In Praise of Middle Government

Letters

Vol. 12 No. 14 · 26 July 1990

From Ted Honderich

According to Ian Gilmour’s review of my Conservatism (LRB, 12 July) I speak of Lord Hailsham’s ‘undergarment’, say that the Russian political system has fallen only as short as ours of being ideally democratic, and discuss books by Labour politicians. I don’t. This doesn’t much matter, but enables me to own up with greater equanimity to the little errors he finds in my book, and makes a meal of. His error rate seems to be higher. More important, he says I have written on a subject that doesn’t exist, since ‘Conservatism’ doesn’t pick out anything. That is a surprise, since he also announces the death of ‘socialism’. Perhaps keen not to be further associated with some people who might be part of the first subject, he makes it vanish, by noticing diversity in it. Very keen to bury all of the second, he is blithe about yet more diversity. He obscures the fact that in the course of my book I explicitly define the tradition which is its subject, by arriving at its true features. It is footling to say that nothing falls under that definition. Partly by being footling, he pretty well avoids the whole long argument and the largest single proposition in my book. It is about the rationale of Conservatism. He neither deals adequately with my argument nor, yet more important, supplies an alternative rationale. That is incomprehension or evasion – in any case, a critical reviewer’s disaster. It is also the intellectual disaster of Conservatism.

I am, he says, the archetypal rationalist of the nightmare of one of his mentors. When not in that dream-life, I wrote a chapter on Conservative claims as to bad and good sources of politics: rationalism, abstractionism etc, as against the test of time, empiricism etc. Ian Gilmour reports the numinous nonsense that political activity consists in being lost at sea, but does not try his hand with my arguments. He is clear that I am an ideologue and he isn’t. What is one? Anybody who propounds something other than ‘middle government’? That reduces his approval of himself as a non-ideologue to the news that a supporter of middle government is a supporter of middle government. As for my too great confidence in my views, I do not notice any great diffidence in his. It would be nice to go on – about the reluctant accommodations Conservatism has made with history, about declamation with respect to equality and liberty, which I discuss at some length, and about the nature of political philosophy. It is different from the history of ideas, guides to reading for the A level in Politics, and Popper-piety, which is well known outside philosophy but not in it.

Mr Gilmour enables me to get into the second edition of my book some little corrections that should have gone into the first, but he disturbs me not at all. He is upset because I have no respect for Conservatism. Should I, in civility, pretend a respect? I feel no inclination at this time when Conservative governments, from which I allow he is to be honourably distinguished, have made a society into a slum.

Ted Honderich
London WC1

Vol. 12 No. 15 · 16 August 1990

From Ian Gilmour

Professor Honderich’s letter (26 July) makes it easy to understand how he made his errors about Burke and others. ‘According to Ian Gilmour’s review of my book Conservatism,’ he writes, ‘I speak of Lord Hailsham’s “undergarment”, say that the Russian political system has fallen only as short as ours of being ideally democratic and discuss books by Labour politicians. I don’t.’ Let me take these points in order.

1. In my review I said: ‘The most glaring exclusion of all, however, is that of Lord Hailsham. Honderich is aware of Hailsham’s existence since he makes a heavy joke about his trousers, which Honderich calls his undergarment, but he is evidently not aware of his books.’ Honderich is entitled to complain that my execrable handwriting produced ‘under’ instead of ‘lower’ garment, especially as it is the only solid point in his letter: but the correction does not make his joke any lighter or lessen his negligence in failing to know of Hailsham’s books.

2. My remark about the Russian political system was a quotation from Honderich. After giving his exacting definition of democracy I wrote: ‘Honderich points out that Western democracies do not meet these requirements (he does not say how any regime could ever meet them) and then adds in all seriousness: “something the same has been true of the Soviet political system.” ’ On page 130 of Conservatism Honderich says: ‘Western democracies are certainly not actual instances of it [i.e. democracy], however closer they may be than certain other existing governments. Something the same has been true of the Soviet political system.’

3. I never suggested that Honderich discussed books by Labour politicians. Discussing his ‘honest threadbare bibliography’ and his exclusion from both text and bibliography of Hailsham, Patten, Waldegrave and Pym, I wrote: ‘These omissions might have been ascribed to a bizarre decision by Honderich to disallow books by all practising politicians, were it not that he does include Roy Hattersley and Gordon Brown.’ Their books duly appear on pages 248-9; Hattersley is cited on page 82.

Honderich further claims that I said his subject does not exist ‘since Conservatism does not pick out anything’. I in fact said that what Honderich meant by Conservatism – in his words, the ‘political tradition … exemplified by the Conservative Party in Britain and the main part of the Republican Party in the United States’ – does not exist because the Conservative and Republican traditions are different.

Contrary to what Honderich says, I was in no way upset by his having no respect for Conservatism – that was entirely predictable. Nor did I, or do I, object to his confidence in his own views. But British Conservatism is intimately bound up with British history and the Conservative Party. I merely think, therefore, that, however well justified Honderich’s confidence in his own great abilities may be, for him to attempt a polemic against Conservatism without bothering to study British history, or to take his reading of British Conservative theorists much beyond The Portable Conservative Reader, was decidedly imprudent. If, instead of sneering at Oakeshott and Popper, Honderich tried to learn from them, the second edition he promises us might be a considerable improvement on the first.

Ian Gilmour
House of Commons

Vol. 12 No. 16 · 30 August 1990

From Ted Honderich

Ian Gilmour is better at listing titles of books than he sometimes is at reading them. In his letter (16 August) he persists in the bloomer of his review when he ascribes to me the idea that the Russian political system has been only about as far short of being ideally democratic as ours. I say that with respect to only one of three features of democracy, and say very differently with respect to the other two, and hence of the Russian system in sum. See pages 127 – 30 of Conservatism. I invite him to concede the point.

He does concede that he, or maybe his handwriting, made a second little error, about Lord Hailsham. As for the third, about whether I discuss the books of Labour politicians, I most certainly persist in thinking he at least implied what he now says he didn’t suggest. I thus persist in thinking his overall error rate is higher than mine.

He is wonderfully silent about the oddity of his supposing that ‘Conservatism’ when used of a tradition with diversity in it is meaningless, but ‘socialism’ isn’t. It is in fact absolutely impossible to suppose that things in some respects different cannot be grouped and discussed together.

Can one write against Conservatism without putting in a lot of history, and looking up books by practising politicians, even those of Ian Gilmour? Yes, one can. That is what happens in pretty well all books of political philosophy. Can one defeat a book without attempting, in review or letter, to provide an alternative answer to the main question it asks? No, one can’t.

Ted Honderich
University College London