R. H. Tawney
Richard Henry Tawney[a] (30 November 1880 – 16 January 1962) was an English economic historian,[1][2] social critic,[3][4] ethical socialist,[5] Christian socialist,[6][7] and important proponent of adult education.[8][9] The Oxford Companion to British History (1997) explained that Tawney made a "significant impact" in these "interrelated roles".[10] A. L. Rowse goes further by insisting that "Tawney exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and, above all, educationally".[11]
R. H. Tawney
16 January 1962 (aged 81)
English
Harry Tawney
- The Acquisitive Society (1920)
- Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)
- Equality (1931)
Early life and education[edit]
Born on 30 November 1880 in Calcutta, British India (present-day Kolkata, India), Tawney was the son of the Sanskrit scholar Charles Henry Tawney. He was educated at Rugby School, arriving on the same day as William Temple, a future Archbishop of Canterbury; they remained friends for life.[12] He read Greats at Balliol College, Oxford.[13] The college's "strong ethic of social service" combined with Tawney's own "deep and enduring Anglicanism" helped shape his sense of social responsibility.[14] After graduating from Oxford in 1903, he and his friend William Beveridge lived at Toynbee Hall, then the home of the recently formed Workers' Educational Association (WEA). The experience was to have a profound effect upon him. He realised that charity was insufficient and major structural change was required to bring about social justice for the poor.[15]
Christian socialism[edit]
Whilst Tawney remained a regular churchgoer, his Christian faith remained a personal affair, and he rarely spoke publicly about the basis of his beliefs.[16] In keeping with his social radicalism, Tawney came to regard the Church of England as a "class institution, making respectful salaams to property and gentility, and with too little faith in its own creed to call a spade a spade in the vulgar manner of the New Testament".[17]
For three years from January 1908, Tawney taught the first Workers' Educational Association tutorial classes at Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, and Rochdale, Lancashire.[18] For a time, until he moved to Manchester after marrying Jeannette (William Beveridge's sister and a Somerville graduate), Tawney was working as part-time economics lecturer at Glasgow University. To fulfil his teaching commitments to the WEA, he travelled first to Longton for the evening class every Friday, before travelling north to Rochdale for the Saturday afternoon class. Tawney clearly saw these classes as a two-way learning process. "The friendly smitings of weavers, potters, miners and engineers, have taught me much about the problem of political and economic sciences which cannot easily be learned from books".[19]
World War I Service[edit]
During the First World War, Tawney served as a Sergeant in the 22nd Manchester Regiment.[20] He turned down a commission as an officer as a result of his political beliefs, preferring instead to serve in the ranks. He had initially opposed the war on political grounds, however he decided to enlist following reports of atrocities committed during the German Army's invasion of Belgium. He served at the Battle of the Somme (1916), where he was wounded twice on the first day and had to lie in no man's land for 30 hours until a medical officer evacuated him. He was transported to a French field hospital and later evacuated to Britain. The war led Tawney to grapple with the nature of original sin. "The goodness we have reached is a house built on piles driven into black slime and always slipping down into it unless we are building night and day".[21] It also heightened his sense of urgency for meaningful social, economic and political change. In 1918, he largely wrote Christianity and Industrial Problems, the fifth report (the other four were on more ecclesiastical matters) from a Church of England commission which included a number of bishops.[22] Notable for its socialist flavour, the report "set the tone for most Anglican post-war social thinking".[23]
Activism[edit]
Social criticism[edit]
Two of Tawney's books stand out as his most influential social criticism:[31] The Acquisitive Society (1920), Richard Crossman's "socialist bible",[12] and Equality (1931), "his seminal work".[33] The former, one of his most widely read books,[27] criticised the selfish individualism of modern society. Capitalism, he insisted, encourages acquisitiveness and thereby corrupts everyone. In the latter book, Tawney argues for an egalitarian society.
Both works reflected Tawney's Christian moral values, "exercised a profound influence" in Britain and abroad, and "anticipated the Welfare state".[31] As David Ormrod of the University of Kent stresses, "intermittent opposition from the Churches to the new idolatry of wealth surfaced from time to time but no individual critics have arisen with a combination of political wisdom, historical insight and moral force to match that of R.H. Tawney, the prophet who denounced acquisitiveness".[34]
Christian socialist politics[edit]
Historian Geoffrey Foote has highlighted Tawney's "political shifts": "From an endorsement of a radical Guild socialism in 1921 through his authorship of the gradualist Labour & the Nation in 1928, his savage attacks on gradualism in the 1930s to his endorsement of revisionism in the 1950s". Nevertheless, the same author also argues that "Tawney's importance lies in his ability to propose a malleable yet coherent socialist philosophy which transcends any particular political situation. In this sense, his mature political thought never really changed".[35]
In 1906, Tawney joined the Fabian Society and was elected to its executive from 1921 to 1933.[14] His fellow Fabian Beatrice Webb described him as a "saint of socialism" exercising influence without rancour.[36] He joined the Independent Labour Party in 1909[37] and the Labour Party in 1918.[38] He stood three times, all unsuccessfully, for election to a seat in the House of Commons: for Rochdale in 1918, for Tottenham South in 1922, and for Swindon in 1924.[39] In 1935, Tawney refused the offer of a "safe seat", believing that being an MP was now not the most effective contribution he could make to the Labour Party.[40]
He participated in numerous government bodies concerned with industry and education. In 1919, he and Sidney Webb were among the trade union side representatives on the Royal Commission on the Coal Mining Industry, chaired by Sir John Sankey. Equal division of membership between union and employer representatives resulted in opposing recommendations on the future organisation of the industry.[41] The union side recommended nationalisation largely due to Tawney and Webb.[23]