Maurice Cowling

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Maurice John Cowling
Born September 6, 1926(1926-09-06)
London
Died August 24, 2005 (aged 78)
Nationality British
Occupation Historian

Maurice John Cowling (September 6, 1926 – August 24, 2005) was a British historian and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Contents

[edit] Early life and professional career

Cowling was born in Norwood, South London to a lower middle-class family. His family then moved to Streatham where Cowling attended an LCC elementary school and from 1937 the Battersea Grammar School. When the Second World War started in 1939 the school moved to Worthing and then from 1940 to Hertford where Cowling attended sixth-form.

Cowling won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1943. He took preliminary examinations in June 1944 but was called up for military service in September 1944, where he joined the Queen's Royal Regiment. In 1945, after training and serving in a holding battalion, he was sent to Bangalore as an Officer Cadet.

In 1946 Cowling was attached to the Kumaon regiment and the next year-and-a-half he travelled to Agra, Razmak on the North-West Frontier and Assam. As independence for India neared in 1947, Cowling was dispatched to Egypt as a camp adjutant to the British HQ there. Cowling was then promoted to captain in Libya. By the end of 1947 Cowling was finally demobilised and in 1948 he went back to Jesus College to complete his Historical Tripos, where he got a Double First.

In 1954 Cowling worked at the British Foreign Office for six months at the Jordan department and in early 1955, The Times gave him the job of foreign leader-writer which he held for three years. In 1957 Cowling was invited by the Director of the Conservative Political Centre to write a pamphlet on the Suez Crisis; it was never published, however, as the party wanted to move on from Suez as quickly as possible. He stood unsuccessfully for the parliamentary seat of Bassetlaw during the General Election of 1959 for the Conservative Party.

In 1961 Cowling was elected a Fellow of Jesus College and Director of Studies in Economics, shortly before the History Faculty appointed him to an Assistant Lectureship. During six weeks of the summer of 1962 Cowling wrote Mill and Liberalism, which was published in 1963 and became one of his most contentious books. The book claimed Mill was not as libertarian as he was traditionally portrayed and that Mill resembled a "moral totalitarian". One reviewer, Dr. Roland Hall, called the book "dangerous and unpleasant". In 1963 he was elected a Fellow to Peterhouse, Cambridge where he advised his students to tackle liberals with "irony, geniality and malice". Cowling published his work on the 1867 Reform Act during its centenary and dedicated it to "the Prime Minister", Labour leader Harold Wilson. During the 1960s Cowling campaigned against a Sociology course to be introduced at Cambridge, regarding it as a "vehicle for liberal dogma".[1] In November 1966 Cowling was elected as a Conservative councillor on the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely County Council in a by-election, which he held until 1970.[2]

He was appointed the literary editor of The Spectator for a year (1970–1971) and in the early 1970s he wrote articles of a broadly Powellite nature arguing against the UK being a member of the EEC. In 1977 Margaret Thatcher visited the Cambridge Graduate Conservative Association of Peterhouse where she "cut through the compact subtlety and 'rational pessimism' of [Cowling]" and sharply retorted: "We don't want pessimists in our party".[3] In 1978 he ceased to be Director of Studies in Peterhouse and in the same year he helped found the Salisbury Group, a group of conservative thinkers named, on Michael Oakeshott's advice, after the Prime Minister of the same name. Also in the same year Cowling published Conservative Essays where he said:

"If there is a class war – and there is – it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones".[4]

Cowling was "instrumental" in getting the historian Lord Dacre of Glanton from Oxford to become Master of Peterhouse from 1980 to 1987, though in later years he came to regret supporting Dacre's arrival there.[1] In November 1989 Cowling published his essay on 'The Sources of the New Right' in Encounter which detailed the ideological roots of Thatcherism in Britain and became the Preface to the second edition of Mill and Liberalism in 1990.

Cowling retired from the History Faculty of Cambridge in 1988 and from his Fellowship of Peterhouse in 1993. In 1996 Cowling married George Gale's ex-wife and in 2005, aged 78, Cowling died after a long illness.

[edit] Historical work

In Cowling's political history books he developed what became known as "high politics" and he was also the most prominent of the Peterhouse school of history. This meant political events were interpreted through the study of around 40 eminent persons such as politicians, civil servants and servicemen who played a role in government. Class struggle is a running theme throughout the three political books. In Cowling's The Impact of Hitler, for example, party conflict is to Cowling class conflict with the Labour party the party of socialism and the Conservatives the party of resistance to socialism whilst being dedicated to preserving the existing social order. The policy making process to Cowling is therefore heavily influenced by party politics.

Cowling was an "isolationist imperialist"[5] who argued that from Britain's point-of-view the Second World War had been a "liberal war which had been entered into in a condition of moral indignation without the resources to fight it" and that it had been "providential good fortune which had placed the burden of fighting on the Russians and the Americans".[6] He was also critical of the war's outcome in the result of a Labour electoral landslide, a greatly expanded welfare state and the liquidation of the British Empire.[7]

[edit] Books

  • The Nature and Limits of Political Science by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1963)
  • Mill and Liberalism by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1963)
  • 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution. The Passing of the Second Reform Bill by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1967)
  • Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill edited by Maurice Cowling (New American Library, 1968)
  • The Impact of Labour 1920–1924. The Beginning of Modern British Politics by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1971), ISBN 0-521-07969-1
  • The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy, 1933–1940 by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1975), ISBN 0-521-20582-4
  • Conservative Essays edited by Maurice Cowling (Cassell, 1978), ISBN 0-304-30044-6
  • Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England Volume I by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1980), ISBN 0-521-23289-9
  • Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. Volume II: Assaults by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1985), ISBN 0-521-25959-2
  • Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 1993), ISBN 0-521-40013-9. Cowling's Festschrift.
  • A Conservative Future by Maurice Cowling (Politeia, 1997)
  • Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. Volume III: Accommodations by Maurice Cowling (Cambridge University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-521-25960-6

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Maurice Cowling", The Times, London: Times Newspapers, 2005-08-26. Retrieved on 2008-02-11. 
  2. ^ Rosenstiel, Colin; Keith Edkins (2001). Cambridgeshire & Isle of Ely County Council Elections - Cambridge Electoral Divisions. Retrieved on 2008-02-11.
  3. ^ Ghosh, Peter (1993). "Towards the verdict of history: Mr Cowling's Doctrine", in Bentley, Michael (ed.): Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British history presented to Maurice Cowling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 288. 
  4. ^ Cowling, Maurice (1978). "The Present Position", in Cowling, Maurice (ed.): Conservative Essays. London: Cassell, p. 1, p. 9. 
  5. ^ Cowling, Maurice (1980). Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England: Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 214. 
  6. ^ Cowling, Maurice (1990). Mill and Liberalism, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. xv. 
  7. ^ Cowling, Maurice [1975] (1977). The Impact of Hitler: British politics and British policy, 1933–1940. Chicago, London: Chicago University Press, p. 391, p. 399. 

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Persondata
NAME Cowling, Maurice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Historian
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 2005
PLACE OF DEATH