progressive Liberals, and as the specific legislation was passed, they became increasingly aware of more extended and radical implications in their own position. Their function during the Liberal government was not to innovate specific legislation, but rather to convince the majority of the party of the need for reform, and to consider such questions as the eventual direction the Liberal party should take, and the moral and philosophic justification for new Liberal legislation. Thus, although they did not create specific legislative programmes, they provided the best articulation of the new Liberalism.

The most important journal for the dissemination of new Liberal ideas was the Nation, which succeeded the Speaker in 1907. All of the major new Liberal journalists and theorists were directly or in directly connected with it. Its writers included Hobson, Hobhouse, C. F. G. Masterman, J. L. Hammond, former editor of the Speaker, H. N. Brailsford, and F. W. Hirst, "the one surviving disciple of Bright and Cobden. "1 It was edited by H. W. Massing ham, whose spirit and beliefs dominated the journal. "There is no doubt," wrote Leonard Woolf, "that he was a first class editor in that somehow or other he impressed his personality on those who wrote for him and what they wrote."2 The Nation's circulation was small, only a few thousand, but it was recognized at the time as the most responsible and influential journal of the new liberalism. It was the mouthpiece for the "advanced guard" of the party. Through its weekly lunches, at which prominent public figures were often present, it provided a convenient meeting place for advanced Liberals inside the government and for social reformers of all kinds.

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