RSA Replay - Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet

my name is Allegra Stratton I'm the political editor of news night it's a huge pleasure for me to be to be helping Jesse do this evening's event for you partly because normally I'm in a mad rush to make a package please before we start I'm sure you've all had this ad nauseam but turn your mobile off there are some people actually reaching to do that the clue this is a useful announcement this is going to be and this is the best I have to look down at the notes for it is going to be a podcast so if you want to tell your friends about it or indeed as we were just discussing watch it again when you're doing the ironing then do it's going to become a free download from the RSA and right now they are also live-streaming it so there'll be people he'll be joining us online so welcome to you as well if you're a Twitter fiend which some of you may or may not be hashtag is RSA Burke I wonder what Edmund Burke would have made a Twitter he might have quite liked it come on admit it but that's official notices and health nurses over Jesse Norman is in front of you now he is the MP for her effort and South Herefordshire that writes it's a bit of repetition in there but that seems like it's right also a senior fellow at the sink tank policy exchange you will all know him for being a frequent contributor to programs like news night but also the op-ed pages of the papers completely writing pamphlets constantly coming up with ideas and blogging at Jesse Norman comm and then in 2012 he was awarded parliamentarian of the year and backbencher of the Year but I think I think that's why the spectator magazine the seedling he's here to discuss with us his book Edmund Burke philosopher politician and prophet it's published by Harper Press Jesse is widely regarded as one of the architects of new conservatives and he's certainly written a lot about the big society some of you may or may not want to ask him about that and it's possible slight disappearance he's also the ideal author to demonstrate how boats ideology and wisdom applies well beyond the times of Edinburgh particularly from about 2005 our own Prime Minister talked a lot about little platoons and people like myself before this book didn't really have we had there was there was one biography called the great melody wasn't there but until this book I really don't think there was a hugely concise and as clear as Jessi's book for us to rush to to figure out what David Cameron meant and we now have it's just a shame that he might have dumped the idea we can discuss that anyway welcome to Jesse Norman what Jesse's going to do is talk you through some of the ideas possibly even show you some pictures and then I will bounce back up and we'll talk together for ten minutes and then more importantly we'll all talk on mass about Burke and his ideas and his relevance over to you Jesse well thank you thank you very much indeed Allegra for that magnificent opening and thank you all later gentlemen it's a complete delight to have a chance to introduce Edmund Burke to you or possibly reintroduce Edmund Burke to you tonight in this temple to enlightenment values and the power of ideas Burke as you may know was a political statesman of the first magnitude he was also I've hinted a philosopher indeed a prophet of a kind he fought five great campaigns throughout his life at one for better treatment for the Irish and particular Catholics in Ireland another for proper relationship between Great Britain and the American colonies and against what he saw as the oppressive misgovernment by London of the colonies a third campaign to fight the encroaching power of the executive and of the monarch within politics a fourth campaign to correct in justices of British rule through the East India Company in India and finally and this is I think the thing he's most much remembered for these days against the French Revolution but he was also not merely a campaigner but a supreme our orator and a pro stylist a Boswell said of Burke that watching Burke speak was like watching a man in an orchard just pulling back you know as it were apples and pears and pelting the administration completely freely such was the fertility and breadth of his imagination and he's also as I show in the book but won't really have a chance to talk about today really the first great framer of representative democracy in a kind of proto modern sense and of the proto modern political party and you may think he has a lot to answer for in that regard but I want to persuade you because we can do this in the questions that this is actually rather profound an important thing to have done um but he also lived amidst a staggering cost of other characters the end of the 18th century is one of the most amazing times going to galaxy of talent around Berk and so I want to pick the story up with him and I don't know if the lights can come down a little bit but we start with him in the let me just see if I can get this right ah in London so Burke is born in 1730 in Dublin and goes to a head school which is an open-air school outside the capital and then to Trinity College Dublin he then makes his way as every young man and I'm afraid he was men at the time worthy of his sort did to London because he tells his father he's going to London in order to become a solicitor to study won't beat a barrister to study at the ends of court his father is a solicitor in Dublin and unfortunately this is true early for a period but he very soon towers of the Middle Temple and decides to try and make his fortune as a writer and as a thinker and this is an image of the underside the underbelly of London in the 1750 and this of course gin lane by Hogarth and it depicts a time when London was not merely the most exciting place in the world the center of a commercial empire that ranged from Bombay to Boston but also a place where ideas were flourishing in an either to almost unimaginable way in this country the British Museum founded 1753 the novel starting to get going with Richardson and Dafoe writing just before then the fireworks music these great occasions when handlers able to gather thousands and thousands of people together for music and lights the foundation of you know the revolution is going on in the theatre at this time when these naturalistic styles actually been introduced by david garrick but there is also an underside this is a place where one child in three survives into adulthood when there is an enormous difficult tough life for large numbers of people and Hogarth visibly vividly picks this up and of course he's picking up I'm sorry as it stays further will come too well comforting him in a moment um he picks up I'm just gonna find how this there we go it's um it's hand for the smaller mind this is a woman called Judith de for um Judith before in 1734 this slatternly lady letting a child fall off the side there in a in a she is the victim of the gin craze which had broken out in the 1720s and 1730's and the by the 1740s the average consumption of journey in this country was two gallons a year per head that's not trivial and non-trivial amount of gin and Judith de for was famous in the infamous in in London and he'd England because she in 1734 had taken her child out of the parish workhouse into some wasteland I killed her and then sold her petticoat to raise money for to feed her gin habit and um such was the craze that it took you five I think Acts of Parliament to bring it under control and so this is London the the underside but also let's not forget the excitement of a city and this Dubliner is making its way and it's a city which is controlled by this man or rather the followers of this man and now you don't know who this is but everyone in 1740 when this caricature dates from would have known who this is is of course Sir Robert Walpole and now Walpole had run British politics for two decades by 1742 and what this caricature which is subtitled the idol worship or the way to preferment what this sure is doing is his is mocking Walpole's extraordinary grasp of patronage across both church and state and so in the messages if you want to row your role your wheel of fortune to great success then this is what you have to do and by the way there's a carbuncle on the left cheek to remind you how painful the experience may be and it does involve climbing on top of one another in the search for patronage and success and everyone would have got the message no need to show Walpole's face and it's against that backdrop that Burke arrives in London by 1760 you have George the 3rd on the throne and the young King the new king who is George a second grandson of course and much younger therefore than would be expected has come to power very much intending to put his own stamp on proceedings and to rein back these professional politicians this is the so-called Whig supremacy I'm caricaturing slightly but broadly speaking and and so George a third is determined to put his stamp on events as he does in some respects with disastrous results so Burke arrives in London this is an eighteenth-century image of a dinner party at Joshua Reynolds house and gives you some sense of what it must have been like at the time these people were members of a famous club cleverly entitled the club which met at the Turks head in Soho founder Joshua Reynolds Burke's great friend member number 2 Samuel Johnson member number 3 Edmund Burke and here we see a gathering at Reynolds's house which picks up the same figures this is Charles Burnie the great musicologist in the foreground Johnson and Burke then you have Reynolds here and Boswell and the Corsican Patriots Paolo Paolo Lee and goldsmith and Wharton mrs. Boswell this is Gehrig and goldsmith and the Wharton in other words an extraordinary outpouring of talent almost the like of which we will have never seen indeed before or since when you think that Berks friends included not merely people like Johnson who left no branch of English literature untouched by his genius people like Adam Smith David Hume I mean this is just a staggering staggering group of people um and so it's a time when Burke is able to start to allow his own powers to flourish and it is it is famously true that he and Johnson got on but they got on with a certain undercurrent of competitiveness Johnson said it's not surprising that Burke is the first man in the House of Commons because he would be the first man anywhere but it's certainly true all said that they had a slight undercurrent of competitiveness and and what's interesting is that they're of course they dominate the conversation but Johnson style very epigrammatic a terse Burke full of you know astonishing F effusions of energy and imagery in his own speech this is him in a painting after Joshua Reynolds 1769 by 1765 Burke's got into Parliament and he arrives in early 1766 by that time he's already by an extraordinary stroke of luck for secretary to the Prime Minister the marks of Rockingham because the merry-go-round under George the third of administration's has turned several times at this point and the Marcus has formed administration a short-lived administration with his group with the Rockingham Whigs this is a time where we do not have political parties in modern sense we have factions and the Laraque iam Whigs our affection and they've come to power it's politically dominated by the aftermath of the Seven Years War so in 1756 we go to war with the French across you know several continents by 1763 we've comprehensively duffed them up in all areas the church bells are worn out with ringing in the words of Horace Walpole but there's a gigantic bill to be paid and that bill on both sides has annexed ordinary long-term implication in some respects it actually ultimately leads to the French Revolution but which is caused in part by disastrous financial state of the French finances at that point if jacker at that point in Britain it leads to the desire to impose duties and ultimately therefore the tea duty and that's what creates the conditions of the Revolutionary War um work of course arrives in Parliament from a from a a rotten borough the borough of Wendover and but the good news was that he was saved any of the difficulties of a contested election this is a time when treating is absolutely endemic and I'm just going to give you a brief moment on treating if I may um at the very least voters and in eighteenth-century expected to be lavishly wined and dined or treated by the different candidates treating remains an electoral offence today but only if alcohol or meat are involved it is an oddity of English law that vegetarians and teetotalers cannot be treated in the 18th century how a treaty was endemic and since elections often took weeks to conclude the cost could be ruinous in fighting for Chester in 1784 the Grove and a family paid for 1187 barrels of ale 3756 gallons of rum and brandy and over 27,000 bottles of wine the seat had 1500 voters so it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting moment in a to be elected and this is the place he's elected to this is the House of Commons at the time it's a painting by Hickel from 1794 or there abouts it's actually in the House of Commons moment in committee room 6 film wants to go look at it here speaking is Pitt known as the bottomless pit because he was so thin this is the this is the this is the old chamber before it was burned down in 1834 by the way anyone who hasn't read thoroughly enjoy Caroline sentence magnificent book the day Parliament burned down and with the big windows at the back and it's been modeled remodeled it was in the chapel originally at some this is a seaman's chapel in a chapel as you know the two sides faced each other they don't face the altar that's the origin of the adversarial style of British politics you have the speaker you have clerks in the same way you do now these great windows at the back these galleries have been put in by Christopher Wren it's so cold in the winter that they've lowered the ceiling in order to really that means it's absolutely stifling in the summer it doesn't take anything like the number of MPs at the time which they're 558 and you can see that even then I think some of these people were in court dress which they were symbolizing that they come from the government side so and lurking if I may say lurking I don't if you can see him in the back here is Charles James Fox in wearing and you can't quite see it in the blue and buff of the American revolutionaries that's a kind of progressive piece of signaling at the time and so you've got you've got the House of Commons as it is then and Burke enters it and immediately that starts to make his mark and his oratory is truly extraordinary and instantly recognized as such and the most or there's a wonderful example of that which is the his speech on conciliation with the colonies where he's desperately trying to argue in the last ditch that Britain must not go to war with the colonists but must seek a more conciliatory approach he says he says the proposition is peace not peace through the medium of war not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations not peace to arise out of universal discord or to depend upon the juridical determination of perplexing questions it is simple peace sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts it is peace sought in the spirit of peace and his argument is a very simple one it's not simply that Britain could never hope to win a war with the country 3,000 miles away it isn't simply that the Americans are possessed of an extraordinary and independent spirit it is that it would be an act of self-denial almost of suicide for the British to go to war against their own kindred people and he demonstrates in the speech and rasili action is staggering ability he has to move from Olympian generalisation to the most perfect detail as well as an external flair for memorable expression he says some we cannot falsify the pedigree of this fierce people and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates your speech would betray you an Englishman is the unfit aspersion on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery genuine simplicity of heart this is going on someone genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great Empire and little minds go ill together so could work of it have verted the Revolutionary War if they'd followed his advice almost certainly not it's just in the eve but what we can say is that if they had understood the force of the argument that he had been putting earlier then it's possible that the war could have been avoided and more conciliatory and ultimately successful position achieved it's also a time of great physical turmoil this is John Wilkes another extraordinary figure from the the era John Wilkes as you may recall is a man with a positive genius for constitutionally effective mischief-making he's a man who manages to he's the reason that you can read Hansard and fetters now parliamentary proceedings subject to contempt of court before that of the Parliament before that and here's the reason we don't have general warrants with no names on them he the reason that parliamentary privilege has been protected in the way it has been is extraordinary man and book sucked with a very long spoon with Wilkes they were both very much on them as it were progressive side of the argument in the 1760s but there was a fear that works was a little too strong medicine for any but the strongest substance nevertheless he was an extraordinary figure as the picture shows and Wilkes was famously is actually or the flashing apparently but Luke's was famously ugly with a very vicious squint and a prognathous jaw I might just quote if I may in giving him a vicious squint and a prognathous jaw Nature had not been kind to John Wilkes but he had overcome these impediments to procure himself a notorious reputation as a Hellraiser in philanderer he boasted that it only took half an hour to talk away his face with a woman in 1763 now an MP Wilkes obtained an advanced copy of the King's Speech and denounced it and it's presumed author the Earl of Butte in his radical and Varley anti Scottish weekly the North Briton he previously accused the Archbishop of Canterbury of buggery and called the Bishop of Gloucester's wife a professional prostitute he had even suggested the bluets influence extended to taking George 2/3 mother as his mistress this however was the final straw and so of course some they invade his house they take his property they did all these evil things he counter sues he's elected triumphantly several times to Parliament and these great things fall into place another snapshot of the of the era but increasingly in the 1770s slightly and then in the early 1780s burkas is really preoccupied with one thing and that is India in India the British have long had outposts in Madras and in Calcutta and in Bombay and they've controlled increasingly the coromandel coast down in the southeastern corner here and then in the but they've done this is a trading matter the East India Company but in the 1730's and 40s they the running war with the French escalate and then in 1756 they win the Battle of Plassey which which is really less a battle than a form of advanced bribery and deception and the result of that is to open up a large amount of the of the hinterland and in particular in due course Bengal from which fountain of Lucca results and the results of that is twofold one is that it sends a vast an amount of young men and I'm afraid is always men back to England as neighbours that is to say people that when the modern indian nouveau riche if you like who returned back to india they've managed to avoid dying of some exotic disease or malaria and they've come back with staggering amounts amounts that one could never hope to earn in one's own lifetime in india and they've become a significant parliamentary force in their own right and their support is rather crucial in the in the election in 1784 which brings pips which defeats the forks north coalition and brings pit to power and so by 1785 burke has come to the view that this power must be restrained and in Burke's view and this is a constitutional topic of some what widely shared at the time but poorly implemented all power not merely public power but private power must be held accountable and therefore the power of this India company and in thinking the East India Company I wanted to think of Google and Microsoft and Apple and all these other firms combined to get some sense of its extraordinary influence and therefore he determines to do something about it he's not in the government he's only had two years in total in the government in a career of 30 so what to do and the answer is to pull this man Warren Hastings the governor-general of India back from India and to impeach him to put him on trial in Westminster Hall in the most public possible way to demonstrate the long arm of English law and the accountability to its all power must be subjected now Hastings in many ways was a rather great man and it's extraordinary to explore the the contrast he's done many bad things in India but he was by no means a man without qualities and it's quite interesting to see that the parallelism in the scholarship and intellectual attainments of the two men nevertheless Burke increasingly fixates on Hastings himself as a symbol of everything that has gone wrong in India he holds him back and he brings him here to Westminster Hall and anyone who knows Westminster Hall today will recognize these famous hammer beam roof parts of the roof saved again from the fire in 1834 and all of this has been put in specially for the trial and here we see the Lords themselves who are ultimately going to make the decision we see judges we see that we're that these are the Royal boxes you've got the lady Pierce's here you've got visiting guests foreign potentates lawyers in the front here Burke with his arm out here a rating and this very unhappy figure in the front is Warren Hastings and so Burke brings him back and he puts him on trial and of course the trial lasts for seven years and eventually Hastings is acquitted as Burke knew and must have known he would be he's got many friends and Lords and there's dirty work at the crossroads and Hastings is acquitted and he and that is a is a late and crippling in some respects blow to Burke but the principle the principle of the public accountability of public and private in particular private in this case power has been properly established and this is a win the Golden Age of caricature of course and so this is some a caricature of the era this is by James gillray and it shows Hastings as the savior of India kind of Britannia like figure on a horse being attacked by Burke now Burke in a tricorn hat and the cassock that's a mockery of his alleged Jesuit tree sympathy with the Catholics he's wearing armor like a kind of Quixote figure I'm fated to be unsuccessful he's discharging a blunderbuss the famously inaccurate instrument he always wears glasses Burke in fact always did wear glasses but the glasses here have the effect of pointing to lack of political vision and of course he's where he's barefoot suggesting that he's a mountebank an adventurer he's a man who's on the make and here you've got Fox with a monobrow as always depicted foxes the man to whom temptation is no stranger with a five o'clock shadow enormous paunch again similar things stabbing Hastings in the back what one would expect meanwhile Lord North here quietly helps himself to Lux of rupees and then ultimately due course gems and bonds so you get the idea that there's an awful lot going on in the popular representations of this trial and the popular understanding of the principles involved by no means much of it flattering to burke himself so let's then talk briefly about Burkean principles all power must be legitimate and publicly accountable we elect our MPs as representatives not delegates in 1774 Burke is elected as the Member of Parliament for Bristol Bristol's a slave port the number two city in the country at the time it's a colossal achievement to have been to become for an Irish adventurer to become its MP by 1780 he's decided not to stand again because although he says in his great speech in 1774 where they're expecting him to doff the cap and thank them for electing him he turns around and says I'm sorry but so he would say I'm sorry but he says it he says a member of parliament does not owe you he does not follow authoritative instructions he owes you just his judgment on your behalf and Burke exercised his judgment and weren't very happy about it because Burke's judgment was a very independent one and when it included things like opposition to the death penalty for rum sodomy or in particular very the harshest penalties on people who didn't pay their debts the merchants of Bristol didn't get very happy about and Berk of course actually people don't realize this was in the vanguard intellectually of the fight against slavery Berk wrote a private member in 1780 setting out in detail a way of regulating the slave trade prior to its abolition ziz seven years before the abolition movement ever gets going in England at all but he insists that MPs must be representatives and not delegates and then these last two go together society is a trust which each generation must preserve it is a compact between the generations between the living the dead and those to be born and as a trust it must be held as all power must be held as a trust and the job of the parliamentarian the job of the political leader is to safeguard preserve and enhance that trust to preserve its lineaments its features from the past and to add to that a proper regard to present and future generations and therefore that leadership must be modest it cannot put itself forward it cannot advance its own interest over the interest of those in whose name it seeks to act it cannot be subject to generational arrogance there's a strong contrast with Jefferson here we might explore in the questions if you would like so effective political leadership is modest and moderate in its actions and legitimates itself through its continued good work and if it doesn't do that then the result is this and this is another image by James gillray the promised horrors of the French invasion because of course the French Revolution was regarded by the 1790s the mid 1790s as a germ a cancer that could infect not merely France itself but Britain here we see this is some James's assassin James's Palace going up in flames the French revolutionary armies walking up st. James's on this side you have Brooks's Club which is famously full of wigs and Pro French revolutionaries they've got a guillotine there in a variety of heads there's a man being here in the front with liberty on the top here this side is white sand toys are being hung by the neck and in the front and in the front here you have Burke with his glasses being gored by a Bedford sure ox and that is a reference to the Duke of Bedford with whom Burke was having a huge fight at the time and if I may just end let me do so by reminding us all of his extraordinary prophetic genius because in 1789 when on July the 14th the Bastille Falls the reaction in Britain is one of near universal rejoicing all enlightened opinion regards it as the beginning of a transition to a constitutional monarchy Wordsworth famously says that bliss was hidden that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven an only book it almost literally only Burke and Burke immediately says no you don't understand everyone else is marinating themselves in self congratulation and Burke says no you don't understand this is a disaster this is going to lead to violence and bloodshed and terror and civil war and international war and ultimately to tyranny and in the reflections on the revolution in France published in 1790 he says this and I will close on it in the weakness of one kind of Authority and in the fluctuation of all the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction until some popular general who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery and who possesses the true spirit of command shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself armies will obey him on his personal account there is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things but the moments in which that event shall happen the person who really commands the army is your master the master of your king the master of your assembly the master of your whole Republic the king would be there already but otherwise this is a frightened the exact description of the emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1793 at three years after those words were written the young general was started to make a name for himself with a siege and seizure of too long in 1799 he staged a coup d'etat naming himself First Consul and moving into the twittery by 1804 he would be emperor of France a year later he would be master of continental Europe thank you very much indeed Jesse I'm gonna restrict myself to two questions on Burke's period and then to and sort of Burke's relevance and then we open it up I think on Burt what struck me about your book was Burke his to be very crude and trinket is about established order possibly sort of overly staid and not quite as poetic as you repeatedly and there's some beautiful things about the temper of the governed I think is a really lovely phrase about Burke emphasizing all the time that it has to be about firstly that relationship between young old dared to be born but also what people will wear and then being wise and so on whereas in stomach rather than whereas anywhere but I suppose it's the classic sociology question whose established order so you have Mary Wollstonecraft getting very uppity and there's lots of critique of Wollstonecraft that we could go into the hyena and petticoats she she was a forward individual herself but was she not partially right that this is a this is a world view that if you are part of the Burkean accepted class you're all right and I say that accepting all of your five battles that he won and fought and and sort of but but if your problem is exactly if you if you're part of that is fine but you know what about 1832 where would he have been on that and where it's too far ahead to talk about women in the vote but that it was who's established order and until he could sort of grapple with new groups coming through he can't really be a thoroughly modern politician well of course in many ways Burke as a as a postmodern politician is pretty critical rather than a modern politician um no of course what's fascinating about about Mary Wollstonecraft is that in some respect she's a very perky and figure herself I mean she's fantastically eloquent she writes as marvelously discursive criticism of Burke in a very similar kind of Burkean type way she's enormous ly intelligent and fiercely kind of minded fiercely pendant um and but I think her criticisms actually slightly missed the mark and as you might expect when Burke is no stranger to all aspects of the social order as an Irishman who's made it yeah you know particularly the Catholic mother and a Catholic wife in London um in Britain so so what his view is broadly speaking that the social order creates the conditions within which the people can be successful and flourish now it is true that if you take a snapshot of the social order you can say well on second looks like the aristocrats are doing terribly well and the folks at the bottom are doing terribly badly and of course that's a that's a that's a correct criticism it ignores the aspect that the aristocrats from Burke's point of view as you recall are merely there to anchor the process and are under tremendous obligations themselves there's no unaccountable power from that side um how would you felt in 1832 I think actually he would welcome dignitary to because because because your argument is that if it happens gradually and it sort of integral to society talking to itself and come into an arrangement then he would have been okay with social change yes well but I mean it brokes conservatism of course it's not cool conservatism till later but that is what it is is a philosophy of change yeah I mean Burke says you know a state without a means of changes without the means of its own preservation so what he objects to and he's a great veteran or one of the earliest great theorists of revolution what he objects to is the total overturning um but things sort of that things that preserve and enhance the way of life even at the cost of rebellion as in the case of the colonists he's come full with its the preservation of the way of life and it's the damage done to what we would call social capital now that people tend to ignore when they make radical schemes of whatever kind said I don't and I think he would so I think he would have welcomed I mean of course it's a parlor game to suggest what people wrote them no I know but I don't think he would have that would have that would he would have been found that independent and there's numerous places we could take that but just he emphasizes property-owning democracy quite heavily and again that's clearly sort of only wouldn't allow through another class of people to vote and so on and so forth again is that something that you think with time he might have put to one side well I think he thinks I think he thinks the part about property is that it secures rights and freedoms against a sovereign that might seek to take this away from you and so a property becomes the anchor of rights well beyond merely the rights of the property trust themselves and I didn't think he would have been you know he absolutely wanted the system in which people were able to succeed in their own terms wherever they came and he says at one point he says if I were forced to take my place I would take it with the week of the meek and the poor know much much more yeah nuanced yeah then people currently on and he's absolutely not some idiotic dyed-in-the-wool reactionary quite the opposite I'm gonna ask my mother-in-law's question in historian which is how could he write the words he wrote about Marie Antoinette well okay so let me see if we can just get the words he read about on our internet very quickly um he says just funny he says it is now six nor a brief engagement it is now 16 or 17 years since I've saw the Queen of France of Versailles and surely never lighted on this or bridge she hardly seemed to touch a more delightful vision little with I dream that I should have lived to see disasters falling on her in a nation of gallant men in a nation of men of honour and Cavaliers I thought ten thousand swords must have left from their Scabbers to avenge you know look that threatened her with an insult but the age of chivalry has gone that of Sophos economists and calculators has succeeded in the glory of Europe is extinguished forever I mean what is so magnificent about that is to two things one is it's preposterous over the fuckness which I've no doubt he would have been aware at the time um but also how many things actually going on under the surface of that so that is the pamphleteers appeal to a certain kind of royalist sentiments but it is also a it is also a thinly coded attack on the rationalist aspirations of the revolutionaries and I do not share the view that I mean Burke of course was pushed into the position of supporting monarchy which was of course in the case of li xvi rather a reforming one like people forget this at the time but i don't think that that the Burke's position in in a modern context would be one that celebrated the monarchy day for it's quite the opposite his whole the whole point of the 1688 revolution was that it was the limited change that was preserved the integrity of the whole constitutional arrangement and so I think what he's really seeking to do is to is to restore the social or rather to restore the molecules so just to pick you up on something you said just then about about I think you're alluding to the possibility at one stage of a constitutional monarchy being successfully installed in France and I suppose that's for some people the difficulty with Burke is that he's so quick to say this is gonna be a disaster and indeed becomes a soothsayer of uncanny accuracy but that actually for two to three years and I absolutely understand that lying in the kind of early bit of the revolution is is its end but equally it nearly worked didn't it it was nearly a constitutional monarchy Tom Paine did not want my aunt Annette's head to be chopped off you know there were there were people who Burke set his face against very early on who eventually would come to have a fairly similar position to him well of course he maintained had been a friend of Burke's yeah pain when he'd come to London pain was from East Anglia and when he came to to London after the American Revolutionary War for whom Burke was regarded secure in America yeah was was close to Burke and indeed Burke said that they heard he said we hunt in pairs but pain was a deeply dishonest man who never retained the affection or admiration of anyone who knew him for any period of time and died a deeply lonely death and including George Washington and what was interesting about pain of course was the pain then fought a very vindictive campaign against Burke suggesting that he was receiving a secret pension fact for which there was no evidence and indeed entirely untrue as far as we know so I didn't think Paine deserves any great moral high-ground although he is undoubtedly a brilliant journalist now I think in I think in in Burke's case there is a there is a kind of nobility of Endeavour despite failure which wholly outshines our pain and there's a depth of thought which outshines pain and I 2013 questions we're really the time is galloping away from us which is up when you had your four principles you talked about representative Parliament and this idea that you're not sent to Parliament to do the bidding of Bristol or Old Sarum or wherever and yet with the recent gay marriage debate you saw many many many MPs on programs like mine saying hold on a second my people didn't put me in Parliament to put this through do you think that the principles are coming slightly on unstuck well I think we've got a lot of people who we've got a society which doesn't really understand and make sure the British constitution that is the problem I mean for example it's widely believed in this country that the British constitution is one of popular sovereignty it is not one of popular so it is one of parliamentary sovereignty it is one in which the popular the popular vote acts as one part of a a bicameral consideration in the legislature amounting to relationship with the Queen in Parliament and that is deliberately that is a vote isn't deliberate but it's evolved over the years to balance popular chitinous II against expertise to allow the short term and the aesthetic to be to be offset by the long term and considered and and as soon as one thinks of these things purely in sovereign really in terms of popular sovereignty you're missing a lot of that and I'm afraid I have colleagues across the house who under pressure of political events and with Twitter at their backs occasionally say things that they wouldn't necessarily support in the more considered moment okay well we could go on but let's open it up to questions we have I'm not going to take them in groups because I find that is how people avoid answering questions gentlemen and I've seen arms up here as well okay whose O'Brien's the last person to do an outstanding biography of Burke why'd he get so little attention and why is your book the first significant book in how many years years a bronze book I think is from 1992 or three and he's a marvelous book if anyone hasn't read it I mean it's a it's a good story light heavyweight about 500 pager um and it's a book it's almost impossible to read if you do really know rather a lot about the life of Burke which is a slight drawback in a biography and but the thing about um O'Brien's book is ghost O'Brien has this marvelous thing that you know it was like bug you know he understands the Irish pretty well there's got a slightly different I think so long for the two Irish cost um he's a working parliamentarian of enormous distinction at the time he's very thoughtful and brilliant he was a lot of works a wonderful book the the he says in the introduction that's he tried to write a chronological bio straight biography and blew up after two or three hundred pages and and the way I tried to address that is by is by separating out the very old-fashioned approach really the separating out the life and the thought and that has two advantages one is that it means you don't have a fifty pay a 50 page excursus on the concept of parliamentary sovereignty you know in between discussing you know as it were Robin Burke's ordinary daily life and it also which I think people find difficult to read and it also allows me to very very scarcely a few rabbits on roots and hopefully you you're so intoxicated by the sub Chilean prose that by the time we get to the second half you're ready to buy a few ideas because the kind of thing carries you along and then remember to smuggle some stuff in there as well but there is a bit of a change between the one and the other gentlemen just on the third row back in the light of Burks admirable statement that MPs are representatives rather the delegates what do you think Burke would have thought of the modern party whipping system um well it's actually a topic I discussed in a little detail in in the book and Burke's of course Burke has a view but the part of the quotation the famous creation that no one remembers is the point where he says that enormous tempies be as it were the lickspittles of Westminster and that's not his terminology but that is the thought so he's he's looking for a kind of constrained independence that gives that as it were vitality and energy to the system so I don't think he would have been in favor of very very heavy use of the whip or of MPs who count town to heavy use of the whip it's it's but the reason why the whip is so important and people forget this now is the reason why it was important to time which is the alternative is faction and and faction means chase rather like a it's not a proportional representation and you get changes in government without a popular vote you know little groups moved one side of the house no one's actually voted any differently there wasn't a general election yet you've got a change of government and this happens repeatedly in the 1760s so um and the trouble with faction is that faction is really ultimately based on interest and often self-interest whereas Bittaker parties are based on principle they do not dissolve after they lose power they stay united that principle has to be articulated in order to be shared it therefore must be public and therefore you get them this will come as a surprise to some people you've got a more honest politics and although we don't feel the politics is very honest at the moment actually the whip has many recommendations as well as some drawbacks gentlemen second row for them back yes thank you coming back to your highlighted principles that Burke outline some years ago with the view that - perhaps politicians in the current age are constantly scrutinized by the press indeed they're constantly scrutinized by the proletariat through social media how well do you think modern politicians stand up to those principles well it's an interesting question I think sometimes they stand up very well indeed actually I mean you know whatever you think about a Churchill or a Thatcher these were not people I mean in Churchill's cases you know he was not a man of you know he had he had rather racy set of friends that he hung out with he wasn't averse to going on 3-month holidays in parliamentary time you know he wouldn't have survived Twitter very long on the other hand we wouldn't have been in a very good place in 1940 if we hadn't had him and you know I think the politician you can survive public Inquirer of that level is very rare indeed one person who goes and who I argue in the book is really the archetype of a great leader not quite a modern leader is Lincoln I mean let Lincoln is absolutely extraordinary and and rather he's one of those people who the more you know about and the more you admire and he he was a devoted follower of Tom Paine but actually acts in a completely Burkean way he is extraordinarily restrained during the Civil War he is extremely careful not to alienate the swing states that might become supporters of the South he is extremely protective of the rule of law with the glaring example with a very exception of habeas corpus for reasons of state all the way through and he he manages to kind of coax and love the country in all its parts to a point where it's able to reach not merely a victory in the war but also the 13th amendment and into the freeing of the slaves so I think he stands up extraordinarily well Jesse just before we have some more questions I've seen your hand I just want to bring you back to this gentleness question about why you think that he has received relatively little and you obviously got one 500 page biography and just to add us up entry to it which is he of course did receive what whooping great big massive endorsement from the prime minister with this constant throw away little platoons little tunes this is what I believe this is my ideology you ever spoken to the Prime Minister about Burke and about sort of the strength of feeling he has about that I won't tease you about big society being dropped well I'm happy to do I think the boo Society has not been dropped I think it's waiting to pounce at the government is brightly allowing its actions do the talking and then it will fit their theory to the actions after that's happened and I think the B site is actually a philosophy of government I don't think it's a wheeze about philanthropy or volunteering um I think the question you raised I hadn't understood the point of it I'm sorry about that it's very interesting when Burke is not a soundbite politician you cannot do Burke in 140 characters and that's one reason why I absolutely love him to bits and I think one of the things that's so sad at the moment and one of the reasons why the RSA is such an extraordinary institution is because there is a colossal hunger for an intelligent debate an intelligent argument that doesn't pretend these differences that exist that doesn't ignore complexity that actually engages with itself I think people are hung desperate for that and they don't get at the moment in a lot of politics like wish they did and one of the things that Burke does is he doesn't merely refuse to patronize his audience because he's a man who you know breaks new ground in political communication by publishing his own speeches I mean there's a moment books sitting on the back benches whoever's famous people who will forget you know Europe at the time and so he never passion Eliza's his audience he never talks down whoever you know and of course he's got a very least audience but he would never now I think personalised ordnance he always expects people to be able to follow and actually if you look at the Bill Clinton whatever you think of Clinton now Clinton does this thing where he'll give a speech and he's perfectly happy to get to paragraph 3 subsection 4 little to okay but he always brings it back to his main argument and people love that because they're going somewhere they're following him somewhere they're believing they're accepting and then they'll come back and and buy the whole thing and one of the most frightening statistics in modern politics I think is the fact that in the 1960s the average length of political soundbite was 49 seconds now it's about eight this considering the sort of the continuum pervasive power of the meter in in politic in politics today do you think Burke would have would have seen that as benefit as beneficial to his to his own career do you think it would have been resentful to to to the media having such strong presence in in politics well I don't think Burke would worry about the accountability particularly but he would worry about the mob instinct the the you have to remember the Burke's view is that circumstances it is his word circumstances give to a political principle every political principle it's distinguishing color and discriminating effect so you cannot divorce a principle from its context and then just bandy it around like some after-dinner conversation you cannot just take a word like freedom or or something we would consider you know a particular freedom like you know habeas corpus you know right like that and just say well actually we're gonna we're gonna pretend it's like you know that not the nine o'clock news sketch which has you know liberty equality cupcakes just his nonsense and and he's got a very good line which I always think of context in modern politics sometimes it worries me when he describes Lord North who knows in the process of making a spectacular hash of the Revolutionary War and he said Lord North is a man and who consults his invention and rejects his experience and I rather fear that's what's happening now and and by the way in the French Revolution one of the great worries about the French Revolution is that because the mobile cracy has taken over these words like Liberty forget any take any they have become traded in that way they've just become slogans Jesse when you said you're worried that's what's happening now with regard to what well I just think that um you you can't govern by slogan you have to have an you have to make an argument you must make an argument they're not really doing that at the moment that's a attempt to indiscretion quietly but I would say a little but completely right there is a paucity and these speeches are from from Blair um as they were kind of verbalist weren't they preferably speeches I'm I like verbs because they can note action sorry okay so I'm just the guy behind you but than that I know you also want to ask questions so that there's been a lot of men so far I'm just wondering there are conservative elements obviously in Burke's thought the idea you you change in order to preserve but they're also progressive elements in his in his thought how does a modern conservative think looking at someone like Berg square the circle there between the the very conservative elements of his thought his reaction to the revolution and they're very progressive elements was thought in his reaction to one of the revolutions that the American Revolution how do we how do we how do we think about that well of course I deny that there is a contrast between the conservative and the progressive Burke's whole life is animate across all these five campaigns great themes is is motivated by one great driving passion which is detestation of the abuse of power and of arbitrary power and it is I think a great mistake I'm not sure it's on your committee server does the way it was like in general for people to think well there's a progressive Burke who's kind of a goodie and then there's a reactionary Burke who's a baddie and I just think that's nonsense the reason why Burke opposes the French Revolution is because he can see that the that the tyranny of a mob is going to lead to disaster now when he is allegedly in his progressive phase earlier on of course he's acting from profoundly conservative principles almost all the way through it's only because we've got some idiotic worry about the word conservative that we don't allow the possibility there could be noble honorable good wise and conservative okay we're gonna have one last question and then we have to wrap it up this is from you just yes hold on a sec so members of the Historical Society which as you know but the legend the legend yes which doesn't quite the history quite as you know yet fairly by Bert but almost almost yeah my question actually really Springs from from that background and I've been a long and almost passionate fan of Burke in lots of ways but have struggled enormous lis with this notion of government the business of government being effectively the preserve of an elite a social elite a certain class were capable of governing on how do we say not so much on behalf of everybody else but it is for that elite to do it government isn't the business of the man in the street as it were looking at the contemporary context where this is a criticism that's leveled time and again at contemporary politics too many professional politicians not a broad enough experience ahead cite what lessons would you say that we can learn today from Burke's view in other words is that is are we again in a world in which politics is fundamentally an elitist game or is a populist game in which all of us have legitimate right to participate well of course politics in Burke's lifetime was analyse activity you there's no doubting that if you want to play in the game of politics in Burke's lifetime it's an elite activity but there are s and and and there are aspects of Burke's thought which are not compatible with it being as it were simply regard as and least activity now of course he does demand that people should be you know able to give and exchanged reasons good government relies on publicly enunciated principles you have to have high levels of education in order to do that but we have higher levels of education in this country that are vastly higher then thing could have been contemplated across the entire polity at that time and I don't think for a second that Burke would have sought to exclude people certainly on the basis of social class or background this is an Irishman for crying out loud he's made his way to the center of British politics you know on the back of his if individual genius he's a it is an exemplar of the kind of social mobility that I think he would seek to celebrate and he's a man who never made it into the cabinet probably in part because he was an Irishman and everyone else in there broadly speaking you know as a landed aristocracy so no one could be more acutely aware and and ultimately I think opposed to the concerns that you describe um is British politics now and least activity well the answer is it absolutely shouldn't be it should be properly involving of every aspect and this is what a burking conception of the social order in which everyone plays their role would permit unfortunately what you have is a foreshortened style of public debate which has the effect of alienating people who've used that a not within that cadre you have a feeling of the political class that extends between the journalists and the politicians you have a narrow base of political experience when people come in and that isn't very attractive and it also means that Parliament which ought to be an exchange of views a parleying between people with wildly different expertise and experience becomes narrowed technocratic and allegedly but not in fact very expert and it would be good to change that on that on that idea there's that very moving quote from him about when his son dies and it becomes a quite obviously that's emotional feeling but it's also quite political because he has all these aristocrats around him whom he feels like a massive forest and they just keep on producing and they they will go on and on and on whereas his son is felt his son isn't him comes an MP doesn't he and and that that has a sort of political feeling for him doesn't it you read it it's a it's a perfect point to end they were only Burke leaves Parliament and is absolutely thrilled when his son is given by Fitzwilliam who was the son of rocking the same pocket borough that he had had and the moment is destroyed for him when the boy suddenly and unexpectedly dies and it's not just a personal disaster for Burke he's a very loving father and a loving husband but it is also the kind of extra patient he has a son who's already died a younger son and he's the extirpation of a line and a kind of his own almost a dynastic ambition for an Irishman to make it in his own family in Britain and so when he gets into a punch-up with the Duke of Bedford who's Bedford ox we saw earlier and who is a damned aristocrat of the most in substantial and irresponsible kind he doesn't hesitate to reach for his twelve ball in contrasting the young Bedford with his own experience he says had it pleased God to continue in me the hopes of succession I should have been a sort of founder of a family I should have left a son who in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed in science in erudition ingenious in taste in honor and generosity in humanity in every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford or to any of those whom he traces in his line but I live in an inverted order they who ought to have succeeded me had gone before they who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors and then he says elsewhere he says the storm has gone over me and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scat about me I'm stripped of all my honors and torn up by the roots and like prostrates on the earth lacking in proper public honors Burke's life may have been but his achievement is one of inextinguishable glory

Channel: RSA

Views: 9,415

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: Allegra Stratton, Jesse Norman MP, Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke, Politician (Ontology Class), Conservative Party

Id: zGMeUdwkXCU

Length: 65min 23sec (3923 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2013