As a dedicated Liberal I’ve always vaguely subscribed to the Whig view of history, defined roughly that, by and large, on the whole and in the main, things are gradually getting better. Improvements are due to the gradual progress made in the development of democracy, increases in individual liberty, and advances in science and technology. There are, of course, occasional steps backwards, but the direction is generally onwards and upwards.
To take each in turn, since 1945 in the UK we’ve seen the increase in women’s and minority representation in parliament, and the creation of effective specialist committees; we no longer hang people, racial discrimination is illegal, gays, lesbians, and unmarried mothers get a better deal, and couples can live together respectably without formal ties if they prefer things that way; and science and technology have made astonishing strides, especially n the fields and medicine and communications.
On the downsides, we still don’t have a fair election system, turnout at elections has fallen, local government has been enfeebled and the executive’s control over parliament has increased intolerably; individual and institutional racism and suspicion of “the other” endure and have become a campaigning tools for mainstream parities as well as the extreme right; some scientific “advances” (eg plastics) are polluting the planet or contribute to climate change, improvements in communications have made it much easier to disseminate misinformation as well as enlightenment – and nuclear weapons, could bring an end to most life on the planet, except for microbes.
But by and large (again) Britain is a much better place to live in now than it was 80 years ago, and much the same can certainly be said of most of Europe and probably most parts of the rest of the world (exceptions being such as Tibet, Myanmar, parts of China, and, of course, the areas where “minor” wars persist.)
However the election and actions of President Trump very clearly thrown a spanner in this cosy view of steady progress.
But we’ve been there before.
Consider the world at the turn of the last century, say 1900 to 1910. A Liberal government with a massive majority set about taxing the rich to establish the welfare state, reducing the powers of the aristocracy in the House of Lords, amid growing recognition of the right for women to participate in politics; there hadn’t been a major war in Europe for 80+ years; the Royal Navy “ruled the waves,” we were on friendly terms with Germany, which already had a welfare state and Edward VII established the Entente Cordiale with France; the British Empire ruled about two thirds of the World’s ’s population and thought it was doing them a favour by bringing “Civilisation, Christianity and Commerce” to primitive lands and peoples; railways were taking the workers away for holidays at the seaside, cars, radio and cinema were being invented, and the Americans were keeping themselves to themselves at the other side of the world.
What was not to like?
Yet for no apparent reason other than international rivalry which appeared at first to be no more than school sport-day style enthusiasm, by 1914 the world entered into the most devastating war it had experienced to that date, which continued for four years through a combination of pride and obstinacy.
That war should have been a “wake up call.” War was no longer a matter of professional armies occasionally meeting and firing arrows, charging on horses with swords and scimitars or firing muskets at each other, but now on an unprecedented industrial scale which treated young men like cattle for slaughter.
True, most statemen realised this and set up the League of Nations, but the US, now the world’s most powerful nation, failed to join it, and so it amounted to a wake-up whimper rather than a call.
The reaction after the Second Word War was more robust, and peace, of a sort, has been maintained (though you wouldn’t think that if you lived in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Iraq, Sudan and over 200 other places – there are plenty of people who have every right to feel that the Liberal World Order hasn’t worked for them).
With Trump’s election that rocky and inadequate structure is more likely to crumble than be enforced.
We have to take the situation seriously: the next war may not be just slaughter on an industrial scale on a Western Front, but the destruction of life as we know it on the planet. We must take urgent steps to :
- Control, even abandon universally if we can, nuclear weapons;
- Limit climate change;
- Tackle world poverty and inequality.
- Combat propaganda (alternative facts) with truth.
Our task as Liberals is to persuade the electorate of the gravity of the situation and our need to treat these issues as urgent priorities. Understandably many if not most of the electorate give priority to the more immediate issues of keeping their own and their families’ heads above water.
Effective campaigning on both levels is a difficult, but we have to try. If we do not succeed we are of drifting into a cataclysm after which there may be no history at all, Whig or otherwise.
* Peter Wrigley is a member of Spen Valley Liberal Democrats and blogs as keynesianliberal.blogspot.com
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7 Comments
The great disappointment of the current era is the failure to integrate Russia and China into the rules based International order based on the UN Charter that grew out of the devestation of two world wars and the great depression.
On the face of it, after the collapse of the soviet union and the opening of China under Deng Xiaoping we appeared to be entering the 21st century in an era of International cooperation and peace. However, as with Norman Angell’s 1913 book ‘The Great Illusion’, in which the author seemingly argued that globalisation of trade meant “There will never be another war between European powers”; War is always possible and peace needs to be constantly preserved through vigilance and deterrence of authoritarian powers.
The themes Peter suggests should be emphasized are critical to all humankind and worthy aims for Internationally minded parties like the Liberal Democrats to pursue.
Worldwide Utopia is missing and has been AWOL throughout history. There are lifetime length local moments of time where people can feel safe and comfortable. The demise of empires releases long suppressed tribal hatreds – the Balkans have been a prime example and now Ukraine/Russia.
If we want to suppress these tribal(/gang) hatreds and promote a rules based order then we can’t be squeemish about having weapons and flexing muscle. The US tried to do that during their half century of noble aims but got it wrong more times than not. Not easy and now we are losing that umbrella.
Places in Europe and Israel, for example have more fair election systems and they exercise that freedom to support ‘extreme’ ideologies to a level where they have real influence on government. Not really our missing+link utopia.
In the past someone said, if you want peace prepare for war. The ‘peace dividend’ of protection under NATO made the west lax to threats. Putin, like him or not, wants to rebuild the Russian Empire.He is educated in its history and knowledge and has experience in how to get it being an ex KGB officer. His dream is a long lasting one that rides over the comings and goings of western govnts that come and go. To keep Europe from further wars it has to REMAIN wary of being divided and maintain its own version of NATO for USA intervention/assistance cannot be guaranteed in the future.
@nigel hunter.
I don’t know if you had a hidden message in your emphasis of the word REMAIN. If yes then be wary of e.g. the Orban veto.
If strength is built then we need to have the courage to exercise it and be able to cope when we might get it wrong. In recent history, the lovely liberal Dutch stood aside in Srebrenica and the French could have led us all to stop Rwanda….. Milliband somehow managed to stop an intervention in Syria where Obama didn’t want to go alone and look what happened since. Britain wasn’t strong enough to intervene in a commonwealth country, Grenada and the US, in its noble period, had to sacrificing a number of military casualties. Britain did the right thing in Seara Leone….
Thank you for your comments. Joseph Bourke hits the nail on the head by pointing out that the post-1945 failure was to lock China and Russia into the New World Order. A letter in yesterday’s Guardian (15th March) from a Michael Bowers points out that there was a second chance in 1989 when “Russia was wiling to be a collaborative partner with the west, but Europe, guided by the US, sought to characterise it not as an emerging sophisticated state, but as the hungry wolf on Europe’s borders.”
So now Europe seems to be keen to take responsibly for our own defence, though I suspect a whiff of the jingoism of the early 20th Century and “We want eight [battleships] and we won’t wait!” and I see no enthusiasm for paying for it other than dumping the cost on the poorest. Would that it were as easy to generate enthusiasm for the fights against poverty, inequality, disinformation and climate change.
How did we not bring Russia into the new world order post-1945? the USSR was, along with Western countries, a founding member of the UN and was given a security council seat and veto on equal terms with the USA (and the UK and France). The USA even offered to give Marshall Aid to the USSR and Eastern Europe, but Stalin declined. China (ruled in 194 by the Kuomintang) was also integrated into the world order with a UN security council seat. We arguably made the mistake of not initially recognising the new Communist Government when they took over in 1949, but I can’t really see that the situation today would be any different if we had acted differently then.
Today it is not (mainland) China but Taiwan that is denied a proper place in the world order, thanks to the international community’s failure to stand up to the totally unreasonable demands of China regarding not recognising Taiwanese sovereignty.
@Simon R
Yes, the USSR was given permanent membership of the UN Security Council with a veto power but the formation of NATO in 1949 was a significant first step in creating an architecture that excluded the USSR. Of course the USSR responded to this by creating the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact gave an opportunity to include Russia in the changes that were occurring but NATO took the opportunity to expand NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries, but deliberately not Russia. Perhaps if Russia had been invited to join NATO, Europe would be in a much safer situation today.