Professor, where have you been?
Once again the London School of Economics is in the news. On page 144 of this issue of the SPECTATOR Professor Geoffrey Barra- dough advances a startling new theory to account for the recent outbreaks of student revolt in England, and at the LSE in par- ticular: they are, he suggests, a reaction against the political philosophy of Professor Michael Oakeshott. On page 136 of this same issue Dr David Martin, enjoying the unfair advantage of actually teaching at the LSE, puts forward a rather more convincing ex- planation of the phenomenon.
It is not, of course, wholly fanciful to link (as Professor Barraclough does) the collapse of the Labour government in 1951 with the end of the 'Laski era' of socialist optimism which had reached its zenith in 1945. But he is in far deeper water when he attempts to draw a similar parallel between our present discontents and the end of the 'seventeen years of negation and pessimism' of 'the Oakeshott era.'
When Professor Barrclough writes that '1968 stands out as a turning-point, in much the same way as 1951' and that the 'new generation'—in the best progressive circles it is de rigueur for age to defer to youth—are 'far more impressed by the vast potentialities opened up by science' than concerned, with Oakeshott, 'that the struc- ture of civilisation, so intricate and fragile, is toppling,' one is tempted to ask where on earth the Professor has been these past four years. For it was in 1964, not 1968, that Labour swept back into power on a tide of Laskian optimism, promising (in Mr Wil- son's own words) to 'harness socialism to science, and science to socialism: It is, if anything, against just that kind of facile and fatuous optimism that a disillusioned public is now reacting. And today, four years later, the essential fragility of our civilisation is all too apparent.
But there is one respect in which Professor Barraclough is undoubtedly right. 'Con- servatism today' he points out 'has travelled far beyond. a. . . Burkean faith in tradition and suspicion of theory.' Too far. For in doing so it has undermined its philosophic basis altogether. The real value of Professor Barraclough's article lies in his overdue (if also overstated) reminder that political ideas matter—even to politicians.
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