Gareth Stedman Jones

History in one Dimension

Britain in 1914 was as near to revolution as it has ever been in the 20th century.
A dispirited government, barely united and effetely led, groped its way between right-wing rebellion backed by military force in Ulster, and a militant
syndicalist Labour movement freed from respectable leadership. Three decades
later, a Labour party won a greater and more convincing electoral victory than
any working-class party has won before or since in Western Europe. Between
these two landmarks lies a period as yet scarcely charted by serious historiography: a period beloved by scrapbook historians and television raconteurs
the roaring twenties, skirts two inches above the knee, trial marriage, toothpaste inpowder out, the General Strike, Larwoods body-line action; 2 million
unemployed, the king who renounced a throne for love; committed poets, the
Oxford Union debate; the rise of Hitlet and the Loch Ness monster. Profound
historical developments and epiphenomenal trivia jostle together like cards in an
unshuffled pack. Sometimes we are dealt Victor Sylvester and crossword
puzzles, sometimes Stalinist purges and the Spanish civil war. But it doesnt
really matter what we are dealt; whatever the cards we hold in our hand, they
always add up, so we are told, to a composite picture of the twenties or the
thirties.
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The historian refrains from reflection, so the professional sentimentalist gratefully steps into the breach, touting assorted recollections
of the best-forgotten banalities of our forefathers. Gossip decks herself
out in all the trappings of history; so successfully that she finds herself
solemnly inscribed on university reading lists. And this situation is fair
enough whilst historians run away from the attempt to create any
serious historical dialectic. Yet until it is done, the peculiarly murky
contours of contemporary Britain will never be understood. These
years are littered with unsolved historical mysteries. So long as they
remain unsolved, it is unreasonable to expect any historian to present
this period as an historical totality. Nevertheless, any historian who
wishes to achieve real historical understanding of it, must confront and
illuminate four major and inter-related themes, which dominate this
entire epoch, and constitute the essential matrices of any interpretation
in depth. A. J. P. Taylor whose English History 191419451, has just
appeared as a contribution to the Oxford History of England, has
provided the first continuous and lucidly written narrative of the
whole period. But he, too, has failed to arrest the atrophy of any
conceptual schematization of modern British history.
The first of these inter-related themes concerns the attitude of the
ruling class towards the prospects of social democracy or perhaps more
remotely, socialism. It was not until 1918 that the propertied classes
were first fully confronted with the task of managing a strong and
coherent working-class movement in an arena of full political democracy. The situation was potentially dangerous. The Labour party vote
rose from 400,000 in 1910 to nearly 2,400,000 in 1918, and the end of
the First World War was accompanied by a crescendo of shop-floor
militance. Baldwins torpid prophylactics seem to have cast a spell over
the inquiring historian. Despite its moderate leadership, the Tory
party remained aggressively right wing throughout the 1920s and the
1930swhenever it broke away from liberal or Baldwinian moorings,
it waged crude and bitter class warfare (counter-revolutionary war
against the Bolsheviks in 1918, the Trades Disputes Act of 1927,
unemployment cuts in 1931 and Imperial preference in 193132). When
and how far the Conservatives accepted political democracy and how
this affected party strategy has never been seriously considered.
Indeed the various groupings within the Conservative party still
remain obscure. It is still not known for instance, except in the vaguest
of generalities, who supported Mondism and similar policies of class
collaboration, nor how far the character and social theory of the
Conservative party was modified by the infusion of Lloyd Georges
business elite. It is arguable that the ruling class was prevented from
provoking social war, more by accident than intention. The only
occasion when the Labour movement ever mustered enough self
confidence to look dangerous came in the four years after 1918;
precisely the time when the powerful lunatic fringe of the Unionist
party had been diverted by the brilliant opportunism of Lloyd George
into some comparatively harmless bloodletting in Ireland. After 1922
the heart went out of the Labour movement. The Triple Alliance
broke up, the post-war boom collapsed, wages fell, unemployment
1

English History 19141945, A. J. P. Taylor, Oxford, 45s.

49

soared, syndicalism declined, the employers began a long and successful

counter-offensive. The; Conservatives were free to harass and demoralize a cowed sullen working class as much as they wished. The
General Strike completed the processand set a tone of embittered
mass apathy and indiiference that produced the bathos of 1931 and
cleared the stage for the political mediocrities of the National Government. But whatever hypothesis is suggested, it will remain speculative
until some more structured study is made of the social and mental
universe of the working class between the wars. In particular, the new
working class engaged in light industry around London, car workers
and electrical workerswhat Bevin called the third classremain
inscrutable, save for a mention by Priestley and a digression from
Orwell.
The second major theme which dominates the history of modern
Britain concerns the transmutation of British Imperialism. It is after
1918 that the first fissures in Britains imperial structure really become
evidentalthough of course, they had been foreshadowed by British
experiments in decolonization in Ireland throughout the 19th century.
The Irish troubles from 1911 to 1922 created a serious crisis in the
British ruling class; on a lesser scale the rise of Indian nationalism came
near to creating one in the 1930sa pattern to be repeated at Abadan
and at Suez. Perhaps, more important, the old certainty about the
function of the Empire was shaken. This did not come about through
any awakening of ethical consciousness, rather from the contradictory influences the Empire exerted on the British economy. If the
slump caused severe dislocations in Western Europe, it had catastrophic effects on what Milner called our undeveloped estate. The
prices of primary products plummeted in the 1930s, shifting the
balance of trade decisively in Britains favour. Great Imperial combinesUnilever, Tate and Lyle, Dunlopbenefited from the low cost
of raw materials and were able to maintain their prices and profits; the
rest of British industry gained as far as it profited from the low cost of
imports. At the same time, the ruin of primary producers had disastrous
effects on manufactured exports and so on the level of employment,
which had particularly been geared to under-developed parts of the
Empire. Exports from 1931 to 1933 were at half the 1913 level, and by
1938 had only increased one sixth when they were hit by another
recession. Hence the depressed industriesLancashire cotton, Yorkshire woollens, the Tyne and Clydeside shipyards, coal mines and
steel mills. The Imperial connection had accentuated the sclerosis of
Britains staple industriesand the Imperialist nostrum-tariffs were
irrelevant to the problem. How far there was any conflict between
traditional extractive imperialism relying on cheap labour and monopoly prices, and the new manufacturing industries (capital goods,
chemicals, electrical) whose interests lay in the growth of an industrial
sector in primary economies, has hardly begun to be discussed. It is
also possible that the economic malaise of the 1930s first made
apparent a further contradiction between these new capital goods
industries and the old staple British export industries (textiles, iron and
steel). On the one hand, these industries depended on high prices and
consumer demand (versus extractive imperialism), yet on the other
hand they relied on under-development and the absence of competing
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colonial industries (versus capital goods). Without some such examination, the rifts within the ruling class attitudes towards imperialism
which developed much more prominently after the Second World
War, will defy explanation. Taylor hardly mentions these problems. He
suggests that the British in India never recovered morale after Amritsar
which is probably true. There seems to have been some tacit agreement amongst the British ruling class in the 1920s that India would
have to goonly this can explain the extraordinary demise of Churchill
in 1930. But unless we care to interpret them, as simple idealist supporters of the Commonwealth, the question remainswhy and how
they changed their minds. The problem also involves explanation at
another level. The empire between the wars provided jobs for at least
20,000 administrators, from pro-consuls to military police. Family
traditions were also involved; a whole imperial culture had been
created, the British people were indoctrinated by an imperial ideology
from the cradle to the grave: by schools, youth organizations, the
press, triumphal processions, broadcasting, and the church. No detailed study has ever been made of this phenomenon. But it is difficult
to believe that it did not seriously affect the character of politics
between the wars: especially since the beginnings of Imperial crisis,
must in India and Egypt at least, have become discernible to all in the
1930s. No historian could write a history of modern Britain with the
Imperial factor omittedbut this is generally what has happened.
Appeasement constitutes the third major problem of the period. Here
Taylor is on home ground, and is able to conduct a skilful and well
documented defence of his own highly idiosyncratic interpretation of
British foreign policy and the causes of the Second World War.
Recently there has been a large amount of research into European
diplomatic archives. Yet, in the course of unearthing a welter of
minutiae, most of these historians have blurred the salient points of
international relations between the wars. Perhaps the greatest distortion has occurred in the treatment of Soviet Russia. Most diplomatic historians and Taylor himself, seem to consider that ideological
considerations will always be subordinated to diplomatic realpolitik.
However ingeniously this is worked out, the shortcomings of this
interpretation remain obvious. On the simplest plane it takes no
account of Revolutionary Communism and international appeal; there
is considerable evidence that the red bogey disturbed the equilibrium of
many of the most perfectly trained civil service minds. British Imperialism thought itself particularly affected. The beginnings of the
Russian Revolution were regarded with equanimityat last the
Tsarist threat to the Indian frontier would be removed, indeed some
suggest that the British take advantage of the situation and advance
into Turkestan. But contrary to expectation the Revolutionary
government maintained itself intact, and added to traditional fears of
tsarist expansion, were the more intangible fears of an export of subversive ideology. There were constant scares in the 1920s (without
much justification) that the British working class might turn towards
Communism; there was also the more real fear that revolutionary
agitators might infiltrate the imperial domains. India was thought to be
particularly vulnerable to the incursion of sinister agents of the
Comintern. The natural course of British foreign policy was anti51

Bolshevik, and it was quite logical in the early 1930s to welcome the
strengthening of Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Russia. In their
attitude to Mussolini the National Government politicians showed
little equivocation. MacDonald carried on a long and amicable correspondence with Il Duce; Churchill wrote eulogistic articles about the
Great Dictator in the press, and Austen Chamberlain even spent his
family holidays with him. Their policies in Spain and Abyssinia gave
the strongest possible indication of their pro-Fascist tendencies. This
does not mean that they necessarily approved of Hitlers policy in the
years immediately before the Second World War. Hitler posed as great
a threat to British interests as to those of Russia. But it did mean that
their anti-Communist ideology prevented them from taking the one
step that would make their guarantees worth more than the paper they
were written on. Whatever the calculations behind Stalins foreign
policy, Communism was seen as a hostile ideology, just as Nazism
was, and it was this rather than diplomatic misunderstandings or
purblindness that lay at the root of British indecision. Taylor suggests
that the bulk of the British people only came to regard the Soviet
Union as less wicked than Germany after Hitlers attack on Russia.
But this presupposes an articulated attitude to Russia which in the
1930s hardly seems to have existed. What is striking about popular
British attitudes to Russia in the 1930s is their ill-informed confusion.
Opinions swayed quite arbitrarily from the purge-ridden dictatorship
to the workers state, from the giant with feet of clay to the steam
roller. After the first two years of the War, however, pro-Russian
enthusiasm reached a pitch which was not really extinguished until the
later years of the Labour Government. Britain and Russia, it was
thought, were both fighting a peoples war. This helps to explain the
fierce retrospective hatred for the old diplomacy that played such a
large part in the 1945 election. Munich had not merely been a blow to
national pride, it had also been the apotheosis of a decade of reactionary
raison d tat.
Lastly any historian who confronts modern British history must reflect
upon the impact of two world wars on the structure and mythology of
modern Britain. The British people were able to see themselves as the
one nation that had successfully fought two major wars from start to
finish. Victory in both cases affected left a lasting mark on Britains
attitude to itself as a nation. The effect of the two wars were quite
distinct, and between them, they shaped the fate of British society.
The First World War changed the whole concept of war, and with it,
the whole concept of society. This was true for all classes. 19th century
moral certainties of imperial mission never recovered from the shellshock that they received on the Somme. War no longer meant the
parading of flags on remote frontiers, manned by hard-core professional armies. It had been brought home with singularly traumatic
effect. This was not only apparent in the work of the war poets. It
marked the first decisive estrangement of the literary intelligentsia from
the ethical raison dtre of imperialism. No other country produced a
comparable efflorescence of war literature. But in no other country had
the nexus between the middle class and the military elite been so loose.
To a large extent the empire had been policed by Scots and Irishmen.
52

France, Germany and Austria had experienced decades of conscription.

The British came, as virgins to war. No disenchantment has ever been
more intense. The dominant tone of literature in the 1920s was
cynicism. It was the only common ground shared by two distinct
modes of writing: on the one hand, the modern movement which
traced its roots back to 19th century French symbolism, on the other
hand, disillusion nurtured by experience of war. In the 1930s some
form of symbiosis occurred. It took the form of political commitment.
But an underlying style also pervaded it: this was an obsession with
violence. War was not only demystified, but glorified in its
demystification. This was an apparent in the works of Auden, as in
those of Roy Campbell, in Hemingway as much as Wyndham Lewis.
For the working class, the First World War was also an unprecedented
experience, and no class has ever gone into war with more patriotic
enthusiasm. The effects were diffuse. In the first place war had involved
an unprecedented mobilization of the labour force in the war effort,
had involved temporary experiments in the government control of
industry. But at another level, it was a war of racketeers, hard-faced
men who had done well out of the war, as Baldwin called them. Its
immediate effects were radicalization: the strengthening of movements
for workers control, the hands off Russia campaign and an enormous
increase in the Labour vote. Working-class euphora was short-lived.
Faced with a hegemonic class determined to reimpose the status quo
ante, demoralization came swiftly. The press lords, the business elite,
and the politicians had stayed at home. No self-doubts deflated their
vulgar pomposity. The imperial crisis of confidence was confined to its
lower echelons. The continued supremacy of a ruling gerontocracy
shrouded a profound moral malaise.
The effects of the Second World War were quite different. Politicians
and radio commentators put it over as the peoples war, and many
accepted the fact, especially as large sections of the ruling class had
been pulled into it backwards. Yet if it was the peoples war it must
have been the most contradictory ever fought. It was not the people,
but Churchill and Conservative MPs who had ousted Chamberlain.
Nor indeed was this ousting the dramatic demystifying process that it
has sometimes been assumed to be. Churchill, in fact, defended
Chamberlain from the government benches. Chamberlain remained the
leader of the Conservative party almost until he died, and no revenge
was taken on the other leading appeasers. The transfer of power from
the National Government to the Wartime Coalition was not the result
of popular pressure, conflict was restricted to the floor of the house;
giant sectional rifts within the Conservative party were muffled under
an outward show of unanimity. The people were let into the secret
afterwards, and transformed it to the statute of a heroic myth. Yet
there was another sense in which the myth of a peoples war became a
reality. The Second World War after 1940 became the most total war
ever fought. Total mobilization entailed total involvement, and total
involvement changed the conception that the British people had of
themselves. In the inter-war period the historical process had remained
remarkably cryptic. Slumps had arbitrarily made millions redundant.
Some hidden process had hit capitalists and workers alike. Men had
remained powerless in the grip of blind impersonal forces. Socialism no
53

less than capitalism seemed unable to explain, let alone control the
economic process. The characteristic reaction was a feeling of impotence which revealed itself in mass apathy. The war after 1940
presented an intensely dramatic contrast to the inertia of capitalist
economy. Issues and choices became cleareven stark. The British
people no longer felt hostage to events beyond their control and even
beyond their comprehension. Threat of annihilation brought a
moment of existential truth; and the result was a feeling of historical
liberationthis was the paradox of Dunkirk and the summer of 1940.
Epic simplification did not last out the course of the war, but enough
remained to inspire the result of 1945.
Unlike the First World War, there was very little tension caused by any
imbalance between military and civilian contributions to the war
effort. Again, unlike the First World War, Britain emerged with a
thoroughly discredited ruling class. Appeasement had become a dirty
word associated with it, and has remained so, ever since despite
desperate attempts at reinterpretation. Despite Churchill, and despite
appeals to vote national, a decisive mandate was given for the first
time to a Labour Government. 1945 or rather 1947 marked the end of
an epoch in British history. The Labour Government maintained its
impetus in its first two years of office. But its legislative achievements
were really no more than the confirmation of victories which had
already been won by the Labour movement during the war. After 1947
the cold war, a renewed offensive of the ruling class called new
conservatism and the ideological stasis of the Labour leadership
ushered Britains epic moment out. The clashes of the inter-war years
were moribund, opposing classes had entrenched themselves in new
positions, which have more or less dominated British society ever
since.
No serious attempt to interpret 20th century Britain can avoid taking
some position on these four related themes. But with the exception of
his analysis of appeasement Taylor nearly succeeds in doing so.
Mr Taylor is a master of narrative history and his contribution to the
Oxford history makes compelling reading. In particular his account of
both world wars is the most succinct and well written yet to have
appeared. He is at his best when he is discussing the manoeuvres of
pure power politics. Like Beaverbrook he feels an especial affinity for
Lloyd George. This is not surprising. Lloyd George after 1918 was
very much a politicians politician. Questions of principle were
sacrificed to brilliant opportunism. Here Taylor is in his element. No
awkward ideas. Politics temporarily became diplomacy. Again,
particularly in his description of the First World War, Taylor is able to
produce a sparkling distillation of the factional conflicts between the
politicians and the generals. Almost as good, is his discussion of
allied strategy during the Second World War. There is no one better at
analysing the fatuities of military theory: at conveying the connection
between backbiting behind the scenes and the direction of the war.
But most of the major themes of British history in the 20th century are
not really susceptible of such treatment. Taylor describes his historical
method as, continuous narrative . . . with occasional pauses for
54

refreshment. It enables him to begin his book, precisely on the day,

4 August 1914, almost at the hour, 11 p.m. when the previous volume
of the series ends. But history is not and cannot be like this. All the
serious tensions of British society in 1914 are omitted: in particular the
twin dangers of the Ulster revolt and the spread of revolutionary
Syndicalism. British society seemed to be on the point of dissolution.
Any account of modern British history which begins baldly with an
account of the British Expeditionary Force in France reduces the
density of historical process to the perspectives of journalism: content
has been sacrificed to presentation.
His book ends as baldly as it begins. No attempt is made to summarize
however schematically, the main directions of British history in the
period he has discussed. The 1945 electionthat dramatic purgation of
more than a decade of lumpen-politicsis described in one-and-a-half
pagesonly one third of which devote any reflection to it (compare
this with the six pages dealing with Edward VIIIs abdication). Long
and well written pages of narrative political history, are interspersed
with the provocative judgment or a dramatic inversion of what
popular opinion has considered to be the most reasonable explanation.
With all his faults, Ramsay MacDonald was the greatest leader
Labour has had, and his name would stand high if he had not outlived
his abilities. Certainly an arresting judgment, and one which will no
doubt be discussed by countless examination candidates in future
years. But, in what way and for whom? Taylor makes no suggestion
that Ramsay MacDonald had outlived his abilities in 1931. His
rhetoric exactly reflected the emotions of the Labour movement: a
highly questionable reflection if the Trade Union politics of the 1920s
is taken into account. The burden of Taylors interpretation comes a
few pages later. It is hard to decide whether Baldwin or MacDonald
did more to fit Labour into constitutional life. This is a statement that
any Conservative of the 1920s would have heartily endorsed. What is
striking about this judgment, and it is one of many, is not its arresting
novelty, but its utter conventionality. What in fact Taylor purports as
an historical judgment, is merely the epigrammatic translation of the
current notions of the time, presented as serious historical reflection.
Taylor never once examines the historical roots of MacDonalds
social theory, nor discusses how far this was representative of the
Labour movement. But, without such reflection at a conceptual level,
it is hard to see how any such statement could be made. The result is
that 1931 is presented as a bolt from the bluea slice of bad luck that
would have knocked any politician. The surprising thing, for Taylor, is
not that MacDonald acted the way he did, but that the Labour movement should have objected.
Triteness abounds whenever Taylor ventures outside the safe grounds
of Westminster or the Foreign Office. His analysis of the significance of
the cinema in the 1930s forms the only decisive exception to this rule.
Here scholarship and imaginative insight are momentarily combined.
In a section entitled appearance and reality Taylor discusses the
effect of the cinema upon peoples image of the social universe and
their role within it; real life was itself turned into a spectacle . . .
politics seemed more passionate; international events were more
55

widely discussed than ever before. Yet with it all was a feeling that
these great happenings had no more connection with real life than
those seen every night in the cinema palaces . . . facade became reality
for a generation . . . The perceptions concentrated into these few
pages are worth more than all the well turned epigrams which act as
surrogate interpretation throughout the rest of the book.
His analysis of class is particularly facile. National loyalty, he writes,
transcended class consciousness except for a small minority, and it is
possible in this period to write the history of the English people
rather than the history of the exploiting classes. Paradoxically however, a few pages earlier, since creeds had ceased to divide, class stood
out the more sharply. How are these two judgments to be reconciled?
The two statements, in fact, refer to different bodies of material. On the
one hand: accent, eating and drinking, a caste system of education and
the distribution of property. On the other hand: the development of
womens clothing, the universality of cigarette smoking, democracy,
the servantless house, the demise of the idle rich. But if national
loyalty transcended class, this was hardly recognized at the time. On
the contrary, men thought that they were living in a disintegrating
society. All these statements contain elements of truth. But Taylor
never makes any attempt to construct systematic phenomenology of
class in the 1920s, and these bold and random statements conceal the
absence of any attempt to define class at all. On the face of it, Taylor
comes to two opposed conclusions about class and leaves the reader to
take his pick. At the level of narrative however, Taylors assumption of
class attitudes are quite firm, and differ yet again from what might be
called his conceptual analysis. A firm image emerges, which is strongly
reminiscent of popular press attitudes to class. The working man is
primarily interested in a cup of tea when he comes home from work
and a pint of beer with his mates; abstractions such as class and
politics could be left to the TUC and the politicians. In the General
Strike, they were loyal to their unions and their leaders, as they had
been loyal during the war to their country and to their generals. They
went once more into the trenches, without enthusiasm and with little
hope. Again in 1931, electors responded to the appeal for disinterested sacrifice, as the young men had done over Belgium in 1914.
Whatever the party calculations of politicians behind the scenes, the
country put country before class. They voted against the depression
with their feet. But class is not a hobby like football which can be
taken up or ignored. Class is a relationship, not an option. It is arguable
that the period 1910 to 1926 is the most bitter period of class warfare in
modern British history. From 1922 onwards the workers were defeated and subdued in one industry after another. The General Strike
was the majestic but pathetic epitaph to their struggle. Taylor considers that, the General Strike, apparently the clearest display of class
war in British history, marked the moment when class war ceased to
shape the pattern of British industrial relations. He further considers that this had been teleologically foreshadowed in the early
1920s. According to him Bevin and Thomas were industrial leaders of
a new type, no longer merely concerned to resist and who never
forgot that compromise was their ultimate aim. The miners on the
other hand, were almost anachronistic. They fought the class war and
56

the employers responded with zest, and he goes on to support this

opinion with a characteristically fatuous statement from Birkenhead, I
should call them the stupidest men in England, if I had not previously
had to deal with the owners. Quite apart from the dubious factual
validity of some of these judgments (it is surely impossible to talk of
Bevin and J. H. Thomas as if they were the same cast of Trade Union
leader in the early 1920s), what it betrays is a profound lack of curiosity
about differences of work situation, and the necessary function of any
trade union leader. No successful trade union leader has ever sacrificed
the immediate benefit of those whom he represented to the ultimate
advent of socialism. But in a situation of slump and unemployment,
political change is often the only card left to play. It is particularly
crass to blame the miners for failing to see that Mondism was the way
of the future.
Taylor refuses to treat the Labour movement and politics as part of a
single spectrum. Instead, pieces of information are interspersed
throughout the book in fragmented lumps. There is no conception of
history as a continual and total process. History will remain meaningless and trivial unless the historian can grasp its ongoing dialectic
between thought and action, between consciousness and reality, between intention and event. Taylors philosophy of history precludes
this. One salient example of this is the complete absence of any discussion of Fabianismthe dominant philosophy of the Labour leadership.
Milnerism is only mentioned in connection with appeasement. The
social policy of the Conservatives between the wars, as Taylor rightly
stresses, was shaped more by Chamberlain than by any other single man.
But Taylor tells us nothing about the roots of this policy. What sort of
social philosophy did it derive from? How far was it a continuation of
the theories of Joseph Chamberlain? These are important questions in
the development of Conservative ideology; Taylor makes little or no
attempt to discuss them. The problem of Liberal ideology is even more
intriguing. After 1922, perhaps even after 1916, the party seemed
doomed to a slow death by dismemberment. Yet, almost with its dying
gasp, this party produced the only significantly novel economic theory
of the inter-war periodthe works of Keynes and Beveridge. Again,
what were the continuities between this and pre-war liberalism? How
intimately was it connected with the Liberal party in the late 1920s?
What social philosophy did it entail? Taylor discusses the relevance of
Keyness theory of unemployment. But there is no attempt to connect
Keynes, the Liberal party intellectual and Keynes, the economic
theorist. The mystery remains as dark as ever. Taylor has no real interest
in ideology or social theory. Such treatment of it, as he is forced to give,
is cursory and grudging. He projects his own pragmatism on to the
history he is discussing. It is the old Tory view of history, men not
measures. The result is lopsided and one dimensional. One half of the
dialectical process has been arbitrarily lopped offor rather so severely
maimed, that it hangs like some fractured limb registering a feeble
pretence of action to satisfy the rubrics of the Oxford history series.
Few historians have done more than Taylor to make history accessible
and interesting to a lay public. For this he deserves our respect, if only
for demonstrating that armadilloid scholarship is not the sole mode of
57

historical communication. But his achievement has been double

edged. In his effort to display history to a wider audience he has
succumbed to the priorities of tele-journalism. The overriding tone of
his latest book is ultimately one of complacency. His attitude to all the
lead-actors on the historical stage is one of benevolent indulgence
Ramsay MacDonald, a prince among men, Chamberlain, the cards
always ran against him, Birkenhead, the cleverest man in the kingdom, George v, his trousers were creased at the sides, not front and
back, Churchill, the saviour of his country, etc (only poor old Eden
emerges with bad marks). It is impossible on Taylors premises to
impute anything as drastic as historical responsibility to historical
agents. Any such attempt would be in direct opposition to his theory of
history. History is merely the elegant chronological arrangement of
things that happened. It is an opaque fatality, swaying men in one
direction or another, according to whim, chance or sheer perversity.
Men are, before all else, creatures of habit. Men do not really make
history. Nor on the other hand does history govern the action of men,
except in a chronological sense. History is paradox: Cleopatras nose
writ large.
If then, history is meaningless, if its direction is random, what is its
justification? Journalism provides the answer. History is entertainment.
Taylor is fond of framing statements in the form of irony. His use of
witty and adroit epigrams has even been mistaken for satire. This is to
mistake his purpose. Satire implies a serious commitment, a radical
questioning. As an entertainer, Taylors art is not that of the satirist, but
rather that of the music hall farceur. The basic values are never questioned, and the basic values for Taylor are the conventionalities of the
time. But whilst they are not questioned, they may be mildly deflated
by impish humour. Mens foibles provide endless targets for the pen.
Taylors philosophy of history precludes him from taking his subject
too seriously. The assessment of historical importance depends upon
the random whim of the historian. Taylor says of Harold Davison, the
unfrocked rector of Stiffkey, he attracted more attention while he lived
than, say, Cosmo Gordon Lang, archbishop of Canterbury. Which man
deserves a greater place in the history books? If this is the criterion of
historical significance, the question might be rephrased. A. J. P.
Taylor received considerably more attention in the 1960s than, say, the
president of the Federation of British Industries. Who, then, deserves
the greater attention from future historians? Taylor has capitulated to
the values and world vision of the modern press. History and news value
have become one. It is a sad reflection that one of the most technically
gifted of 20th century historians should prefer to serve in the ranks of
raconteurs and scrapbook annalists.
But history and tele-journalism cannot be merged by a sleight of
hand, and the failure of the greatest conjuror of all only reveals the
vulgarity of his tricks.

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