David Cannadine, In Churchill’s Shadow: Confronting the Past
in Modern Britain 1st published 2002 (London: Penguin Books,
2003), pp. 385.
David Cannadine,
Professor of History at London University, is a well known historian having
written six books including a biography of G.M. Trevelyan, the great Cambridge
historian. He specializes in the study of class, especially the aristocracy, in
Britain. This book comprises articles covering a wider theme---the decline of
Britain as related to the perception of that decline in the upper, and
upper-middle, classes. Among the great personages through whose lives we
perceive that consciousness of decadence and decline are: Churchill, the
Chamberlains, Josiah Wedgwood, Stanley Baldwin, Francis Brett Young, G.M
Trevelyan, R.B. Meriman, Gilbert and Sullivan, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming. He
also looks at two institutions in this context: the Palace of Westminster and
the National Trust.
The first thing one learns, and Cannadine emphasizes it
from the beginning, is that what passes off as ‘tradition’ is often
constructed. Most English institutions, considered ‘traditional’, were actually
created during the Victorian era. The Palace of Westminster, Barry and Pugin’s
palatial masterpiece, was created when a fire destroyed the old palace in
October 1834. The new palace projected a Tory vision of Britain. The commons,
who were becoming powerful, are not visible but the crown, which was already of
ornamental and symbolic significance, was written large in the architecture and
decoration of the palace. The fact of the matter was, however, that this was a
palace only in name. In reality it was the parliament of a great democracy.
It was as if the soul of Britain was split between the
old world grandeur of royalty and aristocracy and the new world reality of
people’s power. So Churchill, a duke’s grandson, duly reported to his
parliamentary colleagues and jealously guarded against royal exercise of power.
But he also believed most ardently in the symbol of monarchy and was moved by
the pageantry which went with royalty and aristocracy.
The Chamberlains of Birmingham, classified as
‘quintessentially a middle-class family’ by the author, represent the rising
new Britain. They developed their city, Birmingham, into a great modern
metropolis. This is one part of the schism in the soul of Britain referred to
above. The old feudal Britain concentrated on London or on the construction of
palatial residences for the aristocracy. The rise of the bourgeoisie led to the
development of new cities---Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds etc.
Another such entrepreneur, this time a potter, born at
Barlaston was Josiah Wedgwood. He too was a great admirer of the British ‘great
tradition’. His life was devoted to the completion of a history of the
parliament from medieval times onwards. This sense of the continuity of
parliament was invented in the teeth of the opposition of historians who
pointed out that the medieval institutions were, in fact, so different from the
modern ones that it was problematic to lump them together and talk of
continuity. However, Wedgwood laid the seed and it flourished in a different
form and has yielded fruit in the form a history of parliament.
It was in the nineteenth century too that the cult of the
British countryside was born. What with the encroachments of the satanic mills
on the lush green countryside it was inevitable that someone like Wordsworth
would give the clarion call to save this British heritage. And who better than
Stanley Baldwin, thrice prime minister, and the author Francis Brett Young.
Both are now forgotten but Baldwin was elected thrice and Brett did sell copies
in hundreds of thousands in the middle of the twentieth century. This was
unprecedented at that time and became possible only because he touched a new
chord---nostalgia for the ‘uncomplicated’ life of pre-war England which the
countryside symbolized.
Another aspect of this celebration of Englishness was the
scholarly work which emerged from it. G.M. Trevelyan, Regius Professor of
Modern History at Cambridge, wrote his well-received books on English social
history. R.B. Merriman, his American counterpart at Harvard, wrote on a wide
variety of historical subjects but more importantly from the point of view of
modern history is that both influenced their respective governments to fight
Hitler.
This was more an exercise in patriotism rather than
self-defence. And patriotism is the theme of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and
Noel Coward’s plays. Both camouflage the patriotic theme with comedy but in the
end, along with romantic deference to the aristocracy, the theme takes over. It
also forms the impulse behind the setting up of the National Trust which
acquired country houses from impecunious aristocrats who could no longer afford
them.
Given this obsession with patriotism and the invented
‘great tradition’ it is little wonder that the age of action, thriller,
suspense and sex symbolized by James Bond could also be connected, though
obliquely, with this backward-looking tradition. Yet Ian Fleming, the creator
of Bond, was also a patriot and very much a sentimental admirer of the Tory
tradition. In short, the Bond books from a bridge from the grand architectonics
of the palace of Westminister to the macho military of modern Britain which can
take over Basra in the ‘grand’ colonial tradition.
On the whole the book is well written and is very useful
for understanding the British obsession with the past and the construction of
‘tradition! It is in the tradition of literary history or history as a humane
discipline which makes for readable books and not for source-studded tomes.
However, the sources are there for reference so that the scholarship is very
much there though not on pretentious display. What is missing in it is the
conviction that these obsessions with greatness come at a great cost. They make
people oblivious to the sufferings of the common people who pay for them and
die for them as well as the sufferings of those who are conquered and
dominated. One needs correctives when writing such accounts. The celebration is
there, the correctives are not. This is a flaw in the book which mars one’s
pleasure in reading it. Had the author taken pride in Britain’s humane
tradition: the parliamentary tolerance, the rule of law, the liberty, the
withdrawal from the colonies without unnecessary violence, the welfare
state---that would have been an indisputable source of pride.