The camera moves around. Incredible.
SPEAKER_06Marvellous. You should be able to hear me now. I'm going to move the camera a little way. Can you hear me? I'm sure you can hear me. But you someone put their thumbs up if you can hear. Hearing me? Ah yes. Wonderful. Right. Perfect. Okay. Here we go. So welcome to our final session of heritage with me, Samuel Woodall, and my colleague Jack Thompson. And today we're going to be looking at Disraeli and Oakshot, two quintessential figures in the formation of what is today known as One Nation Conservatism. Reflection. This sort of answers a couple of questions, but also I sort of left it up to sort of discussion. But I think you are right in the sense of we should round off here. But as we come to the close of our heritage series, it's worth reflecting on the journey we've taken from the philosophical foundations of the ancients to the cultural and political thought of the moderns. We began with Plato exploring the perennial question of order, not merely in the state, but in the soul. His republic gave us the architecture of hierarchy and virtue that would echo through the centuries of Western philosophical thought. From there, we turned to Augustine, whose City of God bridged classical philosophy and Christian theology. Augustine transformed the Platonic search for the good into a drama of divine and earthly citizenship, setting the terms for how faith and authority would be understood for over a millennium. The conversation then moved forward to Joseph de Maestra, passionate fan over here, the counter-revolutionary philosopher of Providence and Punishment. De Maestra forced us to confront the darker side of order, authority rooted not in consent but in transcendence and necessity. With Edmund Burke, we entered the modern age of politics. Burke's reflections on the revolution in France articulated a vision of continuity, of reform grounded in inheritance rather than rupture. His notion of society as a partnership across generations provided one of the most enduring defenses of tradition and heritage. We then moved on to examine Roger Scruton last week, whose modern conservatism translated the moral intuition of Burke into a philosophy of beauty, belonging, and the sacred. Scruton's concern with home, culture, and stewardship helped us see conservatism not as nostalgia, but as a living moral ecology. Finally, our series concludes with a discussion of one nation conservatism. It could be said the modern British expression of these deeper inheritances, a vision sinking balance between liberty and social obligation, between tradition and reform. So for those of you who were here in our first session, Peter, why concept not an ideology? This may sound like a repetition, but I thought it was important to maybe just chat this back in as we're coming to a close. So we called this series heritage rather than conservatism quite deliberately. As intellectual historians, we are wary of what Skinner calls the myth of prolexis, the temptation to read present ideologies and conceptual frameworks back into the past. The idea of heritage allowed us to explore the conceptual roots and moral vocabulary of conservative thought without perhaps confining our discussions within the boundaries of a particular political label. It let us trace an evolving conversation from Plato's order to Burke's prudence to Scruton's love of home as part of a broader intellectual inheritance rather than their partisan creed. Intellectual historians are often cautious about approaching conservative thought as a fixed or transhistorical ideology, precisely because doing so risks what Skinner famously called, again, the myth of prolepis, the tendency to project contemporary categories and meanings back into the past. To treat conservatism as an eternal disposition rather than as a historically contingent vocabulary is to misunderstand how ideas emerge, evolve, and very much, as we've seen, respond to their own contexts. Historians such as J. G.A. Pocock and Donald Kelly have argued that we study conservative thinkers not as participants in a single sort of linear tradition, but they each grapple with crisis, authority, and change in its own time. These are distinct discursive moments. In this life, figures like Burkhold and Maestra are not conservatives in the modern party political sense, big C, but moral and political theorists articulating responses to rupture, to revolution, and the challenge of modernity. For intellectual historians, then the task is to reconstruct the language of preservation, order, and inheritance in our own terms, resisting the temptation to read them as early expressions of an ideology that would only later take a coherent shape in the more contemporary modern world. So let's set some context then. We've just been talking about context, why we've done the series the way that Jack and I and Dara have composed this series. The politics of the 19th century. The 19th century was an age of profound political transformation in Britain, defined by reform, industrial growth, and social upheaval. Between 1801 and 1901, the population of England and Wales nearly quadrupled, rising from around 9 million to 32 million, as industrialization drew millions into expanding towns and cities. The Reform Act of 1832 broke the monopoly of the rotten boroughs, extending the vote to the middle classes and signalling the decline of purely aristocratic politics. The Chartist movement of the 1840s, with its demand for universal male suffrage, revealed growing democratic pressure from below, while the second Reform Act of 1867 and later the third in 1884 expanded the franchise to include further large sections of the working population. Meanwhile, the Great Exhibition of 1851 embodied a sort of self-confidence of industrial Britain, whose empire by the century's end governed over a quarter of the world's population. Yet beneath the surface of progress lay sharp tensions, dislocation of labour, debates over moral order and poverty, and struggles over the meaning of a nation. In an age of empire and reform. It was within this dynamic and uncertain landscape that new visions of political identity and responsibility began to take shape. I'll just have a little sip. That's okay with that. Sir Benjamin Disraeli. He lived between 1804 and 1881, and he stands as one of the most complex figures, I'd say, in the 19th century British political and intellectual life. He was a novelist, he was a statesman, twice Prime Minister, 1868, and then again from 1874 to 1880, whose career embodied the union of imagination and authority. He was born into a Jewish family that converted to Anglicanism in his youth. Disraeli's early life as a writer profoundly shaped his political vision. He viewed politics not as mere governance, but as a grand narrative of identity, duty, and nationhood. And of course, yeah, his Jewish background meant that before Rishunak, he was essentially the first and only uh leader from a minority background as a prime minister, even though, of course, as I've said, he converted, so he wasn't technically a practicing Jew, but he was of that background, um, which is quite interesting to be a Tory in that in that background, and but we can sort of get into some of these kind of bits and pieces. Um but his early novels, Vivian Grey, uh Coningsby, and Sybil, fused romanticism with social critique, diagnosing the dislocation of industrial Britain and the widening gulf between rich and poor. Intellectually, Disraeli forged what might be called a romantic, we've covered the romantics, um, or imaginative conservatism, seeking to balance the moral continuity of tradition with the demands of modern society. In an age defined by utilitarianism, or on the flip side, let's say fair individualism, he re-enchanted Tory thought with an appeal to faith, history, and the symbolic unity of a nation. His one nation ideal, that the privileged bear obligations to the powerless, or in French this idea of noblesse oblige, um often a moral counterpoint to industrial capitalism and remains a central concept in conservative thought. For the intellectual historian, Disraeli's significance lies not only in his political achievement from social reform to imperial vision, but in his effort to transform conservative politics into a language of national imagination, most vividly expressed in Sybil, his meditation on the two nations of Britain. So a bit of context for Sybil. Sorry. Industrial towns like Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds had grown explosively, yet millions lived in squalid conditions with little access to education, sanitation, or a political voice. It was against this backdrop that Disraeli, already a rising Conservative MP, composed his tract Sybil. Drawing on his tools of industrial Britain and his growing conviction that the Tory Party must speak for the whole nation, he sought to expose the moral cost of industrial modernity. The novel's famous phrase that England have become two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy crystallized the widening gulf between the wealthy and the poor and called for a new sense of social responsibility, rooted in shared heritage rather than class antagonism. In this way, Sybil was not merely a work of fiction, but a political intervention and imaginative attempt to re-enchant conservatism as a moral creed capable of healing the divisions of the age. And here is that excerpt that we will look at first. I'll read it. The stranger paused. Egremont was silent but looked inquiringly. Yes, resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval, two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets, who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners and are not governed by the same laws. You speak of, said Egremont hesitatingly, the rich and the poor. Okay. I'd like to throw the microphone over to you, and thereby the camera, which I'll spin round menacingly in some sort of Orwellian fashion. Um, let's see. Well there's Dara. There's Jack in the boxes, and there's how to regulars, especially Peter. But uh I'll move it back sort of to so that we're kind of central. Uh no, I think that's gonna be about the extent of it. I can zoom in. Right, there we are. Anyway, who has a uh idea? What what what is Disraeli trying to say? He's not a Prime Minister yet, um uh at least for his longer term, um, and we have a long way off for his longer term. Um, but what what's Disraeli analysing? What's he trying to say from the context that we've just looked at, and then the the the tract itself that we've just read. Um, what's he trying to put across? How is he analysing Victorian Britain in the mid-century of Victorian Britain?
SPEAKER_03Well, it it seems to me to be a form of you know a very modern narrative. Um I I actually I I read the first few books of it this morning and uh this afternoon. And the the the density of the text, the the density of the reference is the kind of thing I thought he wrote much later. Yes, he's still a young man, really. Yeah, he's in his forties, but um still, I mean he had another 40 years to go. Um it's very interesting. He he seems to be saying um that conservative policy is um ordered towards the preservation and the the growth of a certain order of affairs, especially economic, which is leaving a whole world of people behind. Yeah, and there's not been sufficient conversation about how the products of the industrial revolution are going to get filtered as it were back into the soil. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I mean it's very it's very similar to what you might observe now, in the sense that it's like a two-tier society that maybe he's observing, in the sense that you've got the rich and the poor now. Sam, you said about the corn laws, yeah, you know, being a really significant driver mark the desperate months of poor now. Amongst that, you had like in especially up north, you had massive like social problems, yeah, yeah. Like riots going on. You had the Peter Lee Massacre in 1819, all right? A very significant time before this was even written. But a lot of what he was thinking and what what he was saying in this text would be informed as a result of things that were happening, especially up north during the time that he's talking about and what he's referenced to.
SPEAKER_06Definitely. Um I think it's interesting because I mean the 19th century isn't my area of expertise, but what is interesting about the 19th century is it, and there's this obviously famous term by the end of the 19th century that kind of found the sicler, the kind of end of the century period, um, where industrialization and urbanization have had such an intensity that there's very much a loss of, you know, and the the post-structurists in the 40s and 50s would love to analyze this, you know, there's a loss of kind of uh an authentic sense of place and authentic sense of self. Who are we in this kind of rapidly modernizing world? And I think what perhaps Disraeli is analysing is that, and it was interesting, Jake, that you said this was sort of a new phenomenon, and Dara also you said you could see parallels with today, because I think also what's interesting about this period is that he's looking back nostalgically, he's looking back to a time, and this is why I used that term interjected with the term noblesse oblige. There was a period that the statesmen in the 19th century looked back to, which was this kind of feudal order, that as much as it was obviously very regimented, and as as kind of the more left element of this reading club, Bruce, you and I would probably equally criticize the feudal order. But for a Tory politician, there is a certain romanticism of this bygone age where your lord of the manor did provide a certain sense of kind of here's your place, here's here's um, you know, your land to work, your your seed to plant, this sort of thing. And there was a regimentation, but there was at least an image of a helping hand given by each element of society, as um William James calls it, know your station, know your sort of place, and thereby society will work well. This comes back to these Platonic ideas of a kind of well-functioning state. Um, so there is a certain nostalgia there, but also a look into the future in a more modern way of kind of, you know, there's the Chartist movement which has got going only five years before um this book is published, and demanding rights for the people of the nation, demanding a say and a share in society. So there is very much a modern context to this, one that we can relate to more than many of the texts that we've covered so far, but also a nostalgia for a bygone age where you know chivalry, duty, responsibility was the order of the day. And for Disraeli, he thinks that this is falling away in this kind of urbanizing world because you've got to remember this is a cry to the Tory party to follow his advice, but actually, your what were the Whigs would then become the Liberals, this party of free trade, of commercialism, actually, for many people at this time was seen as sort of the the the worst evil in the sense that they were looking towards private interests and and opening up the economy, making money and profiteering. And perhaps Disraeli's vision of the Tory party was one that actually stands for, well, obviously, we like the idea of a thriving economy, of a thriving modern Britain, but we still have to think about what are our duties to people who don't get on that on that sort of wave of free trade that the Liberals were promulgating. Um, so those are a couple of political and historical contexts. Do we have any more points about you know um even more of a linguistic or or or a literary way? How does this sound? What's the way he's saying this? You know, a couple of political points.
SPEAKER_04Please do bring. So how it feels to me is uh nostalgia is something that the rich you know love, it keeps them rich. Yeah, I'm not sure it's something the poor are equally um interested in. It seems to me this is happening at a time uh post-Adam Smith. Um I don't know quite where Ricardo and others fit in, but it's basically you know, we move away from a feudal system to experimenting and trying to get a capitalist system going, and the poor are suffering without a doubt, because a lot of mistakes are being made about you know, uh pay the minimum wage and uh you know the rentiers and the uh capitalists take profit because they take risk. And there's all that sort of um sort of um economic thought that's out there. Yeah, and of course, because there's change happening, and there was the French Revolution just a couple of decades before, then um those who have had power and continue to have power and wealth um are saying, well, hang on, you know, the poor are suffering, and if we let them suffer or we have them suffer too much, then you know we're gonna have our heads topped off, or there'll be a revolution of a kind that we don't like. And the Corn Law is an example of where that came very close. So it seems to me, as it was in the time of Plato, and I probably argue in the time of St. Augustine as well, is that those in power are seeking to consolidate that power by finding a new mess message. Could be a romantic message, could be an aristocratic message, could be a religious message, yeah, to basically retain and um continue in power.
SPEAKER_06Very true. And you raise a brilliant point about revolution, because of course, at this time, not to sound too rest is history, we need to leave that for the podcast, Jack, but uh uh the storm clouds of revolution in 19 in 1845 are gathering over Europe because in Germany, in Belgium, you will have uprisings um that that will go far beyond the Chartist movement in Britain um and will somewhat successful, somewhat failure, but 1848, the year of revolutions across Europe will see um political violence um across a whole spectrum of countries across the continent.
SPEAKER_04Um I want to say you've got the left, you've got the communist Marx British Library work taking place at this point in time. Yeah, there's a left-wing ideology building up, there needs to be a response to it.
SPEAKER_06Very much. And in Germany, yeah, you've had your Matt Stirner's and these kind of proto-anarchists, proto-communists um who are writing these kind of revolutionary tracks as well at the same as even before Marx. Um, so there is certainly on an intellectual level an awareness of this, but also on a practical level, it's clear that there is unrest across Europe and the Chartist movement is a sign of potential unrest across Britain.
SPEAKER_02If I could um add a maybe the corn the corn law was that in catching up uh yes, yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_06Um and the repeal of the corn laws, um, which is happening around this time. And Dara, you were raising this. Did you write about this or something at one point?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did I did it in A-levelism. I think I did a project on it at university, although that was a few years ago. So I do know quite a bit about corn laws and all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_06Again, for free trade, like with the like for example, with the disestablishment of the East India Company as well, um well, after the sepoy mutiny that happens in um well, mid 19th century. And again, a more sort of free trade element to you know, removing these kind of big royal charters. That at one time would have been seen as a kind of way of sort of ensuring maybe a job for certain people or ensuring a sort of regulated. Now we have our obviously very major modern criticisms of the organizations, but at the time there were people thinking, well, if we're just going to open all of these big organizations up for free trade, it would be a little bit like our modern equivalent of privatization in the 1980s. It would be sort of like, oh, well, okay, but what's going to come next? Is it just going to be profiteering individuals all over the place trying to make money for themselves? Um, I'd like to move on to the next one because I realise we're at half past and we still haven't finished um Disraeli. Um, and we've got two centuries of intellectual thought to cover. But I'm going to rush through this speech. Egamont's later reflections and dialogue with Sybil. And now, and can I not feel for men, my fellows, whatever be their lot, I know you will deny it, but you are in error, Sybil. You have formed your opinions upon tradition, not upon experience. The world that exists is not the world of which you have read. The class that calls itself your superior is not the same class as ruled in the time of your fathers. There is a change in them, as in all other things. And I participate that change. I shared it before, I knew you, Sybil. And if it touched me then, at least believe it does not influence me less now. Strength. If there be a change, said Sybil, it is because in some degree the people have learnt their lesson. Ah, dismissed from your mind these fallacious fancies, said Egremont. The people are not strong. The people never can be strong. Their attempts at self-vindication will end only in their suffering and confusion. It is civilization that is affected, that is affecting this change. It is an increased knowledge of themselves that teaches the educated their social duties. There is a dayspring in the history of this nation, which those who are on the mountaintops can as yet perhaps only recognize. You deem you are in darkness, and I see a dawn. The new generation of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not oppressors civil, as you persist in believing. They're intelligence, better than that. Their hearts are open to the responsibility of their position. But the work that is before them is no holiday work. It is not the fever of superficial impulse that can remove the deep fixed barriers of centuries of ignorance and crime. Enough that their sympathies are awakened. Time and thought will bring the rest. They are the natural leaders of the people, Sybil. Believe me, they are the only ones. Now, what are we getting here? Because I think we're getting multiple things. We're getting the nostalgia, but I think we're also getting a certain, a certain enlightenment tone also coming through here. This kind of idea. We're getting a platonic tone of the educated ruler. We're getting, yeah. But we're also getting this idea of the enlightenment opening up, you know. Uh in the previous century, you had this idea of the kind of um enlightened despot, you know, the ruler who opens his mind to the arts, to culture, to intellectualism. Um, what what what are we seeing Disraeli putting across here?
SPEAKER_04You can't use force, you have to reason with people. Yeah, yeah. That's the concept of the enlightenment. People can think for themselves. Uh, therefore, you can't just tell them to get back to work. That's you know, that was few listeners and what you can do nowadays. Yeah, you have to reason with them, and we need a new rationalism.
SPEAKER_06And of course, from a Foucault perspective, this would be integrate them into the system, it will pacify them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, Jack.
SPEAKER_04Um yeah, I'm I'm trying to grasp it. So the debate building up here, actually.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, so so so okay, for the the top half, he's he's um he's drawn this distinction between tradition and experience, or received notions of who we are and what and how things are organized and no longer no longer um applicable. So we have to wake up to a kind of change, I presume. The change is that he's referring to with the two nations, yeah, uh the social divide. And he goes on to talk about um, and so this is what I'm struggling to connect to, is that um the people can never be strong. Um their attempts at self-vindication will go and only in their suffering sort of the poor can't help themselves. Why is that? Um civilization that has affected that is affecting this change, is increased knowledge of themselves that teaches the educated their social duties.
SPEAKER_06Um master slave dialectic that we see in Hegel here, which is that there's a certain ignorance on both parts, and it's for the educated to sweep in and try and change this, because the poor won't recognize their situation in and of themselves. They need a sort of benevolent um higher class to look after them because otherwise they will persist in the kind of maintenance of the current social order, and he's saying that you know that the rich and guilty essentially of not trying to make that structural change to not look on these people with pity and to try and help them and support them and improve society.
SPEAKER_04The game view is also that the master needs the slaves, exactly.
SPEAKER_06So it's still and obviously it still involves a maintenance. Goes back to trust us, stay poor, we'll look after you. There's nothing saying make these poor the rich.
SPEAKER_04It's yeah, because it actually infantilizes them by saying that they can't look after themselves. Yeah, exactly. Either that or it says they don't have power and we'll never give them power, whichever completely, yeah. Yeah. Jack Dara.
SPEAKER_03I mean I think that seems to me to be to be true, true, to an extent, but um are they are they not in a situation where the the poor are genuinely powerless that there has to have to be some benevolent transformation from within the aristocratic class to to enable them to put out their own affairs? Certainly, certainly. Um at least to do so in a peaceful way. I mean I mean, presumably the poor wouldn't be powerful involved. Yeah, yeah, presumably that is a real fear.
SPEAKER_06Um and you've had the introduction of a state police force by this time with peel and the peel reforms and robots.
SPEAKER_00Don't forget there has been a lot of social unrest throughout this period. And a lot of a lot of attempted coups, a lot of attempted um, so there is a real fear that if something is not done to address this issue, then there is going to be a widespread revolution and maybe an overthrow of the state. Yeah, yeah, completely. Okay, that's not a very extreme example of it, but considering the number of different sorts of social unrests and amount of violence that was seen throughout this period.
SPEAKER_06And with again, with the immensity of people moving into cities, there is this idea that locations can be obviously condensed bubbles of potential political violence.
SPEAKER_00Well say people can travel a little bit more now as well, yeah, because this was at the beginning of the interception of the railways, although very early meant to the people were able to move around a bit more as well, travel to places, and then you've got things such as the media, which is where you know you can influence ideas, certainly, um, and yeah, influence other people that might have the same, you know, agreements as you all make the same grievances with you against the state and system. Yeah, and they can easily be influenced by that.
SPEAKER_03It's curious that it's the educated class or the the intelligence of the academics, presumably, who are the mediator between the poor and the aristocrats. Presumably there's a lot of overlap between the the academics and the and the wealthy. Certainly, certainly. How does how does this really understand that difference?
SPEAKER_06I mean, I I think he's saying that there's a generational change taking place, that there are certain elements of the rich that will become enlightened, will become um oh, would it be a moral education? Certainly, yeah, yeah. And and obviously um he is in the backdrop of a very morally repressive age. Again, Tories like him maybe have a nostalgia for an age that perhaps came before the Victorian generation, um, when yeah, sort of uh morals and social mores became extremely repressed. And we we've looked at someone like John Stuart Mill, who wasn't able to study at Oxford because he was uh uh dissenter, you know, he wasn't part of the Church of England, there's still very, very strict and actually compared for some of these thinkers compared to the 18th century, there's a feeling that actually society has sort of become morally sort of more stringent and kind of repressing itself. Um, so maybe people of an educated class who should be thinking about these issues should be looking to those lesser off than themselves, perhaps have siloed themselves away from social responsibility in an age of kind of moral repression and sort of keeping everything a little bit under wraps. Um do we have any more points about Israeli? Does anyone have anything?
SPEAKER_05I don't think it starts under uh you know the benevolent um landowner who bar uh builds these cottage estates. If you look at the Watson Manor, I mean it's cottage um also Coleman Mustard. Yeah, he builds all the cottages and schools and everything.
SPEAKER_06Very true. Um that's yeah, I know that's very interesting about the actual practicalities of living, um, because you have that sort of vision. Um, you also have it contrasted with someone like Robert Owen, who again is seen as this kind of proto-communist um visionary who's building very regimented towns um based around factories that he's starting to employ people um on the basis of their merit. Um and he's trying to create societies where you're measured against your kind of utility and your sort of, you know, you get a green wooden block, a painted green wooden block left next to your uh desk if you're succeeding in your quota for the day, but you get a red one if you've not managed to meet your target. Now, these people were seen as visionaries because they were housing their population, you know, these these work towns um were housing their population, providing them obviously with their pay, their accommodation, supporting their families. But at the same time, for for a for a Tory, it would be seen as kind of well, what what what's this going to lead to if this kind of idea of sort of monitoring people and keeping them kind of uh as pieces in a great mechanism, you know, again, this idea of uh nostalgia really not liking the kind of enlightenment legacy of a mechanistic society um comes through as well, I would say. Um, but we can move on from Egremont to the politics of, shouldn't say the politics of the 19th century, should say the politics of the 20th century, I'm afraid. Um this this should say the politics of the 20th century. The politics of the 20th century unfolded amid the collapse of certain old certainties, um, and the search for new forms of political and moral order. The industrial, imperial, and ideological revolutions that shaped the previous century that we've just seen culminated in global conflict, economic crisis, and the emergence of mass democracy. Liberalism, once the creed of progress and individual autonomy, was challenged by collectivist movements on both the left and the right, from socialism and communism to fascism and corporatism. The First World War discredited faith in rational progress and enlightenment universalism, giving rise to a generation of thinkers preoccupied with the limits of reason, the fragility of civilization, and the moral basis of political association. Across Europe, intellectuals grappled with the failure of idealism and the rise of totalitarian systems that sought to subsue the individual within the state. The interwar period witnessed the fragmentation of older traditions of authority, religious, moral, and aristocratic. While the post-1945 era brought welfare democracies, the Cold War, and the challenge of technocratic governance, political thought turned inward, asking not merely how to design political institutions, but what it meant to belong to a political community in an age of mass politics and ideological extremism. In the shifting landscape, philosophers began to re-examine the nature of political experience itself, questioning whether politics could ever be perfected by abstract reason, or whether it must be instead understood as a contingent historical and deeply human activity. Thank you, Jack. Mate. He was born in 1901 and he passed in 1990. He uh before we read this, he is the aunt to a sorry, he's the uncle to um a well-known um journalist today, Isabel Oakshot, um who is the partner of the deputy leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, who we've hosted at the University of Buckingham and I had a chat with when we were in Buckingham. Um so there's a link there. Um but Michael Oakshot differs substantially from his niece, and obviously I can't say what their political discussions would have been, whether they would have ever had one, but her opinions are certainly more on the libertarian sort of side that we've addressed in various seminars compared to Michael. Um he was among the most distinctive British political thinkers of the 20th century, a philosopher whose work bridged the intellectual traditions of idealism, historicism, and sceptical conservatism. He was born in Chelsfield, Kent, and educated at St. George's School, Harpenden, before reading history at Gonville and Keyes College, Cambridge. O Child was formed in the waning years of what we call British idealism. He studied under J.M.E. McTaggart and was influenced by the moral and metaphysical legacy of Hegelian thought, particularly as mediated through figures like F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bostonke. Yet his early encounters with the tragedies of the 20th century, he said briefly at the end of the First War, World War, and later lived through the ideological cataclysms of the 1930s, led him to distrust utopian ambitions of both political rationalism and historical determinism. His first major work, Experience in its modes of 33, established him as a philosopher concerned with the autonomy of human experience, rejecting the reduction of history, science, or practice to a single rational schema. After serving in military intelligence during the Second World War, Oakshot joined the London School of Economics, succeeding Harold Laske, much more to the left, as professor of political science in 1951, a striking transition from Marxist to metaphysical sceptic that symbolized the shifting intellectual climate of post-war Britain. It was there that he published his celebrated essay, Rationalism in Politics of 1947, articulating a vision of politics as a practical art grounded in tradition and experience rather than ideology or abstract reason. We see the Burkean tradition coming through here. Ochot's subsequent work, notably on human conduct of 75, deepened this philosophical skepticism into a theory of civil association, distinguishing between the moral practices of a free society and the instrumental logic of the purposive decline of systematic philosophy and the search for meaning within the pluralism of modern life. Through, though though wary of party labels, his thought came to represent a distinctly English form of conservatism, sceptical, historical, and humane, grounded in the fragile inheritance of civil order rather than in any programmatic creed. On being conservative, this was a text published in 56. Michael Oakshot presents conservatism not as an ideology or political program, but a disposition, a temper of mind that values what is familiar, protested and evolved over what is novel or uncertain. To be conservative for Oakshaw is to find satisfaction in existing arrangements and to prefer the known to the unknown, the tried to the untried, and the present to any speculative future. This attitude is not grounded in fear or hostility to change, but in an aesthetic and moral appreciation of the inherited world as a living achievement, the product of countless human choices and adjustments over time. He distinguishes this disposition from dogmatic traditionalism or reaction. It does not oppose change per se, but treats change as something to be approached cautiously, as repair rather than reconstruction. This is where his analogy of the ship and saving the ship away from the iceberg, so the state as the ship comes in. You're not there to you're not there to um make substantial changes, change course completely, but you're there to avoid certain dangers. Politics in this sense is not an arena for the pursuit of perfection, but for the maintenance of order and civility. Oakshot's conservatism is thus philosophical rather than partisan, a reflection on how human beings inhabit institutions, customs, and practices whose value cannot be captured by abstract reason or ideological design. In affirming the modest virtues of continuity and familiarity, Oakshot elevates the conservative disposition into a meditation on the art of living amidst the flux of modernity. So we've got a few little points here. I'll go through the first three. There's a couple of slides of this, we can analyze each one. So conservatism as a disposition, not dogma. My theme is not a creed or a doctrine, but a disposition. So what are we what are we maybe seeing in this in this passage? My theme is not a creed or a doctrine, but a disposition.
SPEAKER_04I think it's virtue-based. And you mentioned other people's slides on virtues, continuity, and feminine. I don't understand how those are virtues of individuals. What I do see is the idea that uh or the importance of judgment, steering a ship is a judge well. You can't just see an iceberg and avoid it. Some icebergs you can't see, etc. So it speaks to me of character, but I'm I don't see continuity and familiarity as virtues of character, so I'm not quite sure how you make good politicians out of this.
SPEAKER_06I think a certain idea of uh restraining oneself, of temperance, of moderation, would be seen as a virtue. Jack, you you you you know more about virtue than than me. No, not in a practical sense, I just mean in a scholarly sense. Um but I'm sure you could elaborate more on that. Um, but it also I feel relates a bit into Scruton as well. Continuity as a virtue. What what would you say, Jen?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, exactly. It it's it's but it's a practical virtue. That's that's especially pertinent to Oak Shot because he's quite careful to brand his conservatism as something that is practical and pragmatic, but which is completely independent of any moral or metaphysical or religious claims. Now, I personally see a big tension there. And I actually think that when he goes into that line of thinking, he's no longer a conservative, he's a full out, he's a full-out libertarian because he he's completely um disinterested in terms of what people are doing with freedom. It's for him the project of governance is maximizing freedom within the rules. He reads just like Hayek.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um he reads just like Locke. I think the distinctive notion of conservatism is that freedom is constituted by institution, which we have seen in Burke and Scruton. Um but indeed the one common thing, which maybe you doesn't you don't find in Locke is this emphasis on disposition. Uh he's he's very good at showing how conservatism is something like an instinct, yeah. And in that sense, very much allied with practical virtues. Um we might call cardinal virtues, let's say in Aristotle, uh temperance.
SPEAKER_06An instinct, a precondition to prefer the known to the unknown. Yeah, exactly, which is true, technically speaking.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, with cardinal virtues, you come back to a metaphysical position, whereas he whereas he's not accepting that. Yeah, yeah. So um not seeing the criteria by which you see good political judgment versus bad use. I think it's I think when he says true. That's my instincts. You have no visibility, there's no evidence.
SPEAKER_06I think it's the idea of moderation and temperance and and and and and sort of restraining oneself from making too drastic a decision in either direction, because he's obviously not saying that everything needs to be maintained, but he's saying that we need to be we you know like it. It is, and and and it is sort of this idea that this is my cross to die on. If I'm going to make a judgment about something that needs to change, I need to wholeheartedly believe that it's something structurally that I can justify that needs to change. I can't just you know, on a whim say, well, this is wrong and this needs to be uh reformed or this is you know um something that's fundamentally you need to you need to invest yourself in in the project of if you want to transform things, you need to be wholeheartedly, you know, this is this is where I stand and need to at least have contemplated it. And then yeah, it is very Burkean.
SPEAKER_04But big decisions aren't whim versus authenticity, they are two very finely tuned you know options, you know, um two-child limits on on benefits versus no two-child limit on benefits, they're both tough situations. Um it's a tough decision to make, whichever way you go. But I'm not seeing how you evaluate a politician's decision to go one way rather than rather than the other.
SPEAKER_06I guess the virtue is the deliberation when we're looking at the backdrop of this text. It's it's not being a stuffy, stuffy old school parliament of the 1950s that doesn't do anything, but at the same time, it's not a uh ideologically Soviet kind of uh you know, the supreme Soviet in Moscow making decisions on that basis. You know, it's uh it's a pre the virtue is the deliberation, the contemplation, the moderation.
SPEAKER_04I mean, what you're saying is it's not it's not Jeremy Corbyn hardline ideology, yeah. It's um you know uh new left or some other you know soft line ideology.
SPEAKER_06But just I think almost the process of deliberation. Um so it doesn't it doesn't necessarily you know you could you can have wholehearted opinions of course, but you have to be able to self-criticize, kick the tires of your opinions. No, you know, no with withdrawing into just complete conservatism in the sense of like everything is great because it's been passed down, but it's better than heading off in some radical direction without thinking about it. Yeah, I suppose it's his argument. You may be pretty liberal and still have that character, yeah, yeah. Um, but this is why obviously he is very much seen as a moderate thinker.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, what you were saying there sounds just like something John Stuart Mill would write. I mean, maybe I mean he will maybe read him in the previous series. Um but yeah, so but but what is interesting is is that the argument goes to almost ecology in terms of what kind of beings we are. We're adverse to change, naturally, but it's something we have to adapt to. Yeah. But then he builds up the argument very carefully, so he begins with like tradespeople. Okay, so wherever you have projects and you have tools, you you want the tools that are tried and tested, not radical new solutions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um there is a class of people whose vocation it is to go and explore radical new solutions. He says those are the middle people, they're not the people doing the jobs, but they're not people who are so divorced from the job that they don't know anything about it, but are somewhere between.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, and then he and then he sort of starts to build this towards politics. He says, Well, rules of conduct are just like tools. So we have rigid rules of conduct so that we know how to pass bills and we know how that whole process is going to play out, whatever happens, and we know how we vote, and we know how taxes work, and we know that the government's definitely not going to say this tomorrow because that would be so outlandish and and impossible for them to pull off. So we can then plan for our futures again, very like Hayek. Um, and then by that point, you're already in the sphere of politics. Yeah, but then he yeah, then he he he he makes this this sharp distinction between governance, you know, concerning itself with the rules of of of conduct, and and then you know whatever you want to do with in your own private spheres. Yeah. It's interesting, but it's it's it's very I mean you you use the title to call him a sceptical conservative, I say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, certainly that bail your foot in sort of the traditional yeah, I mean he he in abstract he's saying a lot of the right things, but then when he gets to actual, you know, in terms of like the relationship between conservatism and culture, yeah, no longer there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03A very modern notion. I mean, uh I was reading it and feeling that he's not so opposed to Satcher, yeah. He's part of that track of that that um direction which conservatism went down, where it had no interest in culture only in economics.
SPEAKER_06However, as except except three reads, he will find small and slow changes more tolerable than large and sudden. So this is a very organic sense of reform, a certain sense of, well, in the Disraeli sense, to reform for maintenance of certain goods that we have we have inherited from the past. So certain things that we do cherish, um, whether that be kind of you know nostalgic ones, monarchy, uh, you know, um the kind of more regal sense of well, parades and these kind of things. Oh, thank you, Jack. Yeah, that'd be lovely. Um parades and um these kind of things, and they bring a sense of community and a sense of social cohesion, but reforms to other elements of society um will be a process of changing to conserve, to maintain, you know, to adapt to a modern age and integrate new elements to be able to conserve the things that do bind us together and we cherish. Um so do we have any thoughts on on yeah, on that passage? He would find small, slow changes more tolerable than large and sudden, because I would say that that opposes the idea that he's in a Thatcherite line, because the thing I find obviously so ironic about Thatcher is that I can't I can't really see a conservative bone in her body in many senses. There really isn't an element of conserving very much, um, even the idea of a society which both Disraeli and Oakshot are fully for, you know, conserving the things that do bind us. It's completely done away with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, maybe I'm being a bit unfair too. But I do know what you mean. Um but it would conserve he would conserve the culture for its own sake, but not because of the specific culture that it is. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, so he he buys into the logic that this stuff does bind us together in a particular way, and if you start to tamper with that, who knows what it's going to do. Which is interesting.
SPEAKER_06But perhaps a good analogy would be we had this debate about whether certain controversial elements of museums should be taken down, whether they should be so you had on the one side the kind of left who were saying they should be taken down, put away, they don't they don't need to be in an exhibition, um, whether they be racist, whether they be uh a symbol of kind of occupation, a symbol of kind of bygone mores. Um you had the the the right who would say no, this is part of our tradition, part of our heritage, we need to maintain them for understanding the past. Um, but then you had the kind of adapt and change idea, which you see with some museums. I certainly remember when I was in St. Andrews, the um the St Andrews um museum um had this idea that what you do is you add you add in the past. Sorry, we're having some Wi-Fi issues by the we we may have just had a Wi-Fi issue, but I should continue. Add in new elements of the exhibition that integrate to adapt and change and thereby conserve and thereby reform to conserve. Now that's that's that obviously that's completely out of the context of of Oakshot's time, but I'm just you know, I'm throwing that out there as a kind of analogy for I think where he would sit in this kind of paradigm.
SPEAKER_03It's a yeah, it's a good it's a good balance. Um you say they're on a parallel to the Israeli social harmony reform only to preserve. Um and indeed, um this is I think you find that in Berg. Yeah, this idea that he Okshot, I don't think, fully understands what he's saying on this subject. He says he does begin, you know, he says, maybe this is me too much of a philosopher coming at him, but he's writing a text that is fairly accessible, but he says early on, change is a threat to identity. Um, and you know, ecologically speaking, that's true. But well, well, that's maybe what I'm actually gonna query, because some change is intrinsic to identity. Yeah, you know, there were there were forms that grow and mutate, and we grow, you know, we were children, and then we're then we're adults, so then we're old, and and and then that that that change is intrinsic to our identity, you know, and it's part of yeah. I mean, in a sense, you adapt to it, or you maybe you fail to. Um Burke uh maybe did a a better job of of bringing that point home. Yes. Um for Burke, change is it actually conservative, he defined conservative as changing well, something like this. John Henry Newman's a similar age, actually uh three years before uh Disraeli and uh died in the same year, I noticed. Um he used to say that to be good is to change, to be perfect is to have changed often. Um so if you know how to change well, this is part of an authentic conservatism. I think he is he doesn't he understands that at some level, but he even even Oakshot is a bit cautious about the idea.
SPEAKER_06But I think Burke is quite open. Open about we'll be used that analogy during the Burke one about rather than sledgehammering the whole wall down, you remove the brick that's faulty or you remove the rotten element and replace that, you don't smash down the whole wall.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Of course, Burke also talks about attending to the state with a reverence, as though you were attending to the wounds of your father.
SPEAKER_06So certainly yeah, but and just quickly to be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, present laughter to utopian bliss. In this we see yeah, a suspicion of radical change or rationalist politics, as we've discussed. There's an emphasis on inheritance, um, experience and affection for that that works. Yeah, a parallel to Disraeli's social harmony, reform only to preserve and and present laughter is also a uh, you know, this this might sound very romantically British, but if you go back to discussions in the what were famous during our kind of English Enlightenment, the coffee houses, um, so the equivalent of the salons in in France, we had the coffee houses. The thing that um what Voltaire even comments on is that in England you can you can you can laugh about these things, and this is a tradition that carries through to this age, and you know, some people might criticize it for us for uh as a symptom of not taking the political system too seriously, but for for many observers, it's been seen as a virtue of the British political system, which is that for a long time, whether it be religion, whether it be politics, discussion in the alehouse, in the in the coffee house, um has been one of a kind of you know, a semi-jov a jovial affair. It's not it's not a serious, you know, if you start laughing about a king or you start laughing about the church and some of its issues, um, it's not something where someone in the corner of the pub of a coffee house is going to report you and dob you in for making some shun of of a leader or of a of a certain um religious disposition at that time. It's something where actually laughter is something that's a a release. Um, and perhaps trying to idealize a state where you have a certain vision of where you want society to go could maybe remove that very organic, very unique British element to political and and religious discourse. Government is the umpire. The office of government is merely to rule, to preserve peace, not by imposing uniformity, but by enforcing general rules, a general framework. Um this is also an element that comes across in this analogy of the ship, because there's this other element that um the the state is there to to guide and maybe not to row. It's not it's not it's not sort of really doing the heavy lifting, it's it's to direct society in certain ways into certain morally kind of uh valid, morally um acceptable grounds, but it's not there to do the kind of heavy sort of this is this is the vision of the future, it's there to just help and aid uh the way that our society is going. It's about order, it's not about perfection. Um it's a government, it's a government that's a guardian of fair play, not a social engineer. And this again resonates with these one nation views of responsible and a certain idea of limited stewardship. Um, and stewardship was something we were discussing again last week.
SPEAKER_03Uh but it seems to be quite strange that that on this point Orgshot would consider himself to be in the vein of of Disraeli because Disraeli certainly had a very clear moral vision for unifying two nations, the two nations. Not like the session here. Um Disraeli had a very positive vision for for I think for the so for social reform and for tending to the poor. Yeah. And Disraeli, Ogeshot says that's nothing to do with government, government just sets the rule for people to talk about that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, that's all. You could argue that in Disraeli's time there was a a risk to stability that needed something to be done, and in Oakshot's time, there was maybe less of a risk. And what I'm what I'm seeing, um, and this is a philosophy of process and of character, it is not a philosophy of consequences. The idea that we steer and tweak and um enforce general laws uh is an idea we don't take responsibility for the things that do happen that we need for the things we fail to achieve. And I'm I kind of really don't really buy into that as a value statement. Um, I think politicians are there to strive for consequences.
SPEAKER_06And as much as Disraeli had a vision, Jack, I would also say, yeah, similarly, um I don't believe that Disraeli was advocating any heavy lifting in a sense by the enlightened class. He wasn't saying that they're going to then suddenly transform he's not, you know, if you were going to say that an enlightened class was going to basically transform society, you'd be heading in the idea in the direction of Gramsci and this kind of idea that there would be an enlightened intellectual class that would lead everyone into this great future. I don't think Disraeli has a vision of any kind of heavy lifting taking place from these enlightened people. It's just that they would be better rulers to bring these, what he sees as two divided aspects of the nation together and to synthesize them and in the kind of critical way that Bruce was raising earlier, um, perhaps to yeah, avoid conflict more than to actually improve their lot. Um, even though he does talk about improving their lot, one could argue that there's no there's no structural changes that Disraeli is advocating, nor is there any particular structural changes that Oakshaw is advocating.
SPEAKER_03This is the point I actually wanted to come to earlier. Um maybe you've got time to inject with it. Uh in defense of Disraeli, I would suggest he's quite sincere. And I would suggest this because he seems to me to be very much an outsider. Partly because of the heritage issue you talked about, but also I was reading quite carefully today the the this early chapter where he got he gives you a bit of a history of the politics and some of the key players in the politics from the leading up to the glorious revolution through which is today. Yeah, and he holds very unconventional opinions, highly unconventional opinions. He thinks that James II was was innocent of puppishness. Um he thinks that actually um return to communion with Rome is the dominant opinion of the public, and that's why there wasn't a papal plot. Because if there was now I see why you're defending him. He says this in the text, he said he says if if that if that was real, it would have happened. Yeah, but he believes that is the dominant sentiment, and people are not doing anything about it. Um he yeah, he a lot of things like this. He he had a he just had a very nuanced opinion on everything. He he he's very original. Yeah, I would um uh I was quite um intimidated by everything he would you know how he goes through all these different subjects. So I do think I do think it really is is sincere within attempts to save the conservative party by giving them a positive function. Um you know he he's not um yeah, he doesn't seem to me to be a character who's banking on his own. He's not like he was there before and came up with this new idea. He's he's coming into the party.
SPEAKER_06I would agree, I I I do think he's quite authentic, and I think Victoria sees that because she certainly um preferred him to the grand old man of Gladstone in the rivalry between Gladstone and had a favourite, yeah. Now, obviously, again, on a power basis, you might not be surprised that she would prefer a Tory, but Gladstone was was certainly a popular figure within the nation, yeah. Um but she still preferred Disraeli to Gladstone, and I think there is a certain level of authenticity that you do see in Disraeli. Um uh but yeah, I I I agree it's very apparent.
SPEAKER_03But and then and then just one more thing, I I mean, i I agree with your previous point about yeah, he I I he probably isn't going about to leverage all the might of the state to correctly issues, but people do have to take some responsibilities themselves at some level, that would be a very common intuition. Yeah, um, but it's it's it is singular that that Oakshot I I think he does he does he does throw a hard line there. That's how I read this chapter that he he said like Israeli would be one dreamer among others in Oakshot's language. Um the state has no moral responsibility except just to maintain the rules of the discourse. In that he's he's pure libertarian, and not an ounce of conservatism in that, I would say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um and this is true, and and when we look at this idea of conservatism and freedom, Oakshot does say it's not all inconsistent to be conservative in government and radical elsewhere. You can have a society of free and creative individuals within a stable framework set out by government. Order enables progress, and freedom is sustained by restraint. Um, and there's a philosophical underpinning of this idea of sort of one nation conservatism that we've been discussing. But yeah, I would certainly say that Oakshop is developing further than Disraeli in terms of moving away from that kind of set sort of um social responsibility idea. But again, returning to what we first discussed about um Oakshop moderation and reconciliation, these are the virtues, you know, to restrain, to deflate, to pacify, and to reconcile. The task of politics for Oakshop is balance, not agitation. It prevents the encounter of dreams that breeds division. This is a core of a one nation ethos reconciling classes, interests, and identities. So it's not about being at loggerheads with one another, not about um really fighting politics for the sake of politics, but about really trying to decipher what is the best at that point in time for society. Is that a maintenance of the status quo of what is in place, or is it a turn towards a change, a reform of an element of society?
SPEAKER_03Well m this is maybe uh this is this is the I think this is the point where he breaks apart a little. Well completely, maybe. I haven't had a lot of time to think about it. But Chesterson used to say that um what did he used to say? Um I don't remember his precise line, but he said you he basically said you couldn't be completely tolerant because there were certain ideas. Oh yeah, there is a sort that stops sort, that is the only sort that should be stopped, and that's a very conservative idea, and that's not in in Oakshot at all, from what I read. And and partly on this thing, so so he he he's into change, which is great, yeah. Um in a healthy, healthy change, he likes healthy change, yeah. But the rules of the discourse are inflexible, and what happened when the discourse wants to change the rules of the discourse, he doesn't have an answer for that, I suspect.
SPEAKER_04That's because he's given up on metaphysics.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, I mean he's even philosophical. Yeah, I mean he he said he had a ph philosophical heritage, but I find him a bit confused on this point.
SPEAKER_06I think this is this is very much with the context of ideological calamity that he's experienced in the lead up to this. That um that yeah, if you change the structure, you and if you fundamentally question the structure, the sort of or the yeah, in a kind of more Marxist sense, the superstructure of society, um you you risk moving in the direction of one of these totalitarian regimes that he's seen only obviously 10 years before two so two totalitarian regimes take dominance across Europe. Um but I do think, yeah, even that choice of the word pacify does start to bring into question, you know, how far is he saying that kind of political discussion can properly take place if you're pacifying people, if you're pacifying opinion, you're not just kind of yeah, jumping down the um the disabil the the pressures in society for change.
SPEAKER_04And if if if he has no view, if he has no ideology, then he has no rational framework, as you say, to to to justify one of the rules that he's he suggests we should follow. If he has no he's not holding on to the status quo, which I I think is is a kind of ideology, you know, keep the status quo as a kind of ideology, um, then he's allowing change. But once you allow change, then how do you ration rationalize he is a kind of a relativism almost, although he thinks he's not. Yes, but how does he justify that?
SPEAKER_03He tries to root it in the intuitive or self-evident aspect of pragmatism, which is a is a in sorry it's just dogmatism. Well, I'm I'm torn on pragmatism, like William James and stuff, but it could it seem to be sort of going in that territory.
SPEAKER_04It it can work, it can be it can be um attractive and convincing, but I don't think ultimately it has a it doesn't have a foundation. I'm not sure where the foundation is. If you if you're if you don't have a history, if you don't have a god, if you don't have a um an ideology, then you're just ranting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we can continue that discussion it's the boundary, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06And we're at the boundary of our series. Thank you for attending the heritage series. It's been a genuine pleasure tracing the evolution of conservative thought from Plato and Augustine through Berg, Demistra, Scruton, and finally to the modern idea of the One Nation. Your reflections, your discussions have made this series one of our most engaging, yeah, I'd say. Looking ahead, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Would you like a short review and reflection session next week? I think we've probably answered that already. That is a no. Um to consolidate these ideas. Um, but what we are thinking of doing is moving straight on to our the revolution of thought beginning on Thursday, the first of December. Either way, thank you for the insight, humour, and curiosity you've all brought to the table. It's exactly what keeps this club alive. Stick around for a drink or just get drunk on the sweet nectar of knowledge. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you to everyone online. It's been a pleasure in this series. Thank you. Um, and yeah, we're currently penning our next series, so stay tuned for more uh intellectual gobbits, and hopefully, Jack and I can bolster our podcast count as well in the meantime. Yeah, yeah, indeed, indeed. But yeah, until then, uh thank you very much for attending.